Blade of Darkness

aka: Blade, Blade of Darkness: By Steel will the Flesh divide, Blade: The Edge of Darkness, Severance: Blade of Darkness
Moby ID: 3371
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Description official descriptions

Long time ago, the Lord created Light and Chaos. He gave them souls, and thus two gods were born, the Spirit of Light and the Prince of Darkness. But the latter, envious of his father's power, learned the language of creation and attempted to bring a new demonic race to life. However, the creatures disobeyed their master. In the ensuing chaos, a sorceress named Ianna called forth a hero, who banished the Darkness, but was slain himself. Now, the time has come for four new heroes to obtain an ancient powerful weapon and destroy the forces of Darkness once and for all.

Blade of Darkness is a third-person action game with an emphasis on melee battles and combo attacks, similar to those found in fighting games. The player can choose to control any of the four available characters: the barbarian Tukaram, the dwarf Naglfar, the knight Sargon, and the Amazon Zoe. Each character has his/her unique strengths, weaknesses, fighting skills. Starting locations are also different in the four scenarios.

Spellings

  • 黑暗äč‹ćˆƒ - Chinese spelling (simplified)

Groups +

Screenshots

Promos

Credits (Windows version)

146 People (58 developers, 88 thanks) · View all

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 79% (based on 38 ratings)

Players

Average score: 3.7 out of 5 (based on 43 ratings with 8 reviews)

One of the great, best, difficult, adventurous and high graphics game. It's environments are very beautiful.

The Good
I like its graphics, story, environments, environmental effects, weapon scheming and the fight battles.

The Bad
It's takes too long to load a game even on my Pentium IV.

The Bottom Line
Play this game, you will really enjoy to playing it. First you will find it really very very difficult. But later you will be expert.

Windows · by Atif Shahid (19) · 2003

One of the greatest action games to date!

The Good
This game presents an excellent gameplay based in combo-moves.As a result there are numerous moves for each of the 4 fighters.Graphics and audio are pretty good,and both create an appropriate epic atmosphere.

The Bad
The gameplay is a bit complicated for beginners.Blood and gore which may irritate some can be easily turned off.Generally,there's nothing bad in the game.

The Bottom Line
Blade Of Darkness is a really addictive action game which features many weapons,4 characters to choose from and loads of blood!It is also a quite big and hard game,so it promises many hours of gameplay.Graphics and audio of the game are pretty good and fortunately it will play good on low-end systems too.Highly recommended to action-lover's.

Windows · by Gabriel (116) · 2002

Bloody and tough melee fighting for hardcore gamers

The Good
This game is full of content. The levels are huge and rather realistic castles, the musics are awesome and plentiful, there are over a hundred different weapons and several enemy types. The technology was also a few years ahead of the competition, with nice physics and realistic shadows years before Doom 3 or Max Payne 2. The gore effects are also very realistic. With good moves you can chop the enemy into pieces, painting the walls with dark red. Gore can also be turned off for the faint of the heart.

Blade of Darkness is also a very hard game, in fact one of the hardest I've played. Fights require precision and fast reflexes, and the rather good combat AI makes it a pleasure to boot. A couple of the boss monster fights were very memorable. There are also some puzzles, but none of them is so tough. They only make you more cautious, as a careless player can often run into an obvious trap and die at an instant.

Some RPG elements also are a big bonus. As you kill more, you gain experience, learn new moves and get more stamina. The set of moves becomes large by the end of the game, but as you've been learning them gradually, it's not so hard to master. This game made me feel that I really became a good swordsman by the end of the game, and that's an achievement! Even though it's set in a fantasy medieval world, there are no real magic users in the game. Well, those would've been a let-down in a melee combat game anyway.

The Bad
As much as I liked BoD, it has some problems. Sometimes the movement was awkward and you fell off a ledge too easily. Or some enemies were placed too cunningly, shooting arrows at you from a distance, so the situation was frustratingly hard to solve. A couple of monsters were so tough I had to load at least 20 times to make it. And the game starts as very hard, but gets a bit easier on the middle and latter parts of the game, which is a bit upside down from what I'd expect.

The story is also lame, but not very essential to an action game like this so I didn't care. Had it been more involving though, maybe I wouldn't have become bored at the middle part of the game. Yup, at times it feels like there's just too many ogres to be slain and the game feels like it'll never end. But towards the end it got more intense again and made me hooked to my seat until it was over.

The movement takes a while to master but it's pretty intuitive once you get it, allowing you to fight efficiently.



The Bottom Line
Blade of Darkness is a pleasant experience for players who enjoy melee combat games (even such games that have only duels, like Tekken or Mortal Combat), some adventure, and who think of themselves as good players. Many of my friends didn't like it because they couldn't get past the first few maps without dying all the time.

Overall I though this was game of the year material.

Windows · by Joku Ugo (5) · 2003

[ View all 8 player reviews ]

Trivia

Cancelled Xbox port

There was a Xbox port project directed by Carlos GarcĂ­a Cordero planned, but Rebel Act went bankrupt before it was finished.

German index

On September 29, 2001, Blade of Darkness was put on the infamous German index by the BPjS. For more information about what this means and to see a list of games sharing the same fate, take a look here: BPjS/BPjM indexed games.

Information also contributed by Dark Dante

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Related Sites +

  • 3D Gamers
    Blade downloads at 3D Gamers
  • Bigtruck's pages
    Fan made website (English and French)
  • Blade Forever
    A Spanish download page
  • Blade Mods
    Hosts many of the mods that have been created for the game as well as information on developing your own mods for Blade.
  • Blade Resources
    For those interested in designing levels for Blade
  • Blade Universe
    Contains resources and information about Blade of Darkness, although some of the links have been renamed and no longer work.
  • Blade of Darkness
    Publisher's Blade of Darkness page
  • IMDb
    IMDb website for the game
  • Severance D20
    Background for an adaptation of Blade to D20 RPG system

Identifiers +

  • MobyGames ID: 3371
  • [ Please login / register to view all identifiers ]

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Are you familiar with this game? Help document and preserve this entry in video game history! If your contribution is approved, you will earn points and be credited as a contributor.

Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Kasey Chang.

Additional contributors: Erwin Bergervoet, Unicorn Lynx, Jeanne, tarmo888, Xoleras, DarkDante, formercontrib, Cantillon, Patrick Bregger.

Game added February 23, 2001. Last modified February 23, 2024.