The motion fantasy/sword and sorcery style on the Xbox just isn’t noticeably underpopulated, which speaks to the enduring recognition of entering into a personality’s footwear and swinging a sword about, or firing off spells.
Effectively, strap yourselves in as Insurgent Act Studios, Fireplace Falcom and SNEG have delivered one other of those video games, simply this time it comes with a little bit of a twist – it isn’t a brand new recreation in any respect. No, Blade of Darkness is a remaster of Severance: Blade of Darkness from 2001, now coming full with all of the “quirks” of the unique. Described by some as a Soulsbourne recreation earlier than the idea was even invented, its problem was well-known for being hardcore again within the day. So it begs the query – in a world the place Elden Ring and Bloobourne exist, is the world prepared for a remake to attempt to muscle in?
I’m going to begin by inspecting the story of Blade of Darkness, as it’s all the time a great level to start, proper? Effectively, what we now have here’s a typical form of excessive fantasy narrative that was frequent within the video games of this period. Assume Conan books crossed with Lord of the Rings (each of which had been cited as inspiration by the builders of the unique recreation) and also you received’t be too far off. It begins with a Supreme Being who creates Gentle and Darkish, after which the remaining is a historical past of battle. For sure, the gods want a hero to reclaim a holy sword in order that they’ll cease a horde of evil monsters spreading the world over. That hero is us. Will you settle for the mission, or flip the sport off and play one thing else?
Now, whereas I’m not a graphics snob, Blade of Darkness could be very a lot of its time. The visuals are precisely how ‘leading edge’ was again in 2001, and whereas they’re sufficient, they’re terrible to truly have a look at. The world is a mass of inexperienced and brown, while the draw distances are saved brief by good stage design. On this manner, I think about again within the day that pop-in was saved to a minimal, and so it’s right here.
The characters we play as are fairly nicely designed, if considerably polygonal; the enemies, likewise, a bit angular however in any other case completely high-quality. The digicam is price a point out although, largely as it’s a bit unusual – you know the way while you play a recreation of this type, from a 3rd particular person perspective, panning the digicam to navigate across the recreation? Effectively, there’s a bizarre disconnect between the motion of your character and that of the digicam right here. In the event you transfer the digicam with the precise stick, the character stops shifting briefly, and this feels awkward, particularly in fight.
Additional, sound is okay, with the standard swords and fight screams you’d anticipate, some grunts from monsters and so forth. However there may be nothing right here that can give Sekiro any sleepless nights. It’s all very 2001, nevertheless, it’s optimised for Sequence X|S.
Upon firing up Blade of Darkness there’s a selection it’s important to make – what character are you going to be? There are a complete of 4 to select from, with not an inkling of your fancy character mills right here. We are able to select to be Tukaram, a barbarian; Naglfar, a dwarf; Sargon, a knight; and Zoe, an amazon. After all, every character has completely different stats and might wield completely different weapons extra successfully than others. For instance, I selected Zoe as my first character, and he or she is sort of at dwelling with a employees or a spear in hand, however can’t use a honking nice battle axe. Having these selections at first is sort of good, however I haven’t seen any large distinction between the assorted characters.
However most significantly, how does Blade of Darkness play. Effectively, the information right here is fairly ropey to be sincere, as the principle a part of the sport, the fight, is clunky and stiff. Even the controls are fairly counter intuitive in the event you’ve performed as many video games of this kind as I’ve – for example, to lock on to an enemy, it’s important to maintain the precise set off down, after which assault with the A Button. This feels bizarre, I’m not going to lie, and when you do adapt, it by no means stops feeling awkward.
Fight is a no from me, then. Though there may be one factor that made me smile – if you find yourself combating enemies and utilizing edged weapons, there’s a mechanic that lets you sever the limbs of your foe. You’ll be able to then decide them up and hit them with their very own arm. It’s fairly humorous.
Exploration is fairly troublesome as nicely, primarily as a result of muddy trying textures making it laborious to see the place traps are. Within the first stage for example, there’s a part the place the trail is roofed by two traps taking pictures arrows. The factor is, these arrows are nearly fully invisible. You’ll be able to hear a faint “pfft” noise as an arrow is fired, however the place they’re coming from and the trail they take, no clue. Oh, and to place the cherry on the cake, these traps are a one hit kill, so any progress you could have made via the extent is gone. I do know Blade of Darkness is supposed to be a hardcore recreation, however there’s a distinction between hardcore and unfair…
All in all, Blade of Darkness will make you admire the video games we now have nowadays. It seems fairly poor, performs badly and is mostly missing in any enjoyable. In case you are a card carrying masochist, you might get some pleasure, however I’d suspect the bulk might be higher off enjoying one thing from the FromSoftware again catalogue. I do know it’s an outdated recreation reworked, and plenty of do have a hankering for the retro, nevertheless it’s laborious to make a case for Blade of Darkness being the sport to advance the case of the outdated getting remastered.
