Blade Of Darkness Gets A Graphical Overhaul Mod

I can only assume then that your primary interest is the melee and that you don't really care as much about other aspects like character development, lore, equipment, etc.

Whoa whoa, let's not put words into my mouth that I never said ;). I am primarily an atmosphere/story/lore kind of guy first, gameplay second. Just for an example, It's why I can forgive game like Fallout 1+2/Arcanum for having poor to average combat, because these games have incredibly detailed worlds that the player can interact with in a variety of ways.

So for Souls, I just don't care for the atmosphere or lore enough to be blown away by it. The level design is certainly brilliant in terms of mood, and I loved in Demon's Souls how each separate "world" served a behind-the-scenes narrative purpose, with thought given as to why an area like the Tower of Latria looked a certain way, and how certain monsters came to be. I love this sort of attention to level design, and find this sort of thing severely lacking or "gamey" in many other games. But I just didn't care for how the lore was presented, as there was far too little narrative or NPC interaction for me to really connect with the world - just a preference thing. So I'd give the nod to Souls here as well, but BoD is plenty atmospheric in its own right in a similar, minimalistic manner.

By character development, do you mean the building up your character part? Well, obviously I do enjoy leveling up and using different character builds (this is RPGWatch, after all ;)), but it's not strictly necessary for me to enjoy a game like BoD or Souls. In that specific case, yes, the melee combat absolutely takes precedence for me. If melee combat is going to have such a large focus (as opposed to interacting with the game world in other ways like in traditional RPGs with fully developed narratives), than BoD is my preference. That, and I didn't find Demon's Souls' character advancement all that interesting anyway.
 
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Character development, skills, lore, variety of armor and weapons and level design are unmatched in Dark Souls. BoD have similar aspects but on a smaller scale (considering the technology at the time) and shines on the melee combat - which I have not seen outdone anywhere.

What also attracted me to BoD are the small details like the amazing hit detection; with their limited technology the developers almost have a perfect hit detection system that can detect and sever the correct limb, and spurts blood that is persistant and remains in the environment (along with corpses, so no dissapearing bodies except for zombies made from dust).

The physics and world interaction was/is also ahead of its time. Almost everything can be carried, thrown or broken to pieces following physics rules.

Lighting is also amazing, and to this day is still competent.

It is amazing what can be done with brilliant coding, even more than 10 years ago that can't be replicated with today's technology.
 
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Whoa whoa, let's not put words into my mouth that I never said ;).

Not at all. It was just an assumption considering that Dark Souls is vastly superior in those aspects for most people.


So I'd give the nod to Souls here as well, but BoD is plenty atmospheric in its own right in a similar, minimalistic manner.

I really don't think they're that similar. They share some characteristics in terms of atmosphere, but as far as things like lore and equipment are concerned, there's a big difference between minimalistic and almost non-existent. Story-wise, BoD gives you a brief introductory video, but that's pretty much it besides what's written in the manual.

I do really like the atmosphere in BoD though, and I think it's every bit as good as the Souls games when you judge it by the standards of its time.
 
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Walking like you have a lead pipe up your ass is not meaningful and realistic in the least. ;)

Watch your language! Our server is located in Europe, so it's arse, not ass! :gorath:
 
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