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Blade of Darkness re-release

Humbaba

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Doubt the original devs will see a dime off of this rerelease. Glad I got the game while it was still abandonware. The only game that deserves the title "hidden gem"
 

Curratum

Guest
One of my colleagues raves on and on about this game, but he hasn't played it in 20 years, so I don't trust any of his rose-tinted memories of how he thinks it played.

Hopefully the remaster makes things better. Watching this in gameplay videos is a bit painful.
 

Cross

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I wonder if they will use the same generic royalty free music as the original release. I remember Max Payne uses a few of the same songs too.
I found myself enjoying the game more once I disabled the music. Not only is the background music generic (the tracks are just loops of a few seconds worth of droning sounds that get obnoxious fast), but it actually detracts from the environmental sound design, which is quite atmospheric.

The cutscenes, boss battles and other climactic encounters do have appropriate music (though nothing amazing).
 

fork

Guest
Doubt the original devs will see a dime off of this rerelease. Glad I got the game while it was still abandonware. The only game that deserves the title "hidden gem"

Yes, that's why you pirate re-releases and cash-grab remasters. There's something to be said for buying remakes as long as they're good. But then again, most of the time they're not.
 

deuxhero

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Flowery Land
This is unexpected but not unwelcome. The game barely ran on Windows 7 even after you work for it. Just running on modern PCs is a big enough deal.
 
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Naveen

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Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
It's a big demo. It includes the tutorial and, at least, every character's first level. I tried the barbarian (it crashed when alt-tabbing) and then the knight. For some reason, it doesn't let you save, so when that huge chaos warrior killed me I had to start again but I didn't feel like it. I have taken some screenshots, and comparing them to some old pictures I have from the original Blade, I believe they look exactly the same, ¿perhaps the old one slightly better? (that might be because I had the demo gamma settings too high, though.) Looking at the description, it seems this mostly adds widescreen support, higher resolution, and fixes some stability and minor issues. Not a minor thing since I tried playing the GoG version I have and it doesn't even start.
 

samuraigaiden

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Harare
RPG Wokedex
There's a couple of cool mods for the original game. I remember there used be some form of online pvp. I wonder if the new version supports any of that.
 

DJOGamer PT

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The demo is the tutoral and first level for all 4 characters.

20210916180620-1.jpg


The team behind it so far has done a pretty good job making it run on modern hardware.
There's no laucher (so no more graphical and sound API options), the settings available are only the one that can be changed in-game (so sound, display settings, controls, FOV and resolution)
I am happy with this - constantly going back to the laucher was a hassle, besides its not needed now as everything works outright (they even allow for borderless screennow)
There's nothing wrong with the lighting, textures, physics or any sound fx - shit even the UI works properly now
And they even remade the enemy icons

So all in all, on the techical side I only have 3 nitpicks:
1) you can't assign extra mouse buttons in the controls (I use a 5 button mouse, and the game doesn't allow for the Mouse4 and Mouse5 buttons)
2) the water ripples are very small, almost like what you would see in a pebble splash - I remember that in the original game, when a character enters a body of water there were appropriately sized ripples in the water
3) the weapon moveset image is clearly not yet remade to acomodate modern resolutions:



But seriously, that it
I had much less problems with this version of the game then I had with both the old GOG version and the original CD-ROM


After completing the demo (or even quitting the game) you're greeted with this image:

 

DJOGamer PT

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It's a real shame the game didn't sold very well at the time

I belive the game was an unfinished project - the dwarf and amazon clearly didn't got the same attention as the knight and barbarian, the difficulty gets quite lenient towards the end (mostly due to the players ridiculously high health pool), the magic weapons kinda suck compared to the regular one (I remember going to some trouble to find the Fire Greatsword in the fire temple, not for it to about as good as weapons I found all the way back in levels 3/4), and the enemy rooster is small (the game repeats the same enemies to much)

In fact, my suspicions were confirmed by the following knowledge: after BoD release, Rebel Act planned to fully remake the game into something more "complete"
It's was meant to be called Ultimate Blade of Darkness, and released to both the PC and XBox
These images are the only things left:

 

Matalarata

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Mother of God! I had completely missed this, Severance is one of my favoured games ever. Tukaram will need no fukin Big Sword this time, my erection is moar than enough!
 

DJOGamer PT

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Managed to find this old GameSpot article on Ultimate Blade of Darkness:

https://www.gamespot.com/articles/ultimate-blade-of-darkness-announced-for-the-xbox/1100-2716361/


Ultimate Blade of Darkness announced for the Xbox

Rebel Act Studios will bring an enhanced version of its hack-and-slash game to the Microsoft Xbox.

By Shahed Ahmed on May 7, 2001 at 4:50PM PDT



Rebel Act Studios has announced Ultimate Blade of Darkness for the Microsoft Xbox. The company promises that the game will be more than just an updated version of its Blade of Darkness PC game, but naturally the Xbox version will share many of its primary gameplay elements with the original. Enhancements planned for the Xbox version of the game include a new control system, smoother and more fluid animation, improved character graphics, enhanced particle system and bump-mapping, improved load times, a simplified interface, blood on weapons and footprints, 3D positional audio and new sound effects, revised story elements, and a split-screen two-player mode and new multiplayer levels.

At its core, the game is a hack-and-slash action title with specific RPG elements. In the game, players can choose to play as one of four characters--a dwarf, an amazon, a barbarian, or a knight--each with his or her own specific abilities. Additionally, each of these characters has a different story that unfolds as the game progresses.

Ultimate Blade of Darkness will be released by Christmas 2002 for the Microsoft Xbox. Rebel Act Studios further confirmed Blade of Darkness II. No specific platforms were discussed.


It's seems the "remake" was mostly a tech upgrade
They were probably trying to wow the console crowd, meaning they wanted to expand the game's audiance to the mainstream

Still pretty ambitious plans, a Christmas 2002 release, one year and half after the original release and exactly at the time when all other AAA big hitters would be "duking it out"
Not to mention they were already planning for a sequel, all of this just 3 months after Blade was released
They must have been pretty confident back then, even though the game was underperforming...
 

Roguey

Codex Staff
Staff Member
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I gave the demo a spin and good god the controls and targeting are awful, borderline unplayable. I also went ahead and tried out the Rune demo earlier, since it's also cited as a PC game with good melee combat, and it was also lousy (though more playable than this). PC gamers of the early 00s had cope levels off the charts when it came to this genre.
 

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