(and yes, maybe it gets better later)
Nope, it doesn't. Blade of Destiny is a pretty shit game all in all. It's boring and full of chores, the combat is terrible, some of its design is completely obtuse and many of the quests/dungeons were very obviously designed in such a way to make you buy a cluebook.
If you don't like it already, I can only suggest you drop it right now. You'll get sick of the entire thing in a few hours tops, and after that you'll just keep playing with a walkthrough open to make the nightmare end as quickly as possible. AND THE ENDGAME STILL WON'T BE WORTH IT.
Quite possibly the only good parts of BoD are the music and the manual. The travel interface gets a few bonus points, but it also turns out annoying more often than not.
Playing Serpent in the Staglands had made me more aware of this game, oddly. I'm wondering if Roxor's opinion is well-justified or not, and why? BoD sounds uncompromising, crunchy and perhaps very rewarding if you bother to learn the systems and take careful notes. If anyone has played SitS to a significant degree and RoA, I'd like to know if liking one implies enjoying the other. I'm nowhere near done with SitS, but I can't help but thinking about RoA as I play it, for some reason.
It is not justified at all.
Some posters here just cannot for the life of them let go and play games the way they are supposed to be played, with an open mind and sense of discovery and the ability to go along with the stories and some measure of forgiveness for the game's shortcomings. More often than not Codex is not the last line of defense against the decline but just a bunch of jaded g4m0r manchildren who can't get it up anymore, who stopped enjoying games a long time ago (if they ever did) and therefore are butthurt and try to justify the time they waste ranting here with pseudo analytic pieces about why everything suxx.
But to answer your questions:
SitS isn't BoD, in fact the narrative in the first RoA game is bare-bones at best and the game's kinda ugly today.
But other than that the analogy has something going for it, gameplay in both games heavily relies on systems and RPG mechanics and I might be wrong but I'm under the impression that the story in SitS, while being vastly more fleshed out and also more interesting than in any RoA game (maybe except for Shadows over Riva), takes a backseat to exploration. Blade of Destiny shares that trait, it's explorationfag heaven, and it's one of those nice old-school games where dungeons were actually difficult obstacles full of dangers and hidden secrets. Also combat preparation is as important as in SitS (travel preparation too, but SitS doesn't simulate overworld travel in such a detailed and imo fun way) and the combat itself is a bit underwhelming. So another check there.
Micromanagement is not that fun though, further amplified by the clunky controls. But that's a common problem for many of those old games and it never stopped me from having a blast with BoD.
Just don't make the mistake to check out every house in every town (except Thorwal and Phexcaer), there's nothing to find there, even when breaking in abandoned buildings.
And don't hesitate to consult guides that explain the systems. This game is no fun when you only learn the basics and then choose beginner mode. I suppose it would be even better if you have the patience I had 20 years ago and try to figure everything out without guides but just with the handbook and through trial and error but that's something only kids and other people with too much time on their hands can truly appreciate.
The whole point of it is the feel of leading a band of adventurers in a PnP session, simulating everything from lots of survival checks in the wilderness and in dungeons to the very detailed DSA character development systems.
Also don't overthink it, the game isn't that hard and you don't need optimized char builds. And if you gimped your chars too much just buy lots of poison and use it to kill most of the baddies the cheesy way.
This game obviously sucks for autistic faggots like
Darth Roxor, because of course it has a lot of flaws you can sperg on about and some people just love to hear themselves talk.
The thing is those flaws don't matter if you play it as intended, as a computersimulated PnP session. Ok, sadly without a GM (duh!), but they still managed to capture surprisingly much of it thanks to the solid systems, scripted encounters (often short CYOA sequences with pretty pixel art) everywhere and frequent skillchecks that make your char development and equipment choices matter.
If only the game was a bit more punishing.
