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)

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Screenshots

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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)

Awesome adventure game, somewhat excessive amounts of gore.

The Good
This game is one of the best action/adventure games ever in my opinion. I would be just another average game, but the cool weapon selection, large number of enemy types, and large maps is where Blade of Darkness shines. I thought a cool feature was that after you hack off an enemy limb, you can then use it as a weapon (even the heads)!

The Bad
This game can be quite difficult at times, and I never fully completed it, but other than that, this game stands as a terrific game.

The Bottom Line
If you like medieval fantasy gaming, and are looking for a change of pace from the typical Forgotten Realms game, this is for you. Some players may be scared off by the incredible amounts of blood and gore (when you slice off an enemy limb, blood squirts out and realistically pools on the ground), but I did not find this to be a setback in any way. If you liked RUNE, you should definately try this game.

Windows · by Lord Matthias (11) · 2002

Entertaining, but a bit stale

The Good
The first and most striking thing about Blade is that its light and shadow effects are way ahead of its time; in fact, they evoke games such as Doom 3 released four years later, an eternity in gaming. Not only do the player character and his enemies cast realistic, detailed shadows that spread across every surface, but objects as small as fragments of wood and hunks of meat also do. This real-time shadowing is merged almost seamlessly with the lightmaps (pre-determined light and shadow), and at times the game looks almost as fancy as Doom 3 or Thief: Deadly Shadows.

Of course, 80% of the game is combat, and Blade could have visual effects decades ahead of its time but still fail if the combat wasn't entertaining. Luckily, it is; not so much because it's fluid or intuitive, but because it's so visceral. Blood sprays over surfaces when you strike an enemy in close combat or throw a weapon at them, splattering over walls and dripping on the floor, and whole limbs will fly off, spraying blood around them; if you strike right an enemy's head will topple from his body as he dies. Gratuitous? definitely. Entertaining? Hell yes. There are plenty of weapons to perform these attacks with, which can be used in conjunction with an assortment of shields. Also sprucing up the game's combat is a wide variety of combo moves and special attacks, although they don't play as large a role in the game as it seems the developers aimed at.

Another thing the game had ahead of its time was physics effects. In most games when you break a barrel apart it will splinter into little shards that will explode into the air, fall to the ground while clipping into each other, and slowly fade into nothing; in Blade, a barrel breaks into properly sized pieces which fall naturally to the ground, rolling and knocking into one another realistically. Modern games have far better physics, but Blade was definitely ahead of its time. This comes into play in combat when throwing weapons, where it's actually possible to bank shots and do other fun tricks once you're skilled enough.

Some other high points include a few rare colorful game environments, and some of the game's generally bland sound.

The Bad
Ironically Blade's two strongest points are also its two greatest failings. While it has great visual effects, it lacks great art to showcase it. The four player characters and the enemies you will face are mediocre, lacking in detail; and while the game world is filled with fairly detailed textures, the level designers failed to really show this off, keeping ninety percent of the game confined to close spaces and chains of identical rooms. The character animation was supposedly motion captured, and at times it seems to work, but generally character movement is jerky and uneven. Worst of all, the mediocre animations often impose upon the gameplay, as the sluggish movement of the player puts him at unnecessary vulnerability during a fight.

Which leads us to the game's second great failing, its combat. While it is extremely fun at times, it's ridiculously frustrating at others - do to the aforementioned slow and stuttering animations, simply stepping forward at the wrong time can cost you your life in a fight. A third-person action game's combat should be smooth and focused on timing and combinations, but in Blade you end up thinking about your footwork and dumb luck more.

Finally, the game is just quite repetitive. Its major innovations, in the fields of lighting and physics, don't really affect the game at all. While the copious quantities of blood and guts keep the combat interesting enough for third-person combat fans, anyone looking for a complex or even fair gameplay experience will be disappointed.

The Bottom Line
Blade is worth playing for action-RPG and combat fans, especially those who like games in a fantasy environment. It's not really worth picking up for anyone else, despite its high points; the clunky combat and dull gameplay hold it back from being anything great.

Windows · by ShadowShrike (277) · 2005

It's so difficult I like it.

The Good
Levels:
The levels are HUGE, and the game seems never ending (untill you reach the end). I don't know haw many hours it takes to finish the game, but it can't be done in one day. The levels are so big they feel like real castles and caves and more castles with some caves and mines underneath. Level objects are huge, it makes your character look so really small.

The Graphics:
It's some of the best I've seen in the level design. The water looks like water, not Quake style water. The fire looks good, and the lighting is so good it looks almost real. The lighting is good because of the real shadows, it's not just a black dot under the character, it's a real shodow. the only funny thing about it is the fact that even the smallest candle in the game can made an awesome shadow. Other game makes can learn from the lighting in this game.

The Combat:
It's hard in the beginning, but it gets better as the game goes on. The main thing is to fight smart. The first few levels I beat the orcs by throwing my weapons at them, running around, getting my weapons back and throwing some more at the orc. It's not all run in and start hacking away in the beginning. The thing that makes the game so hard in the beginning is the fact that the character doesn't have the energy to even use the basic weapons. After two slashes the my character's out of energy and the enemy chops his head off. That makes for some creative fighting tricks to fool the enemy AI. Like they won't go past certain points on the map so you reach that point and make the enemy turn back and that's when I run up and hit him while his back is turned. This tactic won't always work, but in the beginning of the game I use every trick I can think of.

Now later on in the game it's gets beter. The character will have enough energy to use a good weapon. I kept a weapon I found in the second level the whole game. At first I could only swing it once and be out of energy, but later on I could keep swinging it as long as I needed to. But for characters like the Barbarian you need the biggest and baddest weapon to win the day.

Characters have different fighting styles. The slow Barbarian uses combos and big weapons. The short and fast Dwarf is more a open style fighting guy and uses light weapons. The Knight is good for speed and has some good combos. The Amazon is fast.

The barbarian sucks against groups of enemies, but can take any single enemy out easy. The dwarf is a hard target for the bigger and slower enemies, and the dwarf is also good at dodging enemy atacks, using dwarf can get real crazy (I like the Dwarf). The Knight fights with style, he's fast and uses good moves.

The gore is off the wall, sometimes all over the walls. One of the first kills I saw was with the Dwarf, this huge door opens (lifting up), a single goblin comes charging through. I told my friend to try and throw the axe, he did, and it decapitated the goblin. Or one a threw an axe it bounced and chopped an orc's foot off. Later on when you start fighting multiple enemies at once using combos that can chop orcs in to a bunch of peaces it gets messy. There's also a matrix cheat, so you can see the parts fly in super slow motion while the camera pans around the fight.

It is possible to finish the game, my friend did it with the barbarian. I got far, but Lightning took care of his computer, so now I have to do it on my computer with IRQ conflicts, on board video, and all.

Even though my computer has allot of problems that makes Half-Life run slow, Blade of Darkness runs OK (playable).

The Bad
The AI was predictable. Some clipping problems, like fighting through thin walls. And I fell half way into the floor once and died jumping down 5 feet. The character was doing it's falling to death animation on the ground LOL. Enemy only has a few death animations they get old really fast and if you take their legs their bodies float in the air, and stays there, bodies and parts do vanish after a while. So, you won't see floating ones all over the place.

The Bottom Line
It's hard but possible to beat. Has the same kind of action feel as Serious Sam. It keeps getting better the more the game progresses.

Windows · by Martin L (8) · 2002

[ 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
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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.