Svartblod Gaming

Hail!

I have been very busy lately, so I haven't had the time to write anything here. There has been a lot of things I wanted to write about here... But now they all seem outdated. But, today I have a day off so I decided to write something. And what will that something be? A review of a 13 year old game. Yep.

I remember when I played this as a kid... I was really terrible at it. But this time I got the hang of it. I actually had to rebuy this game on GOG because when I installed it from the CD I own it said something about my video card being bad... In any case, it was 6$ well spent.

The game is a Might and Magic first person party RPG adventure. It's actually the first Might and Magic game that I've really played, I've only tried out MMI and MMII... They were a bit to confusing (to say the least...) for my taste.

The game starts off with party creation, you create four adventurers aspiring to become mighty and magical in the name of blood and honor. I personally ran the basic knight, thief, cleric and sorcerer. There are a good amount of options here, I just choose to run something very basic. You can pick classes like: monk, ranger, archer and druid also. You also pick their race and name them. Sadly, naming them is about as far as the roleplaying goes in this game... In any case; I made a goblin knight, human thief, dwarf cleric and elf sorcerer.  

 

The first thing that happens in the game is that your characters are competing in a contest on a little island called Emerald Island for the fiefdom of Harmondale. Of course, my characters won the competition! ... Just to find out that the castle they won was ruined, bummer. Also a tribe of goblins had moved in. "Aha! I will talk to my goblin brethren!" Hate, the goblin knight said. But as they moved in to their castle they noted that the goblin tribe felt more inclined to trade throwing axes with the party rather than words. The new lords of Harmondale made sure that not a single goblin woman nor child was alive after the encounter, otherwise the butler wouldn't tell them they had finished their task.  Then the butler told the party they had to seek out the dwarves, they were the only ones who could fix their castle. And so they did....

Well, as I mentioned earlier, naming your characters is as far as the roleplaying goes in this game, which is sad. I would have liked more roleplaying aspects in the game. I would have liked if your goblin character could have tried to talk to the goblins infesting your land. But, sadly that is not the case. Instead, all you really do is ask people which dungeon you should enter. Then you go there and exterminate all it's inhabitants.

Later on in the game you will get to choose between the path of light and the path of darkness. So you can choose the path of rainbows, kittens and friendship or the path of misery, pain and assholishness. I hate when games do this. It's nearly as stupid as Fable. It is sort of explained in the end why you had to pick a side like that, but meh. It just feels dumb and forced.

The story works out pretty well. I like the added sci-fi which apparently is a big part of the Might and Magic games. However, the story isn't that intresting, it just works out well. It could have been way better if they would have added roleplaying options like asking questions and such. Becuase, all you do is blindly following the orders of some guy you don''t truly know who it is until the end. In any case, I really love the ending. It feels truly mighty and magical.

 Hate the Champion with an artifact platemail and a blaster rifle...

The core game mechanics are simple, yet complex enough to be intresting. Whenever you level up your character, he will gain a number of skill points, five skills points the first few levels. Then you have a couple of skills you can add them to, like sword, water magc or stealing. Every skill starts out at one, and to advance it to the second level you need to spend two skill points, three skill points for the third level and so on. Once a skill has reached level four, you can start searching for an expert trainer, to make you an expert in the said skill. At level seven you look for a master trainer, and level 10, a grandmaster trainer. This system works out really well, and once your characters become grandmasters in skills you feel a great sense of accomplishment. Sadly, there is something really annoying as well.. You have to promote your classes. The knight turns into a cavalier, the sorcerer becomes a wizard and so on. To promote your characters you need to do some promotion quests. And this is where I got stuck when I played the game as a kid, the wizard promotion quest. You're supposed to build a golem. Sounds easy enough. But what you have to do is search exactly every area in the game for golem parts. This time I had internet as aid (don't know why I didn't do that last time...) so I actually was able to finish this quest. Without that promotion you pretty much can't beat the game, so that really sucks. Class promotions are needed to become master and grandmaster in skills. I don't like this system of class promotions, but they are needed for game balance, but still, meh.

The soundtrck is actually really good, the only downside is that the soundtrack resets whenever you enter a house, so when you're looking for a trainer among the houses, you'll hear the intro of the song quite a lot...Also, the voices are terrible. Seriously, you'll start hearing "It's just a scrath, but I need it fixed!" in your head with that annoying female elven voice. It will haunt your nightmares. It will haunt your everyday life. YOU CANNOT ESCAPE FROM THE TERRIBLE VOICE ACTING!
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Ehm... To sum things up...
I liked the game a whole lot in general, not one of my favorite games, but it was fun. I love how mighty and magical you become in the end. One of the last things I did was entering the Titan Stronghold and pretty much fought all of the titans and dragons in there at the same time without dying. That's mighty and magical for you!




The story is forgettable. But the gameplay and audio (NOT THE VOICES) is actually really good, and it makes the game very playable and enjoying. Allthough, you'll have to keep in mind that the graphics are pretty terrible by today's standards, it doesn't bother me, but it might bother you.

I think I might do a review of Arcanum in the near future. Stay tuned.

Ave Victoria!
/Hate