Posted on: April 5, 2010

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Games: 718 Reviews: 36

Blade of Destiny: A very rough diamond

(note this is just for the first game) Most games I play I can easily shove in a "good" or "bad" corner but Blade of Destiny is a tough nut to crack. It took me 2 days to read up on the game before I could actually start playing it and having now completed it, 4 days later, I'm not sure whether I really enjoyed the trip or not. Blade of Destiny is called, by many, a "hardcore RPG" meaning it's supposed to be very deep, complex, full of stats, etc. Okay, it HAS a ton of stats but sadly enough, many of them are vague and some don't even do anything! With over 50 skills and very limited skillpoints, it becomes a game of pure guesswork to determine what skills you should focus on. The manual is entirely unhelpful because it doesn't actually state which skills will be used the most. If they had trimmed the fat and had cut out all these skills which are only used one or twice in the entire game, it would have been a far more enjoyable experience instead of giving gamers a headache trying to figure out how to make the best party. In the end, it doesn't really matter that much because even if you lack a skill, there's usually ways around it but, of course, the manual doesn't tell you this either. Basically, before you play this game, I'd recommend you read any helpful website to get an idea what the game is about, what skills to focus on, what items to focus on, etc. because otherwise, you're going to get buried beneath tons of useless loot. Most of the stuff sold in stores seems useless and with your inventory being so limited in space and carrying more than a few weapons seriously slowing you down in combat, you'll end up just ditching everything but rations and weapons. I know I did. But once you get past all this crud, you're left with a raw diamond of a game. Combat is very satisfying and tactical and there's a LOT of it and there's a lot of little detail to the game like random events. You can sell and buy in different stores, there's actual seasons that affect where you can travel to, you can take a boat to cut corners off your travels, there's side quests and lots of caves & dungeons for you to loot and, generally, there's a lot to this game considering its age. Still, even here I can't stop to criticize: the game is completely user-unfriendly for dozens of reasons. Besides how intransparent the skill system is, navigating cities is a nightmare as well, with vital NPCs being in unmarked houses so you end up knocking on every unmarked door just in case an important person lives there. If a city contains 50 houses, this easily takes 15 minutes for a city. Good thing you get the Hint Book with this game which has maps of all cities - USE IT! But that's not all: it's well possible to get stuck with no way of completing the game by doing normal things but picking the wrong things to say. And how about magic items which look identical to normal items and even have the same name! I had three swords in my inventory at one time and one was magical yet I had to use identification spells to discover which was. Or how about in dungeons: picking the wrong hallway once got me stuck with no way of getting out, AT ALL. In general, what people call "hardcore" is really a game being very unforgiving and expecting the player to figure out how everything works with barely any clue and a LOT of trail and error. If this game had had a 300 page manual that carefully explained what most items were for, the ingredients for alchemy (dear god, I spent an hour just to discover what I needed to have to make a potion. If you pick up a recipe, isn't it SUPPOSED to tell you what ingredients you need?) and so many other things like the real use of skills & spells for starters. In the end this is a very rough diamond. For its age it's amazingly complex but it still saddens me to see so many crucial mistakes being made. This game would have been a tremendous classic if it didn't leave you hanging in the air so many times. Even the walkthroughs I find are full of lines like "I never discovered if skill A or spell B had any use" which is not encouraging. Heck, there's even evidence inside the game that the game was meant to be a lot more complex but my guess is that they removed a lot of functionality (or decided against adding it) because it would complicate the game too much which is ironic since leaving all the useless baggage behind does exactly that. Except for the fun combat, there's a lot of rough corners on this game. If you got the patience, it's still worth playing but be sure to use Google to track down every piece of advice you can find!

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Posted on: October 2, 2011

Golbarin

Verified owner

Games: 85 Reviews: 1

Game is great, but this package not

The Realms of Arcania Games are maybe the RPGs with the best flair, they are certainly for me. But this package kinda sucks. It is NOT the CD-Edition with great musik, but the disk-Version with anoying MIDI-Sound (and much less diversity in Musik). The manual of RoA1 lacks the komplete description of the spells. (there isn't even a single sentce about the effect of a spell). For Players new to arcania completely unplayable.

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Posted on: March 15, 2011

Fujek

Verified owner

Games: 232 Reviews: 1

Kind of game for a specific taste

This package contains part one and two of the so called 'Northlands trilogy', which bases on Germany's leading pen and paper system 'Das Schwarze Auge'. The rules have been slightly altered, trimmed and adjusted for the different environment of a computer game as opposed to an actual human game master. The first part plays in the north-western coast region of Arcania named 'Thorwall', which is the home of a seafaring, Viking like people, currently troubled by a massive orc invasion. The game offers a novice and an advanced mode, but the novice mode (much like the option of automated combat) is too much of a drawback to be really 'beginner' friendly, due to the increased difficulty of surviving with a sub standard designed party. A similar issue applies to the optionally available pre-generated characters, that simply can not compete well enough with the adventures that lie ahead of them. While that is not much of a hassle normally, because you would want a unique party to meet your play style anyway in most every role playing game, the process of character generation in Arcania is extremely luck based and thus has a high order of repetition. The amount of detail and choice that the advanced Arcania user can dwell in is a double edged sword, since it is going to require some knowledge of the game mechanics (and thus a bit of time spent with the handbook, or even the clue-book, which is fortunately included with the package), but grants a special sort of dedication and customisation to your alter egos. To ease the somewhat troublesome experience a bit, the second (and third) part of the trilogy allow you to import your previously used party with most of their gear, skills and attributes, which means you only have to go through this time consuming process once. Characters come with several positive and negative attributes (of which the negative have generally less impact and some non at all) and certain skills (and spells for the magical ones). Attributes and skills are capped and progression is handled by point distribution, but with a chance of failure increasing with the growing figures. Even though no single class, race or skill is specifically required to successfully finish the game, some choices certainly increase the resilence of your party (e.g. Warrior, Dwarf, Magician, Elfs) whereas others aren't as useful (especially warlock and Druid). A good amount of people is going to appreciate the impact that even the slightest choice is going to have on the game, like your attributes, skills and even your race and gender influencing dialoges, or the leading party member's skills triggering certain events in the city, dungeons and wilderness. For others the heavy micro management is going to be too bothersome, where even a tent or a bed roll can effect your game (illness, regeneration), where your party is getting hungry and thirsty, requires plenty of (non automated) resting on the somewhat tedious and long journeys between locations and can be split up into independently acting groups. The astonishing general factor of realism somehow outlines the few errors even more (Grimring, a two-handed sword, which is required for the final battle can be used even by a mage, to ensure that one doesn't need a warrior in the party). Aquiring money kind of shows this realism and detail very well, as you could show some acrobatics, dance, or play an instrument in a local tavern, risking nothing and gaining very little, or you could gather valuable materials with herb lore and maybe even mix your own potions due to your knowledge of alchemy. If you're really into gambling, you could try to cheat to increase your luck with a game of cards, or even pick some pockets, but might end up in prison. Another point that displays the freedom of choice in this world is the rather open storyline progression, which allows different attempts and even a different timeline. All in all, the game is very nice for people that want a high level of detail and realism, at the cost of extra effort and dedication, sometimes even resulting in heavy repetition, but easily scares off a lot of others.

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Posted on: December 14, 2009

vaustein

Verified owner

Games: 1831 Reviews: 2

Just adding to the praise

The Dark Eye / Realms of Arkania series is one of the best translations from tabletop to desktop, demanding a similar level of attention to detail. Even among other CRPG epics that followed the paper-to-PC path - AD&D Gold Box by SSI or The Elder Scrolls by Bethesda - Realms of Arkania remains the most loving tribute to its source material, particularly the game mechanics. Other reviewers mention the difficulty, and herein is the irony - how many PC gamers complain that CRPGs are just a nice story broken up by level-grinding monotony? Well, expect many of those same gamers - and I'll include myself - to complain that Realms of Arkania falls into the other extreme. The difficulty derives from 1) the depth of character management and 2) the free and open world offering little guidance. Of course, the experience is constrained by the medium. After all, no single-player PC game yet captures the experience of playing with human beings and dice and book, beer and pretzels, allowing players and the referee / game master to improvise in real time. But leave out the improvisation, and Realms of Arkania remains to this day the truest examples of the live role-playing experience condensed into a single-player scenario. I'd like to award that honor to TES:Daggerfall or Morrowind, but the TES series lets the player sleep outdoors in any weather without special gear and suffer no consequences. In the Dark Eye universe - and, incidentally, this one - that's a recipe for fatigue, illness, and eventual death. I'd like to share my experience with both these titles. I started Blade of Destiny over Christmas some years ago. Over several hours, I managed to learn the lay of the starting city and overcome the first dungeon. Then, my party took their first steps outside the city into the larger world - and there were so many new cities to explore, places to travel, and experiences to live. To bad I lost my saved game files to disk corruption at that point. During the half-day I spent on Blade of Destiny, I was as absorbed as I had been with Betrayal at Krondor and Darklands. Moving straight on to Star Trail, I first fumbled and died in the wilderness, eaten by the local fauna while fighting off "numbskull" and other illnesses my party caught while sleeping in their civvies on the cold, wet earth. Perusing a handy walkthrough, I better provisioned the party and made my way to a city under siege by orcs, complete with neat orcs-leering-from-behind-fortifications textures and a war-drums MIDI track. While surveying the siege and I exploring the city, i became entranced with the first-rate MIDI tracks, some of the best I've ever heard in an MSDOS-based game. I don't remember what happened, but as my party wandered that city, we became lost, a few little people in a big world that revolved around the plot, rather than the plot and world revolving around my party. I since lost the CDs for all three games, unfortunately. The first time GOG offers all three games (these + Shadows over Riva) in a $9.99 bundle, I'm there.

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Posted on: February 3, 2019

nikolausklinger

Verified owner

Games: 58 Reviews: 4

the hard life of adventure

dont forget your blankets, coats, swords, ropes, winterboots, water and food when you start travelling ;) this game can be very unforgiving when wandering around the landscape without beeing prepared for any kind of weather and terrain (and of course orks), so save often. your warriors could catch a bad cold, get sick or just die of hunger while trying to get over the next snowy mountaintop. while at the same time it feel very "real" and motivating to explore the map... there is a lot to see! the most hidden corners of the map, are often the most interessting... a lot of (sometimes random) text encounters are on the road and many times you have to use your skills or choose one of your characters to do a certain job ,according who has the skills that fit like swimming, climbing, hiding) micro management of your group is absolutely necessary to survive. cities and dungeons are built in 3d while travelling is on an overland map. those 3d cities are sometimes really huge and makes your feel greatful that they implemented a good auto-map into the game. nonetheless, cities are huge and one could get lost easily. at least as a kid i found its sometimes really difficult to figure out what to do next and where i should go. combat can be very lenghty since its turn based and slow, but in overall its a nice nostalgic game, which i enjoyed very much (a real GOG). good memories, i am sure i will install it again and travel around see what i can find on the way

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