About This Game A legend reborn as Realms of Arkania: Blade of Destiny returns!Developed by Austrian developer Crafty Studios, Realms of Arkania – Blade of Destiny is a faithful remake of the 1992 original, adored by a generation of Role Players and one of the most successful RPG’s of the 1990’s.Get ready to return to Thorwal, one of the oldest cities of Aventuria. Make sure your wits are sharpened before walking down the small alleys of Thorwal and Prem, and prepare to stop the Orcisch threat while creating a mighty alliance between nations. Featuring a complete visual reimagining along with a comprehensive overhaul of every aspect of the gameplay, Realms of Arkania – Blade of Destiny is set to captivate a 21st century audience of new and old fans alike. Old school RPG at its best – for the Fans of REAL RPG games.Features:Remake of the first part of Realms of ArkaniaRoleplaygame with turn based tactical fightsCities and dungeons in current real-time-3DDozens of talents, fighting skills and magical skillsAuthentic realization of the TDE basic rulesDepending on your gaming style – 20 to 80 hours game timeRevised EditionUser-Contributed ContentModding abilityAdditional encounters, making Aventuria even more aliveEnhanced BattlesCompletely redone graphicsCompletely revised and improved User InterfaceExtended music selectionEnhanced soundSteam Achievements, Stats and CloudLinux build 7aa9394dea Title: Realms of Arkania: Blade of DestinyGenre: Adventure, Indie, RPGDeveloper:Crafty StudiosPublisher:United Independent Entertainment GmbHRelease Date: 29 Jul, 2013 Realms Of Arkania: Blade Of Destiny Download For Pc [portable Edition] Old School Cool, I remember first playing this on my pentium 75 back in the day. RPG number crunching at it's best but now in 3D.. On a scale of 1 to 10 I would rate this game a 5/10, and only that high because of the mods and DLCs that make the 2015 implementation of the game somewhat tolerable. I shudder to think of what playing the original re-release of BoD must have been like.Pros:-Planning your party's make-up and levelling up strategy matters (somewhat)-A somewhat nostalgic old-school RPG flavor with emphasis on being true to the underlying game world, and story-telling/quests-Apparently there is a second installment in the RoA series being worked on, so hopefully the party you build and grow in BoD can carry over to the Star Trail re-make (assuming the developers improve on playability in the next installment)Cons:-Combat is glacially slow, riddled with incessant misses, and overall just a chore. If my characters weren't missing all the time, they would be dropping their weapons, or the weapons would break. (Hi I'm a warrior, trained in all kinds of combat techniques and... Whoopsie I just dropped my sword on the ground and now I'm dead....) Luckily I ran across a forum post recommending to switch to computer-controlled combat. I did that, running at a 100x time multiplier and basically just brute-forced combat encounters until I won. (You can configure the time speed-up to use in the settings for the game.)-A still largely opaque and broken skill system. As an example, I'm running around with 15 in Treat Disease, and yet >50% of my Treat Disease attempts fail. For the life of me I still don't understand why my characters miss combat hits, mis-cast spells, etc... The game sorely needs a way in-game to explain what success/failure percentages are, and how changes in base skills and talents will effect those percentages.-Related to disease, it seems that staring at the sky (metaphorically speaking) in this game leads to your character contracting a disease. While I did choose to play the game with the realism setting turned on, the way disease works in this game is beyond ridiculous. I swear in at least one case a party member went from "ouch I didn't sleep well because of a pebble" to "I'm dead" in a matter of days because of the inane disease mechanic in the game.-As noted earlier, weapons break in combat. As in ...all... ...the... ...time... I never did figure out how to prevent this from happening. You can buy whetstones in shops, and repair weapons after each combat occurrence which helps to some extent. But unless you are lucky enough to find a magical weapon, resign yourself to weapons constantly breaking in combat and your party being reduced to making like Chuck Norris (unarmed combat: go punch mummies in the face!)-Travel becomes laborious after a while. At first I enjoyed travelling around parts of the map, wondering what I would run into. But once I got farther into the game, and the much larger distances that needed to be traversed, travel was an exercise in boredom and frustration. Travel is also a great opportunity to contract disease - despite running around with cloaks, sleeping bags, campfires, etc... I swear there is a bug somewhere in this game that is just hell-bent on making characters contract disease.-Inventory management is, well, unmanageable, because of the strict encumbrance system. Luckily I could use a number of mods (listed below) to make inventory management tolerable.*Review based on playing Blade of Destiny v1.36 with all three DLCs installed. It is important to play with at least the latest free DLC (With Blade and Brilliance) since it includes numerous bugfixes. *Additionally I installed a number of mods to make levelling and inventory substantially less onerous: Packesel (pack horse), Mit Sack und Pack (storage chests for potions, books, jewellry and poisons), and erfolgreicheSteigerung (replaces random level up rolls with fixed increases and 100% skill up success). Very important: don't put any of the storage add-ins inside of another storage add-in. For example if you drag and drop your pack-horse, onto the pack-horse by mistake - all of the inventory stored by the pack-horse disappears!*Mods can be downloaded from a mod database[forum.schicksalsklinge.com]. Hint: use Chrome for its handy translate feature if you don't speak German!*Highly recommended to read both of the following community guides for this game so you can plan a reasonable party and know how to invest in and focus on growing your party's skills:"The old Memories Blade of Destiny Starter Guide" and "A camping Guide through Arkania". Although I cannot recommend this game in its current state, the devs have stated that they will release a "Gold" edition, that is what this game should have been. If you are a fan of oldschool RPGs with lots of flavor text, skills, quests, items, spells, and plot buy that when it comes out. As it is though, it was released a few months ago as completed when it actually appeared to be an early access alpha, couldnt even be called beta. I bought it on release, and it was so buggy I literally couldnt get past the character creation screen, or even into it for that matter. Had the devs released it as early access they would have had a horde of loyal followers. But what they released as a complete game looked worse than some small game-builds Ive seen people make for quarter-long class projects. This, obviously, torked off a lot of people, myself included. The translation leaves a bit to be desired as well. For instance when you light a torch/lantern, the game asks you "What do you want to inflame?" For those of you that are not native English speakers, inflame has two meanings, neither of which has to do with lighting an actual fire. The most common use means "To cause strong emotions in, esp anger or lust." The other means "an infected or red and swollen wound/part of the body injured due to sickness or damage.". Needless to say the sentence cracks me up every time I try to set something on fire. As in "What would you like to make really lustful?" or "What wounds would you like to infect?"So why am I recommending it? In short, when it works right, its *awesome*. That and the head dev is very active on the forums, has apologized for the game repeatedly, and has made great strides in making it functional. You can play it now. There are still bugs, but they are relatively minor although annoying. It has ok graphics, that are slowly getting better, and a decent automap. I tried to play the original from the 90s while waiting for this one to be playable. It didnt have an automap. I dont have the time to map anymore, like I did as a teenager, so thats a great improvement. The music is perfect for the setting, and really puts you in the appropriate mood. Town music is cheerful, and puts you in the mind of wandering through a small green village with exposed-woood and thatch roofs. Dungeon music is nicely dark and spooky, with weird ambient effects. Only really bad thing about non-combat sound is the ♥♥♥♥ing *awful* narrarator. He narrates *everything*. And its *terrible*. Fortunately, it can be turned off. The sound effects in battle are typical grunts, "Oof"s, "EEeee"s, slashes, spell zaps and so on. Nothing special. The combat is action-point turn based (Fallout 1/2 style), but there is decent room for strategy with the large selection of spells, movement, combat options and so forth.As far as content, theres a lot. You can camp, hunt, look for herbs, set watches and get attacked. In town you can talk to shopkeepers, drink, gamble, pick pocets (Although you can do nothing with the wandering NPCs - I think they are just there for flavor)Random events and side quests abound, and really make the setting come alive. I cant wait for it to be finished and fullly functional, with all content added (There are still some missing side quests).So I future-recommend it for any oldschool RPG fan, with the caveat "Even though its not listed as Early Access, it is. Don't get it now, wait for the completed gold edition. If you don't, there will be bugs. *Most*are not game breaking *knocks on wood*, but they are there.I also have to recommend it just because of how open and honest the devs have been, unlike so many who drop broken as hell games on Steam and then disappear while laughing all the way to the bank.. IntroductionHardcore fantasy turn based strategy game. This is a modern version of the original and if any of you have played that than you know how brutal this can be. Disease, hunger, dehydration all can kill you as well as enemies.Graphics split into two sections World Beautiful for the most part and then just average in some areas (npc's especially females)Combat Its full motion turn based combat and a different engine was used (appearently) and it is ugly. They dropped the ball imo here as this is what many players complain about. The mechanics work well, but the rendered models are less than stellar. If only they had really had more time on this it could have been awesome but I guess animation full motion is probably extremely complicated. Also weapons are not diplayed correctly, for example a character with a sling is shown using a crossbow. Beleive me they took a hit on yhat one with modern gamers.Music Top of the line...seriuosly up there with Jeremy Soule and Two Steps from Hell Combat and other sounds Good to just o.k.Interaction with world Like in the original 99% of the NPC's serve no purpose. So whem you enter a city you'll see people in the streets etc. that you cannot talk to. Merchants and tavern keepers say the same old things over and over. You'll find your selves quickly pushing dialouge(sp) buttons as quickly as you can.Progression of characters Slow and grindy. However this game is about living in a fantasy world and at level 1 all your characters are really weak (as it should be) and will fail much more often than they succeed. EVENTUALLY your heroes will start to improve but you are going to spen ALOT of time in combat. Did I mention progression is slow?Other stuff: Although you have healing magic, it is not gonna be enough to restore everyone to pristine condition so you are going to have to find Inns to rest in. Now you can campout overnight and heal BUT wounds can get infected. As I said this a simulation fantasy experience and it ain't gonna hold your hand. There are various diseases that can set in but they are all treatable with herbs you can search for (good ones very rare as expected) or buy. Herbs and potions are VERY VERY VERY expensive. Magic items are extremely rare but you can buy some enchanted weapons in some rare places but after seeing the prices you will probably decide "Nah I will loot some magic off foes". This is simply a pipe dream it is so rare.There are smiths Because your weapons get worn and can break (you better have a backup weapon for combat)The stores, smiths, herb shops, healers, Inns etc. all have varied equipment and different prices. There is definetly some economy management to your party. You will find yourselves going from shop to shop looking for the best prices because as I may have mentioned, things are very expensive. If you are lazy and just buy from the first store that has the item you are looking for, then you may later learn you spent twice the amount of extremely important gold that could have been used elsewhere.there is also a weak haggling system. You can try for up to a 50% dicount but be warned if you anger the shop keepers they may kick you out and refuse to deal with you until you leave town for awhile.World size and quest The world is vast but quest are limited. You will spend all your time on the main quest as it sends you all over the place. There are side missions too and I would reccomend doing them, but it wont be long and you will be on the main quest again. No spoilers here so that is all I will say regarding quest.Is it linear? Nope, you can go wherever you want, and do side quest in any order for the most part.Bug? Yep. got some. Most are minor like the wrong label on items are events that don't really seem to do anyrthing. I personaly have not come upon any game-breakers though.So who will like this game? Older D&D players who appreciate using your imgination and really want the "feel" of a true wolrd. Grognards who keep diligent notes and love a challenge. Hardcore gamers.Who will not like this game? Console gamers that push "a" and everything dies type gamers. Gamers that like being spoon fed. Tales of MaJael (which I also own and love) and rouge-like gamers. Probably. Its kinda the opposite of those type games. Rush players who want to quickly become powerful and complete the game.Overall I simply love this game. It can be tedious at times but I find myself losing hours in this world. Don't let played hours fool you as I play offline alot because my bandwidth is also split between my two sons watching movies and playing online console/computer games.If you are a hardcore simulation type that can get past a few hiccups and use your imagination I whole-heartedly reccomend this experience. Fast players give this a pass/Final note...The devs had some legal issues and had to stop development and updates for awhile but are now back currently working on a patch anb free DLC (Ithink) and most importantly making the game open to modders.. Finished the game on patch 1.36 with some mods enabled. No stability problems whatsover, overall very good remake.. NOTE: This review is very old! (July 2013) I will revisit the game when I find the time, I will then update this review.Please do not buy this game! It is clearly unfinished. I had 2 complete gamecrashs in only 15 Minutes of gameplay. Even on my system the framerate drops below 30 fps when outside. Another great reboot-idea horribly executed. I will give them another chance and check back in a few weeks. Until then they have time to fix things. Clearly not a finished game, feels rather like a steam early access game and should be marked as such.. 1. Bad user interface.2. Poor presentation (graphics, aesthetics).3. Very bare-bones user manual.4. There are still some bugs.----1. The user interface has a number of issues:a) Some items are crammed into the corners where they are hard to reach.b) Most menus have a tiny little X to close them in the upper right corner. A big simple OK or Cancel button would have been better.c) Not all buttons have tooltips explaining what they do.d) Tooltips do not tell you what the keyboard shortcut for an action is.e) In combat, you cannot move the camera from side-to-side using the mouse. You have to use the keyboard.f) In combat, the current active character is not highlighted in the bottom character panel. So you have to pay close attention to whose turn it is.g) When leveling up, you cannot go back or undo skill advancement choices.2. Graphics and presentation is way off-base too.a) The character models are very ugly.b) The building/town models are very ugly.c) There are few spell or action animations in the FPS view portions of the game. Casting a spell to cast a light is instantaneous. Knocking over statues in a certain level is instantaneous.d) The sound effects are really bad.e) Not all weapons have appropriate animations. You swing a rapier for instance. The quarterstaff uses the same 3D model as the rapier.f) Everything is brown and boring.g) In general this remake has less charm than the original game for MS-DOS.3. The ingame documentation says the PDF manual is supposed to be the place to go for detailed information, but the PDF manual is shorter adn more bare-boned than the ingame docs.4. I have run into a few issues, but nothing super serious so far.. I am sorry to have to say this, but this game is a fail. Even thought one can indeed feel that 'some' effort has been put into the game, the outcome is just a pale shadow of the original.Truth be told, the original Blade of Destiny from 1993 had lousy graphics and even the MIDI music was very rudimentary; but everything else was excellent: the story, the user interface, the 'randomness factor' - you name it, you have it. You wish to have fights automaticaly calculated - no problem. You wish to speed things up or slow down a bit? No problem. User inventory and skills? Very simple and comprehensive. I can recommend this game heartily to any fan of a good story!And the HD version of the same? Its a complete opposite. Graphics are better (which is not hard, considering the first version to be almost 23 years old) and the music is remastered, story is the same... But the user interface is messed up. Controls are very unintuitive, inventory as well, movement through cities and dungeons is very sluggish and tiresome, as is any other aspect of the game - starting with character generation. If you end up entering someone's house - you need to wait for the narrator to finish his line before being able to somehow get out of there. ESC doesnt work, there is no cancel key, nothing. Only the right mouse button, only after the narrator finished reading the same boring line. That is absolutely unacceptable for anyone who plays RPGs and explores every door that can be opened.And then... the battles. They cannot be accelerated, nor speed-automated as in the original version. If your high level party gets attacked by a couple of rats, you still have to wait 15 min for the battle to be decided. Ridiculous. The *only* improvement that I have seen in the HD version over the 1993 version is the comprehensive explanation of skills and required traits for them. And I did not know that a crystal ball can be enchanted like wands. ^_^Its a shame really... I love the realms of arkania trilogy; it is one of my favorite games of all times, but the HD version is unplayable :(To make things even worse, the support forum is bugged. Registration at forum.schicksalsklinge.com is neigh impossible, nor is possible contact support (always the 'wrong captcha').A shame indeed.
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