Blade Warrior

Blade Warrior's store page heralds this game as a MS-DOS “classic”, a label that it does not [i]truly[/i] deserve. Instead of being a well-remembered title, the game was actually very obscure on the PC. It is a port of a better known Amiga title that *did* get quite some recognition and a score of positive reviews. So, how come the PC-version isn't as well remembered? And how does the game hold up in this day and age? Lets find out! I actually bought this game back in the day, so I’ve added some personal memories to this review. If you don’t want to read all that, I’ve added a TLDR-section at the end. I've also put up [url=https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2207920987]a guide[/url] based on my notes. [b]Days of future past[/b] In 1991, the British publisher 'Image Works' was a company I held in high regard. Among others, it put out titles like “First Samurai“, “Speedball“ and “Xenon 2: Megablast“. These were legendary to the 14-year old me: tightly designed games that didn't cost an arm and a leg, with superb graphics and music. Well worth saving up some hard-earned cash for. ‘Image Works’ was part of a larger company called ‘Mirror Soft’, headed by the larg…

This was FUN! Even if I didn't really understand what was going on or what I was trying to accomplish. The entire environment, your playable knight, and the enemies are all in silhouette over a vivid background, which makes the game look incredibly unique for its time. Gameplay is generally easy, but it's not quite clear how much damage you can absorb before you fall to your ailments. I did make it a solid half hour into the game - killing satyrs, giant spiders, bat dragons, tiny little spear bastards, a demon king, and lightning sprites(?)... and then when I died, I wasn't sure why, I just exploded into bats and game over. My only real gripe, and it's not a big one, is that I wish the game was more sped up - you walk so slooow. The only real technical issue was the game had some stuttering when multiple enemies appeared on screen at the same time.