Anyody remember blade of darkness?

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ep0x73

2[H]4U
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Sep 5, 2013
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Graphics were way ahead of their time. Made by rebel studio that went under, codemasters distributed it.

Great hack-slash game with some puzzles.

It was either 98 or XP I ran it on, no way it could be installed now on anything modern.

The setup choice was not good either as it could not recognize your hardware.

I recall few choices for your gpu, voodoo and a few others and sound, ac97 and a few old sound cards.

Beat it with the barbarian and then the knight.

It would be great if some older games were refreshed for 7/8 to play again.
 
Was that the one with all the really elaborate gore and de-limbing? Fun game.
 
Aaahahaha - no way man, I installed it 2 days ago again! I haven't played it yet, but there are fixes for getting it to work on Win7, just Google it.

The game fecking rocks, even though it's old. I've wasted many hours on this one over the years. The Barbarian is the way to go, but the amazon can be fun as hell. Nothing like chopping an orc's arm off, then picking it up and slapping his friends around with it.

It's a Codemasters game I think with a strong German influence. It would be awesome if they did a modern refresh for it.
 
Not Codemasters, because they suck ass now. But yeah, a remake would be cool.
 
Severance (aka Blade of Darkness) was by far my favorite HAck and Slash game, to this day I still think it has the best melee combat system in ia game.

The sheer variety of movies you had depending on the weapon you used and the character you were playing as.

One of ht eonly games wahere both offense and defense were paramount to win ning and oyu couldn't just spam buttons and hte enemeis also had to abide by the same rules.

If enemies bunched up and one of them swing and hit another enemy it actually did dmg to that enemy and some of them would even get pissed and "turn" on the other npc's if that happened.

It's sad that no other melee game develop seemed to have played it/known about it and "borrowed" that combat system.

Closest game to it now is Dark Souls, but it's still not as good or in depth in temr s of the combat system.
 
Harkamus said:
I always liked Rune better.
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Rune was fun but the melee combat of rune was not nearly as in depth or tactical.

However the area Rune had over BoD was multiplayer, I still remember the fun of playing online in the arenas, chucking a random persons arm at two people fighting each other, was absurd but funny as hell (you could actually use limbs as weapons in both games).
 
Rune had more realistic movement at least in the early days. Then they sped up the movement to make it equal when moving forwards as well as backwards. That was when I quit playing.
 
Cool, glad I am not the only one. Still have the original CD with the cover art.
Is the GOG version updated or is it just a distribution of the original game file .exe?

Neat you can get it on GOG, I'll have to see how you can get it working with 7.

If the game cannot recognize your GPU then you have to use a default which I recall maxed at 800x600.
If you could turn on AA and other eye candy this ancient but very good looking game would look even better.

Not Skyrim in size but the lights, stone and other features gives it that ES feel before they had it.

I agree the amount of moves was awesome, some took trial and error to hit in the right order/time but when it worked they were pretty kick ass.

I forgot about the dwarf until I seen the picture on GOG.

The amazon was the hardest one to play, in fact the very first unique level for her was pretty damn difficult and I never managed to get through.

I'll take a 5 foot long sword over some puny wooden staff.
 
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IIRC BoD was one of the first games to use real time lighting and shadows, even before Doom 3.
 
The GOG version must have been slightly recoded because I just pulled out my original and installed it on 7-64 for the hell of it.
Your video choices are voodoo1-2, premedia or something and something 98.

Reading through reviews on GOG I seen it mentioned to choose openGL so you can play in full HD.
That option is not available to me. The only choices as I recall give you a max 1280

Sound is just as bad, directsound software emulation, directsound hardware, milesound and some other choices.
 
This is the one that folks bring up as a rival to M&B for the best pre gunpowder mele mechanics to date.

I have not played it myself, and beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but if it is presented as being in the same league as M&B it has to be pretty dammed good.
 
jojo69 said:
This is the one that folks bring up as a rival to M&B for the best pre gunpowder mele mechanics to date.

I have not played it myself, and beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but if it is presented as being in the same league as M&B it has to be pretty dammed good.
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IMO it's leaps and bounds ahead of M&B.

In M&B it's built around this "gimmicky" 4-direction ruleset, which holds it back so much.

BoD relies less on this and more on a very in-depth moveset with an importance on both blocking and/or dodging. When you block/dodge, or hit someone, it feels more like "skill" rather then the "luck" that plays a lot more into M&B's four direction limitations.

It also looks/feels a heck of a lot better, fights actually resemble fights and don't look awkward as heck with people strafing around holding up their swords and sliding all over the place.

Neither game is totally realistic (I've yet to play a melee game that actually uses real stances/guards and goes in depth with grappling and other aspects of realistic middle ages fight techniques) but as a whole Blade of Darkness just feels the best and looks/plays both more fun and also more sense of direction and logic.
 
Cool game. It's been called a sort of a precursor to the (Dark/Demons) Souls games in terms of style and gameplay, and I'd say that's a pretty close comparison. Easily worth looking into.
 
Ultimate Blade of Darkness

It's an interesting story of blade of darkness. It rolls round the eternal struggle between the powers of Darkness and the forces of Light.

System requirement for Blade of Darkness

MINIMUM PC REQUIREMENTS

Windows 95/98/ME/2000

MINIMUM

Pentium II 400MHz Processor

64MB RAM

750MB Hard Disk Space

8X CD-ROM Drive

8MB 3D Graphics Card

16-bit DirectSound-compliant Sound Card

DirectX 8.0

Mouse

Keyboard

RECOMMENDED

Pentium III 500MHz Processor

128MB RAM

24X CD-ROM Drive

32MB 3D Graphics Card
 
Im sorry, nothing beats picking up a dismembered limb in Die By The Sword and beating your opponent with their own arm.
 
You could do the same thing in Blade of Darkness, and rune.

The main thing that made Die By the Sword stand out was the ability to control your sword with your mouse and make your own moves and everything, it as calle dthe "Vism" controls or something.

Though it didn't work as well as planned (because with a mouse you are locked to a 2d-plane and can't mimic 3d that well).
 
DO I EVER!

I STILL have dreams about that game. god damn I love it.

Now I must play it again. The combat/graphics/gore & dismemberment made it legendary. Still nothing quite like it that I've encountered today. It was a pretty serious game that wasn't super forgiving. so immediately I fell in love
 
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