Realms of Arkania: Blade of Destiny - HD RPG Remake now available for pre-order

[Neil79]

Game Genre : Adventure/RPG
Developer : Crafty Studios
Developer Quote :A legend reborn as Realms of Arkania-Blade of Destiny returns! Developed by Austrian developer Crafty Games, Realms of Arkania – Blade of Destiny is a one-to-one remake of the 1992 original, adored by a generation of Role Players and one of the most successful German RPG’s of the 1990’s.

http://www.indieretronews.com/2013/0...estiny-hd.html

[Cherno]

Hmm... I played through it once or twice, it's actually pretty close to a face-to-face role-playing game, but it sure does have some things going against it (the original, that is). Primarily, how unfair some portions of the game are, namely one square in the spider dungeon that turns the leader into stone (no change to heal it), time to reload the game! There's also the possibility that a character with low agility just falls down a cliff while travelling along the mountain ridge near the northwestern coast, and this character won't just be dead... No, he or she will just be gone forever, so no chance to resurrect either. during the journey from Skelellen to Phexcaer you can meet a dragon that asks a question that is impossible to know without either a walkthrough or some game background information that is not given in the actual game (the answer is "wheel" IIRC, not too hard a word but the dragon probably immolates the party if a wrong answer is given!).

A lot (in fact, most) of the normal items are useless in the game, such as knife and fork, cauldron, mirror, iron & flintstone... As were some skills, like buggy (horse carriage) driving, or riding.

That being said, if they get rid of those things, and include the great music, they might have a winner

When I played it, the first thing I did in Thorwal was to go to the armory and get geared up, then into the black tower to kill some bandits. After levelling up once or twice, time to go to Daspota, the pirate nest where every house can be broken into, and most of the time there's a bunch of bad guys waiting there for your. After killing the former occupants, there often a ton of stuff than ca be haued back to the next city and sold, and if that kind of money is not enough, you could always go into the nearest bar and let your elven dance or play flute, or pickpocket the bar patrons. Selling plants your druid found during travels was also a big money maker. Then it's off the follow the story, finding enough map pieces isn't easy because some can only be found by luck (a travelling merchant has one, but he travels between a bunch of cities to the south and can be hard to meet!).

The combat mode of the game was pretty cool and extremely tactical, although I never quite understood how the different attack modes worked. Either way, the monsters were great, especially the "Heshtot" demon Too bad they didn't include the Krakenmolch (Kraken-Newt), it only appears in an abstract combat screen during sea travel.

Oh well, I guess this post turned out like a half-review :P
4/5 stars!

Edit: Now that I think about it, I stil have my characters and savegames from Shadows over Riva on HD after playing with the same party through the first two games in the series