It took me a long time to beat Blade of Darkness, almost a year of playing off-and-on. I had a lot of ups and downs with this game, but overall I liked it quite a lot. I beat the game as Tukaram the Barbarian.
The game is a mix of Legend of Zelda, Dark Souls, and a little bit of Tomb Raider, and in the case of the Souls games, it precedes all of them.
The story of the game is fairly simple: an evil sorcerer is wreaking havoc and you have to go map top map following the trail of destruction to stop him. This isn't a bad thing, in fact I think it is a strength. The worldbuilding and overall story (and the games cover) are clearly inspired by sword-and-sorcery: Robert E. Howard and Frank Frazetta in particular. The world is at once familiar in terms of its architecture with Egyptian, Indian, European, etc. aesthetics. The game never overwhelms with mass amounts of lore, but rather sprinkles in short sentences that drop the names of places and people you will never see. It helps to make the world feel larger than it is. That being said, the story-telling was a bit wonky. Voice-over with descriptions between and at the beginning of levels was mixed very quiet and could barely be heard over the music/sound effects, and subtitles proceeded much faster than the audio.
The level design was overall very good, each area felt unique in both art and architecture, and layouts felt somewhat sensible for their purpose, i.e. a fortress felt like a fortress and a temple felt like a temple. Levels were fairly compact, with lots of verticality. Exploring these levels reminded me of Tomb Raider and Legend of Zelda, with platforming, secrets, and ancient locations. Sadly the platforming doesn't match up to Tomb Raider's, the controls had a tendency to fling my character in a random direction when I tried to jump about 10% of the time. Platforming was nailbiting, but more so because I wasn't sure if my character would jump/walk off in the direction I wanted. And admittedly, by the end of the game it felt like there were too many levels, and I very much disliked a couple of them (looking at you Forge of Xshathra). I think it would have been nice to make more levels unique to different characters, instead of just giving them individual starting levels. This way there could be more incentive to play each character and less fatigue.
Now the game's main attraction: the combat. Blade of Darkness has some very satisfying PC action combat. I would even put it up their with the Jedi Knight games. Each style of weapons has a general moveset: one-handed swords, two-handed swords, spears, maces/clubs, etc. and then each unique type of sword or spear has its own unique attack. It plays almost like a fighting game, with different attacks being a combination of directional inputs and/or the attack button. More powerful attacks have longer animations that you often cannot dodge out of, so you must play strategically or you'll take massive damage. Healing items are sparse throughout levels, you may get some that enemies drop (if they don't end up using it themselves while you fight them). I definitely had a couple of times where I just gave up, not wanting to restart the level, but not being able to go on due to having no health, so I ended up using the invincibility cheat. I don't regret it, I don't think I would've beaten the game at all, and would've just been stuck at certain points forever.
If you like sword-and-sorcery or if you want interesting combat, and have a tolerance for older janky games, then I can recommend Blade of Darkness. It is a shame the studio behind it shut down, I would've loved to see what they could have done with a direct sequel or another game in this style. There really isn't another game like this.
The game is a mix of Legend of Zelda, Dark Souls, and a little bit of Tomb Raider, and in the case of the Souls games, it precedes all of them.
The story of the game is fairly simple: an evil sorcerer is wreaking havoc and you have to go map top map following the trail of destruction to stop him. This isn't a bad thing, in fact I think it is a strength. The worldbuilding and overall story (and the games cover) are clearly inspired by sword-and-sorcery: Robert E. Howard and Frank Frazetta in particular. The world is at once familiar in terms of its architecture with Egyptian, Indian, European, etc. aesthetics. The game never overwhelms with mass amounts of lore, but rather sprinkles in short sentences that drop the names of places and people you will never see. It helps to make the world feel larger than it is. That being said, the story-telling was a bit wonky. Voice-over with descriptions between and at the beginning of levels was mixed very quiet and could barely be heard over the music/sound effects, and subtitles proceeded much faster than the audio.
The level design was overall very good, each area felt unique in both art and architecture, and layouts felt somewhat sensible for their purpose, i.e. a fortress felt like a fortress and a temple felt like a temple. Levels were fairly compact, with lots of verticality. Exploring these levels reminded me of Tomb Raider and Legend of Zelda, with platforming, secrets, and ancient locations. Sadly the platforming doesn't match up to Tomb Raider's, the controls had a tendency to fling my character in a random direction when I tried to jump about 10% of the time. Platforming was nailbiting, but more so because I wasn't sure if my character would jump/walk off in the direction I wanted. And admittedly, by the end of the game it felt like there were too many levels, and I very much disliked a couple of them (looking at you Forge of Xshathra). I think it would have been nice to make more levels unique to different characters, instead of just giving them individual starting levels. This way there could be more incentive to play each character and less fatigue.
Now the game's main attraction: the combat. Blade of Darkness has some very satisfying PC action combat. I would even put it up their with the Jedi Knight games. Each style of weapons has a general moveset: one-handed swords, two-handed swords, spears, maces/clubs, etc. and then each unique type of sword or spear has its own unique attack. It plays almost like a fighting game, with different attacks being a combination of directional inputs and/or the attack button. More powerful attacks have longer animations that you often cannot dodge out of, so you must play strategically or you'll take massive damage. Healing items are sparse throughout levels, you may get some that enemies drop (if they don't end up using it themselves while you fight them). I definitely had a couple of times where I just gave up, not wanting to restart the level, but not being able to go on due to having no health, so I ended up using the invincibility cheat. I don't regret it, I don't think I would've beaten the game at all, and would've just been stuck at certain points forever.
If you like sword-and-sorcery or if you want interesting combat, and have a tolerance for older janky games, then I can recommend Blade of Darkness. It is a shame the studio behind it shut down, I would've loved to see what they could have done with a direct sequel or another game in this style. There really isn't another game like this.