Worthy of an entry in the main community thread I feel - possibly THE most requested feature in the remake of this awesome game has just landed in the BETA branch..

For those that haven't discovered Blade of Darkness yet - its definitely a golden oldie, and not for the faint hearted, but then I'm generally rubbish at games and I've beaten it. Go take a look..

If it requires a controller to play good, then it doesn't belong on PC.

Why?

Because every PC has a mouse and keyboard. Not every PC has a controller.
The reverse is true for consoles.

If you want to use controllers, play on a console.

But you can use controllers and gamepads for years now on a PC. Just because the standard input devices for office use - as the pc originally was intended to be - were mouse and keyboard doesn't mean that for gaming purposes you shouldn't use a controller on a pc. I agree with you that it makes sense for games to support mouse and keyboard, but if developers decide to support controllers i welcome this decision.

I'm not sure a controller would fit for the combo system, though.

Disregarding the fact that M&KB is the superior input format, my main source of antagonism regarding this is that many games that "support controllers" often Don't Support M&KB adequately, despite being sold on PC stores.
I have no problems with people using controllers on PC, or that games support them after-the-fact.
It's them being put forward and center. It's the console method of camera angle, movement control, GUI changes, Input limitations, and many many other failings of the consoles infecting PC's.
Quick-time events, scripted actions, Capped FPS, Cinematics, no re-binding keys, etc etc.
It's all connected. PC's and consoles should be separate.

Add to that, for a game to support a controller, means they nerf the ceiling for kb+m typically, making the game overall worse. Just like they do with graphic options, multi monitor support, higher fps support. Developers use the console as their standard which is sub par.

Finally - less comfortable and precise controls!

I can understand the frustration about PC games REQUIRING a gamepad, but this comment doesn't really fit to the topic at hand and you admitted to that yourself: Blade of Darkness is a PC only game that had NO controller support for ages. Whether it has bad M/KB controls is a different question, but I don't subscribe to the notion that it should not exist on PC for that reason. Gothic has clunky M/KB controls as well, and it's a PC only game, should we ban it from stores? This is very much an after-the-fact case.

(Besides, you could just as well say "If it requires anything better than an onboard graphic card to play good, it doesn't belong on PC", because every PC has onboard graphics, but not every PC has a high tier, gamer level GPU. And as a sidenote, my laptop actually does not have a mouse either, just a touchpad, which could make games requiring the use of the middle mouse button just as frustrating to me. It's all relative.)

***

To the OP, thanks for the info! I'm mildly hopefully that it might improve things, unless running is handled the same way as with M/KB (pressing a button twice instead of holding a trigger).

Wise words, friend

Wow, didn't realise i would start such a debate - all i knew was people had been asking on that specific game forum, after the release of the remaster, for controller support.

For the record, I've always played that and nearly every other game I own with M&KB.

To say if a game 'needs' a controller, then it shouldn't be on PC, is a little shortsighted. I'm struggling ot think of a PC game that doesn't have M&KB and forces you to use a cotroller to be honest. Now - whether a gaedm is BETTER played using a controller versus a M&KB is a whole other ballgame :)

Actually, Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons doesn't officially endorse M/KB controls. On Steam there is an explicit warning "Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons requires a controller to play" right at the top of the game's store page, on GOG this information is hidden more subtly at the bottom, in the system requirements: "Dual-stick Controller required".

Nevertheless, the game offers M/KB controls; it's just not encouraged to use them. And I've heard of players who managed to play through it with M/KB, but personally, I found it unplayable that way because right at the start, it seemed impossible to turn the crank on the elevator fast enough with KB before it fell down again.

I had bought the game half ignoring this warning, thinking I could make it work, if not with M/KB, then at least with my PS2 controller, since at the time I didnt really know much about gamepads in general and wasn't aware of the difference between DInput and XInput controllers and that most modern games don't support the PS2's DInput. The Sunk-Cost-Fallacy lead me to buy an Xbox360 gamepad one day, quite spontaneously, when I was in a certain mood, just to be able to play this game, and I bore a certain grudge against it because of that. But since then I've never regretted buying the thing. I used to be of a similar mindset as the guys in this thread, always defying any recommendations for using a gamepad on PC, but trying it out myself made me change my mind. Now I actually prefer it for certain games.

Anyway, moving away from this personal anecdote, there *are* (rare) cases of games on PC that have subpar M/KB controls and push you towards using a controller - or nowadays, require a VR headset even! - and it's not even a new trend: back in the days many games required joysticks or other gadgets, maybe not on what we see as the "PC" today, but still on computers, Atari ST, Amiga etc, not just consoles. And I never liked that either, still don't. But gamepads are a valid alternative to play games, even on PC. They're not for everyone but can be fun to use, and the decision to give players more options on how to play a game should be welcomed, not disparaged. Adding controller support to Blade of Darkness changes nothing about the original game.

You've could've just use x360ce, then again the PS2 controller is a godawful abomination so going to the slightly less godawful Xbox 360 controller is a big improvement.

I think I tried that but for some reason I didn't manage to make it work either. I actually like the Xbox360 controller now, I hope it won't break anytime soon so I'd have to switch to a newer one (but so far it has proven as pretty resilient, too).