RoA: Blade of Destiny HD - Review @ Worlds Factory

Couchpotato

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Worlds Factory is the only English review I can find for Realms of Arkania HD. Let me be frank we all know the game is still a mess so the score given is 10/100.

Realms of Arkania: Blade of Destiny is a buggy, unfinished game that needs a lot of work, and frankly it doesn't deserve your money in this state.

Crafty Studios has apologized for the release and seems to be doing everything they can to fix it, but if the concept intrigues you then buy it when it's a finished product months down the line.

Gamers are more well-informed than ever and it's inexcusable to release a game like this, especially considering alternatives like crowdfunding.
More information.
 
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I was really looking forward to this, being a fan of both the originals and the newer DSA games (Drakensang), but the forum talk scared me off.

Shame what happened. I really hope they fix it up or at least release the 2nd one in a much better state. If they can even afford to do a another.
 
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They are fixing it and so far have released 14 patches for the game and people are saying that it is getting better. This is much better then other games that have been released in a bad state. With my experience with games if this didn't get released in the state it did it probably would have been canceled.

Which would people rather have; a game that is in a bad state that needs to be patched up on no game at all?

PS. I guess the game is moddable so this can go much further then the original game eventually.
 
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With my experience with games if this didn't get released in the state it did it probably would have been canceled.

Agree with Fargol's comment above, but I also have to say that in its current state it would have been better off cancelled. There is absolutely no reason to play this, your far better off playing the original version. This is not a bad remake - it is very much worse case scenario, it is an absolute broken cut-down mess. Even with 30 patches I'm sure the original is still going to be superior. It has more spells, more weapons and larger better designed dungeons.
 
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My most favorite game (Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines) was released in a pretty bad state.
 
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My most favorite game (Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines) was released in a pretty bad state.

I pre-purchased it, still have the T-shirt that came with it too...and I can tell you that VTM:B was still stable enough to where you could (And I did) finish it and see the ending without being blocked or stopped by a bug. Crashes? Sure, it crashed a lot...mainly because it used an earlier version of the Source engine.

I think the only game that was released in worse shape than this was Descent to Undermountain. Or maybe Ultima 9, since I frequented the owo.com boards back then and most of us couldn't even boot it up.
 
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To those who are working on fixing this game: Please continue! I will be here waiting for it to get to a mostly stable and fully playable state, even if that takes a while.
 
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Ha. There was one, a few years back (was it Shadow Vault?) that wouldn't run on Nvidia cards. That was the lowest I've seen.
 
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I pre-purchased it, still have the T-shirt that came with it too…and I can tell you that VTM:B was still stable enough to where you could (And I did) finish it and see the ending without being blocked or stopped by a bug. Crashes? Sure, it crashed a lot…mainly because it used an earlier version of the Source engine.

I think the only game that was released in worse shape than this was Descent to Undermountain. Or maybe Ultima 9, since I frequented the owo.com boards back then and most of us couldn't even boot it up.

You must have played it after patches, since there was a bug everyone had that made the game unplayable when you get to the Society of Leopold. The only way to get through was to use some cheats in which you had to miss pretty much all of the content in the area
 
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Strong advertisement as well. They are in every fans mind and people are naturally drawn to scandalous news so hopefully there will be a lot of new buyers.

Patching ought to bring the game to a playable level. The small character art pics are surprisingly high quality. At least the painter knew his/her job.

They can still craft an excellent game from this and publish Star Trail without such a disaster.
 
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It's really a shame. I accept the 2 developers really worked hard and to their best, but the result is really... horrible.

Two main issues IMVPO:

1) Trying to make a full 3d with a 2 man team was a bad decision. It would have been WAY better to make a different style, like Shadowrun or Grimrock, something more "limited"; but in the 3d it just so sticks out as bad and outdated visuals.

2) The Dark Eye ruleset of that era was THE singlemost clumsy one, and the Blade of Destiny was even back then in 1992 highly critizise as WAY behind the computer games of it'S time. So, slavishly remaking a game system which was outdated 20 years ago is sheer madness.

I try not to bash it too much, because it's two guys working their asses off for a game system they love, but it is really a painful thing to see what happened with this game.
 
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Personally, I'm acting as if its release date was 9/1/2013. I'll double-click the shortcut then and see how it plays.
 
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How is this game in its current state (obviously still buggy)? Can you complete it? I was looking forward to it since the original RoA is still my favorite CRPG series so I still want to play it.
 
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How is this game in its current state (obviously still buggy)? Can you complete it? I was looking forward to it since the original RoA is still my favorite CRPG series so I still want to play it.

When I tried it a few days ago (v1.07), it was laughably bad. There were npcs in town floating in the air above my party, and the performance was very sluggish even with a high-end GPU. The translation still has a ways to go as well.

I'm not sure if it can be completed, but I don't imagine it would be very enjoyable.
 
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