Realms of Arkania: Blade of Destiny Review

Just about every gamer has at least one game that they want to see remade. Games that held a special place in your heart and that you just had a blast playing. Then there are games that should not be remade. There are games that were great at the time but now just fall flat. Realms of Arkania: Blade of Destiny is one of those games that should not have been remade. Realms of Arkania: Blade of Destiny is a remake of the beloved 1992 version. It was hailed as one of the best RPG games of the 90s. Lightning did not strike twice with this remake.

Realms of Arkania: Blade of Destiny is about an orc chief who has united all the tribes and wants to launch an attack against the humans. You are summoned by the leader of the Thorwalians to find a long-lost sword called the Blade of Destiny. The sword is needed in order to defeat the orc chief and prevent the invasion. Don’t get me wrong I love RPG games. I truly do not mind turn based games, but this game was better off in the 90s. I had high hopes that this game would be great. It could have been if the developers had spent more time on it.

The game starts off explaining the story which I didn’t mind that much. If you are a gamer that doesn’t really care for that part, then sorry to say that you can’t skip it. You pretty much have to sit there and wait for it to be done. Once the story explanation is over you have to choose whether to play as a novice or expert. Unfortunately, there is no clear explanation in the game of the benefits of either choice. I had to do my own research to find that out. When you choose novice the game pretty much creates your party for you. Whereas if you choose expert you create your own party and characters.

After that, you appear in the temple and you are in first person view. It gets confusing at this part and pretty much the rest of the game. There is no clear-cut direction as to what you have to do once you are in the temple. Realms of Arkania has a great story, but everything else isn’t so great. Once you arrive in the temple with your party you aren’t given any direction. Then you can’t even explore the temple or any building for that matter. All you see is a static screen no matter what building you enter. There are no menus on the screen either. You have to click on the screen in order to see an action menu. It took me awhile to figure out what I had to do. Then once I figured it out I was asked a serious of questions read by the narrator. Then after the narrator reads the dialogue you are presented with choices. This is repeated throughout the game. You get to explore the town but in first person view.

The dungeons in the game weren’t that much better. The dungeons had actual rooms that you could walk around in but that was it. You can’t interact with anything in the room or do any real exploring. The fundamental of any RPG is to be able to at least explore the dungeons. The dungeons are where you find items to use in the game. The turn based combat was far from exciting. When the enemies arrive you get a message and then the screen switches to a chess type screen. You are basically moving your party around like you are playing chess.

In order to find out what the controls are you have to look at the input screen when you first click on the game. When  you click on the game a small screen pops up. Click on the input tab and it tells you what the default controls are. You better memorize this because the game doesn’t explain what they are once it starts. The controls weren’t complicated or hard to use.  Like most RPG type games the higher the level the harder the quests. The same can be said for Realms of Arkania: Blade of Destiny.  For the life of me I can’t imagine anyone wanting to replay this game or wanting to get their characters to a high level. Replayability is very low, and the graphics compared to most in its category are lackluster. They aren’t beautiful and are underwhelming. Just based on the graphics alone you think that the remake was released 10 yrs ago.

Do not waste your hard-earned cash buying Realms of Arkania: Blade of Destiny. There are plenty of free RPG games that are actually good and free. A game is supposed to be exciting, and fun to play. Realms of Arkania: Blade of Destiny wasn’t either of those. This was a game that should not have been remade. Gamers would have more fun playing the original than this version or any other RPG than Realms of Arkania: Blade of Destiny. Just because it worked during the 90s doesn’t mean it does today. It falls flat compared to other RPG based games.

REVIEW CODE: A complimentary PC code was provided to Brash Games for this review. Please send all review code enquiries to editor@brashgames.co.uk.

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