Realms of Arkania: Blade of Destiny

A forced remake of that great RPG game. You'll be fine, if you just buy the original title.

Issues - this is the keyword that helps understand this game. Treat this as a fair warning against all that you can find in Realms of Arcania: Blade of Destiny HD. The original game (without the "HD") is a much more enjoyable product. Don't buy this horrendous conversion, but simply find the predecessor. Blade of Destiny AD 1992 is a hard and coarse game with issues, but at least it gives the impression that the developers knew what they were doing.

In defence of Crafty Studios, they have been proactive in patching, but Realms of Arkania: Blade of Destiny seems a long way off of being playable quite yet. Save your nostalgia, start learning the German language, and pray to Cromm that things turn around quickly.

In this medium, you're better off knowing that your faves from the past are never really as good as your rose-tinted memories make you believe. Still, taking a look at this remake, you will be equally aware that they were rarely as bad as this.

Crafty didn't finish its remake of Realms of Arkania. Crafty Studios still sells it on Steam. Crafty Studios deserved to be flamed.

When this game was released in 2013, it was an utterly disgusting mess. Didn't want to touch this ever again, but some days ago I had this one on the radar thanks to Steam ads. So I gave it a try and I have to admit: The developers did their best to clean up the mess and make this a real game. Now 'Blade of Destiny' is a fun old school RPG with turn-based combat. For Pen & Paper fans and RPG nostalgics a must-buy!

This is a re-rating after the fixes the devs have done. I think we have a playable game on our hands now. Most of the nasty bugs have been fixed. The game is brutally difficult in a good way. A wrong move could wipe out your party, but risk taking can also result in ample rewards. True to their word, the developers stuck with this game and fixed it up. They even threw in a free DLC for our patience. I wouldn't go as far as to say it's a good game. But it is definitely no longer a disaster.

It has been almost 5 months after release, and an update is in order. Got the game again for 10 bucks on steam, which is a WAY more fair price than the ridiculous 30 Euros for that release disaster I returned in anger... However, I have to strongly disagree with the decent-to-good ratings that have started to come in. I agree, version 1.32 is a quantum leap when compared to the fraudulent, apocalyptic trainwreck they released. But that just means it has improved to be a below-average game as compared to horrible, unfinished and dysfunctional theft. The game today is *still* a clunky, uninspired and cheap remake, full of bugs and glitches and very low on fun. Need examples? In the first 20 minutes, the 45 Dukats of starting equipment fail to happen due to a months-old simple and silly bug, in the first combat enemies get stuck in an endless loop *AGAIN* (and keep circling around and be unattackable in melee), I can't close the smith's repair interface because the button does nothing and I have to click 3 times after saving a game to close *every* open interface window. Graphics are improved but still very mediocre, NPCs now look "halfway OK" instead of "ridiculously awful", performance has improved from terrible to unimpressive... 5 more months and this might be playable. I highly doubt it will *ever* be enjoyable.

Imagine what a game might be like if some high school students had to make one for their computer science project. That is more or less what this game feels like. I play plenty of indie games, even ones with simplistic pixel graphics. RoA BoD however is just a blatant example of how unprofessional, or more so, unskilled developers make a game. Im sure the intentions were high, but the road to hell.... well... you get the idea. This is the first game in over 10 years that I have asked for a refund for.

Dreadful game. Not a patch on the original. Very poor voice acting and the graphics during character creation and combat are worse (how?) than the 1992 version. The only improvement on the original is the scenery. But the rest of the game is worse.