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Review RPG Codex Review: Realms of Arkania HD

Crooked Bee

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Tags: Crafty Studios; Realms of Arkania: Blade of Destiny (Remake)

I bet you didn't see this coming but Darth Roxor has written a review of Crafty Studios' "HD" remake of Realms of Arkania: Blade of Destiny, the game that was infamously released in pre-alpha state and is being desperately patched up as we speak. Have a couple of snippets:

The dungeons? They have been horribly streamlined. Why would the developers redesign the dungeons instead of porting them 1:1 from the old game is beyond me, especially considering how much the new ones suck. They have considerably fewer traps and hazards (nearly to the point of not having them at all, but who needs those when the encounter rates are tripled!), they have been reshaped (the brigand dungeon under the Thorwal academy is a straight-up corridor, and I wish I was joking – it even has secret doors that lengthen the master corridor), and the in-dungeon treasure chests store tons of healing and magic potions. While you still need a perceptive guy that can open locks (although why failing lockpicking gives xp, and to all the party members at that, is a mystery), the dungeons have overall become considerably more hack’n’slashy, less deadly and less fun.

Another incredibly poor aspect of the game is the towns. Navigating cities was already horrible in the original because all the buildings were identical and the best you could do was bring up a mini map to at least check their types. It is quite unbelievable, but the remake's developers managed to make even this aspect worse. The towns are now in full 3D, with terrain elevations, fences, market stalls, etc. You know what this means, right. It means that it’s hilariously easy to get stuck on random baskets that you walk over. I once managed to get mortally stuck on a basket mischievously placed right next to a wall and had to reload, another time I managed to get shot into space while accidentally stepping on a barrel. The good news is, however, that at least now the buildings are tagged, and you can move your party while looking at the map overview. But this just makes it all the easier to get stuck on random props. Providing, of course, that the map works in the first place because it sure as hell doesn’t, for example, in the city of Ljasdahl.

[...] I’ll be honest here, I didn’t finish this abomination. I’ve got a pretty high resistance for shovelware shitgames as long as I can get some laughs out of them. But when it came to this “game”, I simply had to surrender after about 11 hours of playing, or I would risk throwing myself out of the window in desperation. And besides, I figured finishing the game wouldn’t even matter that much because I knew what to expect from later stages in the context of it being a “total remake” (and seriously, anyone who would expect it to magically get better after this time would be a lunatic).

If there was anything listed in this review that you found even slightly positive, I can only tell you one thing. Don’t get this game. Don’t play it, don’t buy it and don’t talk about it because it doesn’t deserve anything other than a kick down a cliff. If there were any positive sides to this garbage, they are only there because they were already there in the original Realms of Arkania from 1992. There is not even the slightest reason to pick this “remake” over the original, and there is even less reason to give any money to the shameless and inept idiots who have brought this upon mankind.​

Read the full article (and weep): RPG Codex Review: Realms of Arkania HD
 
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Most of the tongue-in-cheek elements have been removed as well. The original had a pretty amusing and 4th wall breaking conversation with the hermit at Hermit’s Lake, for example. It didn’t make it into the HD version. All the hermit does is say “hello” and then kick you out of his house.

 

V_K

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Darth Roxor said:
The game in question was Realms of Arkania: Blade of Destiny, which I played, and finished, for the first time. To be perfectly honest, I found it to be rather painfully mediocre in almost all aspects
Stopped reading right here.
 

Agesilaus

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Grab the Codex by the pussy Codex USB, 2014 Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
But wait, the nice person at RPG Watch said it was okay, I'm so confused now... who do I trust?
 

Monty

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Great review. And appropriately scathing.

Couldn't help imagining the team at Crafty Studios reading this.... then retreating to the study with a bottle of scotch and a revolver.
 

SCO

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"the camp watch routine remembers characters"
this is stolen from RoA2 i think.

really fucked it up haven't they

holy fuck i've reached the programming section
:avatard:
 
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sser

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This game thoroughly defeated me, so I have to applaud Roxor's effort to get a review done. The game is an endurance challenge if there ever was one - a digitally realized strain on your physical and mental senses.
 

ben_reck

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Thank you. That is all I have to say. I will now return to Tree 3.
 

Borelli

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10514.jpg

Holy shit.:lol: When i saw this on the start of the review i knew this was going to be a good read.:bro: to you for enduring through this. and in enduring grow strong
 

JoKa

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In the original, you needed a whopping 5000 xp just to get to level 2. Here, you need 100. One friggin’ hundred.
That's because it was like that in the original game (DSA) - they made the numbers bigger (=BETTER!!!!1) in the English version by multiplying them by 50
(so Abenteuerpunkte x 50 = Experience Points). Source
\nitpick

Kudos for persevering for that long and suffering for the sake of this review!
 
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GlutenBurger

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Couldn't help imagining the team at Crafty Studios reading this.... then retreating to the study with a bottle of scotch and a revolver.

Really? The only way I can maintain faith in this reality is by imagining them as master trolls masturbating gleefully at this proof of their success.
 

thesheeep

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If there were any positive sides to this garbage, they are only there because they were already there in the original Realms of Arkania from 1992. There is not even the slightest reason to pick this “remake” over the original, and there is even less reason to give any money to the shameless and inept idiots who have brought this upon mankind.
Couldn't have said it better.

We are also currently working on a game (before you ask, nothing to show yet and it will be months before we do, and yes, of course, it will be an RPG, though nothing too similar to what is already there - we hope). And I swear to whatever an agnostic can swear to that if I ever release a game as horrible as this, I will refrain from ever working on games again.
 

LivingOne

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Obviously there’s a lot of typos in texts, but perhaps my favourite one is the sudden appearance of German lines in some places. This is even more mystifying, considering that they seem to appear at random without any consistency. Pop up text windows also sometimes refuse to disappear, which can be incredibly frustrating.

Reminds me of the italian version of Oblivion except that was also translated via google translate(or a program like that anyway... and the non-translated lines were english rather than german ofc).
 

Koschey

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Not completed, just played for 11 hours, huh? Oh well, at least it's longer than the Escapist would have done :troll:


Now whom to trust? Darth Roxor or Fluent? Tough decision, but I think I'll go for the one who doesn't think unfinished games are worth :3/5: :smug:
 

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