The Souls saga has created a sub-genre within the "action, adventure and rpg game" genre, now when a game with these qualities is mentioned it's qualified as "Very similar to DarkSouls", because besides having RPG, action and adventure game features, as I mentioned before, this type of game is also characterized by its high level of difficulty, being in some cases very difficult, even being unfair in some occasions. Although it is known that the Dark Souls saga popularized this term, there are many other titles that many years before raised this kind of features and aspects. One of those games that I will talk about next, was developed by an old Spanish company, and maybe this particular title could have been one of the games from which From Software (developer of Dark Souls, Demon Souls, Sekiro... among others), was inspired at the moment of creating their most popular titles.
Something typical in many old games of this genre is that they have a very simple storyline, and this is because their main point is the gameplay and their graphic aspect. And this, despite the fact that I personally like games of this style to have a good story, with Blade: The Edge of Darkness I don't mind, because both graphically and in its playable aspect they are very good, and well, being totally honest, when I started playing this title for the first time I didn't do it with the purpose of finding an extremely deep argument, but on the contrary, I was looking for a game where I could deal with swords and destroy any enemy that had the audacity to confront me.
Blade: The Edge of Darkness tells the story of a world where, after several years, an entity appears that wants to cause chaos and destruction in the world, just as it did in the past. Therefore, we must incarnate in the skin of four powerful heroes in order to defeat him, but to achieve such a feat we must obtain a weapon of great magical power, the Blade sword, with this sword we can defeat this evil once and for all and bring back peace to the kingdom and the world.
Blade: The Edge of Darkness is an entirely 3D game and even though it was developed by a small company, I must say that graphically it looks really good. The developers of Blade: The Edge of Darkness knew how to create an optimal universe and recreated in their own way a medieval fantasy world with the exact details that make it really believable.
The details in the scenarios are many and decorate very well each environment where we go with our character, besides that visually it looks very good, that is thanks to the use of colors that in many cases (even with its obvious limitations) has a certain realistic tone, which together with the genre of this game makes it fit very well and also helps to create a captivating atmosphere for the player.
One of the strengths of this game with respect to the graphic aspect is the lighting and shading, as they are so well implemented and recreated, and despite being a game that is almost 20 years old it has aged properly. Dynamic shadows that help to create a dark atmosphere when we find ourselves fighting in dungeons and very realistic lighting that equally know how to create a very enveloping and engaging environment. And maybe to many who are reading this it may sound like I'm exaggerating, and maybe I am, but for a title like Blade: The Edge of Darkness, to have such good and professional features, it's certainly a luxury that many game developers years ago weren't able to achieve what this game could.
The character designs are very good, each of the 4 main heroes present their own type of design with their characteristics that make them different from the others, but above all they make them stand out from other characters. The 4 heroes despite having the typical kind of style games, as they are: Barbarian, Amazon or Dwarf, each one of them has its own unique charisma. In the same way the design of the enemies is very good, they are varied because in this universe you can find all kind of creatures, some of them seem to come from the very underworld, but there are also some with very simple and classic designs. The characters move well, they have fluid and realistic animations. In general terms you could say that Blade: The Edge of Darkness was a video game that was graphically ahead of its time. (Everything I mentioned is taking into account the antiquity of this game).
As expected, the developers of Blade: The Edge of Darkness did a great job on the sound aspect of this game. This is a title full of melodies according to a medieval fantasy world, ambient music on every stage that serves to create a cozy atmosphere when needed and also to create an atmosphere of tension when we are going to face some danger. The melodies are very varied, ranging from music that transmits great tension, danger, suspense, but also relaxing melodies, with the typical chorus of medieval songs that make you remember series like Game Of Thrones or movies like The Lord of the Rings. As for the sound effects: they are many and very well recreated, the sound of the clash of swords, blows and even the squeaking of doors are perfect and the moments when there is no melody and only sound effects are heard, are those moments when you appreciate this kind of effects.
Blade: The Edge of Darkness is a game of pure action and adventure, as I said before very similar to games like Dark Souls or Sekiro, but obviously its mechanics are not as polished as these titles. The control of our character is easy to learn, we control it with the mouse and some keys of the keyboard, we can also adapt them according to our preferences.
In general terms Blade: The Edge of Darkness is an adventure and action game, but a lot of action, we must defeat hundreds of enemies along several scenarios and the way to defeat them is very varied due to the great amount of weapons that our characters can use, besides that the way to defeat them is very violent, since we can tear them apart and even decapitate them, in this aspect Blade: The Edge of Darkness is very gore.
In every battle we must select the enemy we want to defeat, Blade: The Edge of Darkness has a system of enemy selection. Once we have chosen the enemy in question, our first task will be to defeat them in the most violent way possible, but sometimes when there is more than one enemy on stage we must choose wisely who to attack first, as we must also think strategically about the battles we are going to have.
As I mentioned Blade: The Edge of Darkness has four heroes to choose from, each with different stories and a reason to retrieve the Blade sword. But also each character has different characteristics and abilities that according to our needs or preferences we can choose from.
These four characters are:
Tukuram, The Barbarian: As is common with this type of character, his gameplay is the most aggressive of all, as he is able to use two-handed axes and defeat some enemies with a single blow. But in terms of speed it's quite slow.
Sargon, The Knight: Characterized by the use of sword and shield, he is a quite defensive character and with his shield he is able to break the defense of the enemies to defeat them more easily.
Zoe, The Amazon: She is one of the fastest and most agile of the four, therefore she can attack her enemies with great speed, but physically not as strong, however due to her great agility in battle, she can dodge attacks very easily.
Nagflar, The Dwarf: He is very strong and also quite agile, he can settle blows to his enemies that manage to stun them. And one advantage this character has over the others is that due to his short stature, enemies can miss some attacks.
Blade: The Edge of Darkness is an excellent adventure and action game, we will also find some puzzles to solve that will add even more playability and entertainment. It is quite re-playable as it has 4 characters with different stories to discover.
