Blade Warrior's store page heralds this game as a MS-DOS “classic”, a label that it does not truly 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 a guide based on my notes.

Days of future past
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 larger-than-life media-magnate Robert Maxwell.

When news arrived about Image Works’ latest title, I was filled with anticipation: the magazine I read wrote a preview about a fantasy-themed game that combined hack-and-slash mechanics with elements found in adventure-games. The combination seemed interesting. Even more impressive was the game's graphical style: early screenshots depicted a game that communicated it's ruined world by presenting everything in silhouette, shrouding everything in a perpetual darkness. The stark contrast between the shadowy scenery and the moonlit backdrop made a big impression. Something clicked. I *had* to have this game.

Like most ’Image Works’-titles, Blade Warrior was positioned as somewhat of a budget-game: it came in a small box featuring cover art from Simon Bisley (known from comics like Slaine and ABC Warriors). It contained an A5-sized manual, a registration card and a single blue 3.5 inch floppydisk.
The game's backstory turned out to be highly unoriginal: a once peaceful land has been beset by an evil entity called Murk, corrupting everything. You - the unnamed protagonist and titular Blade Warrior - must seek out fragments of an ancient tablet to restore the world, slaying foes along the way. I’ll be honest: shallow plots didn't really bother me in those days. First and foremost, I was looking forward to exploring that dark, well-drawn two-dimensional world.


A sum of its parts
As mentioned before, Blade Warrior combines several types of game-genres and uses several ‘systems’ to accomplish this. Three genres stand out:

• A side-scrolling brawler, where you roam the land and fight enemies with sword & spells.
  
• An adventure game, where you search for items, needed to obtain fragments of a tablet.
  
• A SHMUP, where you ride a dragon between wizard’s towers, shooting at incoming enemies.

While the combined genres provide for an entertaining and engaging game overall, the implementation of the individual parts feels a bit rudimentary at times. The hack-and-slash part, for instance, has a nice selection of enemies and different sword-strokes to vanquish them, but it doesn’t play as fluidly as, say, Barbarian II[www.mobygames.com]. Killing enemies often requires positioning yourself strategically, since the different types are vulnerable to different strokes. A spider, for example, is best hit with a low jab. If it descends towards you from a hill, you're at a disadvantage. Repositioning yourself or casting a spell helps in these situations. Most enemies are generated at random, so walking a stretch of road will be different every time you visit it.

The adventure game elements consist solely of item-based puzzles: you roam the lands collecting things and trading them for others. There's a basic hierarchy to things: Wizards hold the fragments to the tablet you need to defeat Murk. They will trade these for artifacts, but each covet different ones. You can trade artifacts they hold for other artifacts or (often, but not always) spell-ingredients. Wizards also provide spells and advice and clues to "who wants what". To visit all the wizards and collect all the artifacts, you'll need access to the different roads, which are entered through archways. Some of these are closed and require keys that can be found on other roads.

Collecting stuff is an important element of the game. In my current session, I've collected twelve of the fourteen artifacts during a span of ~10 hours of gameplay. I have to mention that I spent most of this time walking around to collect ingredients. You don't necessarily have to do that: Visiting the wizards (or other places) can be made easier with the 'Travelle'-spell or the dragon-rides.

Mixing spells is intuitive: the ingredients you pick up during your travels belong to the four traditional alchemic elements: earth, water, fire and air. A spell-book in your tower shows which ingredients to mix to create the different types. After mixing them, you can assign them to slots that are used by pressing the function keys. An exception is made for harpy-slaying potions, that can be found scattered around the landscape and used by pressing [space].

The dragon-ride / SHMUP-section is easily the weakest part of the game. It feels the developers added it more as an afterthought, at least on the PC. I also own Blade Warrior on the Amiga and on that particular system, this part has been fleshed out more properly. The dragon-rides are not really functional on either platform though: once you get the 'Travelle'-spell, you can move to any desired position far more efficiently.


Looking sideways… And back
In a forum-post, I reflected on how the PC-version Blade Warrior compared to it's Amiga counterpart. Some observations were:

The PC-version has:

• slight slowdowns when it needs to scroll things in parallax
  
• animations that are less smooth
  
• very basic sounds (Amiga also disappoints)
  
• no changes to the background color palette

In theory the Amiga-version *should* be the better game, based on the points listed earlier. Personally, I like the PC-version more.

The PC-port has a slightly more sedate pace, bringing more focus to the adventuring part. The Amiga-version has more emphasis on the brawler-part of the game, where action is more fluid. Since it can be quite hard to hit enemies when you're not facing them strategically *and* the random encounters allow you to get mobbed from different directions, the Amiga-version is more challenging and (to me) less fun.

So, why didn't Blade Warrior attract more attention at the time? I have several theories. One is it's start on the Amiga, a system that was less popular in the US compared to Europe. Second, during the time Blade Warrior was published, Both Image Works and Mirror Image were in a lot of trouble: Robert Maxwell died under mysterious circumstances and his business-empire collapsed after cases of fraud came to light. All-in all, the game might not have shipped as widely as anticipated or promoted as actively as it could have been.

TLDR
Okay, so I like the game and think the combination of different genres works well, even though they're not extremely impressive when looked at individually. If you like obscure games from a long forgotten era, this one is quite engaging. A quick summary:

Pro's:

• Moody graphics that communicate a lot of detail even in silhouette
  
• Interface is quite intuitive
  
• Collecting stuff, trading with wizards etc. takes time but is fun

Cons:

• Sound is almost non-existent
  
• It can be quite hard to hit enemies at times
  
• Noticeable slow-downs when parallax scrolling portals animate