Blade Of Darkness - Naglfar The Dwarven Warriors Story (Part 1)

Hey Folks

In this post I'm very happy to introduce you guys to a game which has quickly become one of my favourite rpgs of all time.

Blade of Darkness is a game which originally released in 2001 as a PC only title.
I had never heard of this game until it appeared on Steam in a Remastered version on October 7th.

The game is currently £11.39 ( $15? ) and considering how replay able it is I feel this low price is a great bargain. There is even a free demo which you can check out before you buy the game.

Pick up the demo here.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1710170/Blade_of_Darkness/#app_reviews_hash

Here is the Steam description of the game.

"Blade of Darkness is a hardcore fantasy action-adventure with unique combat mechanics and role-playing elements that pioneered the “soulsborne” genre. Pick one of four characters to hack and slash through a gory quest to save the world from the forces of Chaos."

Here is the epic launch trailer video courtesy of the Game Trailers youtube channel.I saw this trailer on the Steam page yesterday and was instantly intrigued enough to buy the game.

So lets dive right in and see what this game has to offer. I decided to check out Naglfar the Dwarf character first.

Each of the 4 characters has their own story, its kind of like 4 totally different games which I think is really impressive. I would have LOVED this game if I found it back in 2001.I love it now but back then it would have blown my mind that all of the characters have their own totally unique adventure.

I plan to check out all 4 characters storylines eventually.

We have Sargon The Human Knight, the most well balanced of the 4 characters.

Zoe the Amazonian Archer, she has the lowest amount of hitpoints but is the fastest character.

Tukaram The Barbarian has the most powerful attack but lowest defence.

I love playing Dwarf characters in rpgs so I picked Naglfar the Dwarf who has a skill bonus with Axes and good defence with a shield.

Naglfar's story starts with him falling down a cliff face into the Dwarven city of Khazel Zalam

Bands of Orcs have attacked the city and Naglfar has been sent to consult with the Khazel Zalam Scholars.Its classic High fantasy Dwarves VS Orcs...I love it , Im already looking forward to cracking Orc Skulls!

Lets take a moment to appreciate the retro style graphics. These graphics remind me of the original Everquest and PS2 era rpg's. I love the way this game looks, its an era of gaming I am very nostalgic for.

The City has Fallen....so many dead...How can this be?

Our first Orc...lets smash him! This game is alot like the Dark Souls series of games where any enemy can kill you pretty quickly, combat is brutal, its best to learn to block ,dodge and time your attacks correctly.

The gore in this game is pretty cool we can decapitate our opponent's and even use there limbs as weapons or throw them at enemies' which is a nice touch.

We cut this orcs arm of...

We grab the orc arm and beat another orc to death with it...yaaasss!

If an enemy has treasure it will appear under its profile. This is the first challenging fight we find. Up until now the orcs have had only 6 hit points and die with one hit. This guy has 25 hit points and can hit pretty hard. Its hard to see from the screenshot but he has a rusted key as his loot. We need to kill him to progress through the dungeon.

Now that we have the Rusted key we can open this lock.

We find food throughout the dungeon which restores our health. Crusts of bread only increase our hp by 10 points, meat and cheese restores alot more health.

The battle with this orc gives us enough exp to hit level 2.Our health jumps from 120 to 220 massively increasing our survivability and also increasing our attack power.

As we level we get new abilities which are activated with various combinations of button presses.

In this area we need to get a store key. There is a very tough mob with 100 hitpoints right next to it.I found the easiest way to pick up the key is to climb up on this wall then sneak to get the key. If we do this we dont alert the orc.

Ok we got the key time to check out the store room.

The room is full of spiders...

This life potion can be picked up and used later.

Smashing this chest we find another life potion but it cant be added to our inventory we gotta use it now.

Unfortunately these chests dont have anything in them but they are fun to smash..

The store room also has a 2 handed Spiked Club but we need to level up before we can use it.

Heading back to the room where we got the store key we now need to take out these 2 orcs. The first one has 25 hp and is easy enough to kill.

The big Orc in this room is our first real challenging fight. He has 100 hit points, we need to kill him to get his Iron key. I used the life potion we looted in the store room during the fight. He nearly killed me but I managed to get him down and the exp he gave was enough to push us to level 3.

Now we have the key we can open the Iron lock.

Deeper into the dungeon we find a Biting Axe...this is our first weapon upgrade.

This axe raises our attack damage from 9 to 23...its a huge upgrade. I don't remember ever getting a weapon upgrade in an rpg that felt this satisfying. Now those 25hp orcs are going to die in one hit and the 100 hp orcs are dead in 4-5 shots rather than 11-12....

Deeper into the dungeon we find this bridge which makes me think of the bridge in the Mines of Moria in the Lord of the Rings

The first boss of the Dwarfs storyline is a huge orc that can kill us in one hit with some of his special attacks.The first time I fought this guy he killed me while I was trying to eat some food to restore health...

On my second attempt he decapitated me...

It took 7 or 8 attempts to finally get him down. The way to do it is just get real good at dodging his attack and timing your attacks just after you dodge. Its a fun fight and was VERY satisfying to finally get him down.

We get his weapon as loot..

It raises our attack from 23 to 27 and looks deadly....The sword of a deadly Orc boss...I freaking love this game...its so satisfying :).

I use the orc sword to clear my way to this throne room...

Time to take a well deserved rest on this Dwarven throne carved by our ancestors...

That's it for part 1 but I will be playing this game over most of the others I have picked up recently. I'm very eager to check out the other characters, especially the Barbarian.

Overall I am LOVING this game, I love the old school graphics, I love the music, I love the classic high fantasy storylines, I love the challenging dark souls like combat , I love the hugely satisfying weapon upgrades.

It would be good to see more of you hive gamers play this one @pusen @strawhat @perceval check out the demo ,Im sure you will enjoy it.