Basics of Daikatana for the first-time players

This is a guide for the people who have not played Daikatana before but would like to give an fair shot. My aim is to help people in setting up Daikatana so that they can get a better experience out of the single-player campaign. Hopefully somebody will read this and get help from it. I might write a walkthrough guide later on too if people show interest to it.

Foreword

Daikatana is easily misunderstood game. It's a challenging game that can be a lot of fun most of the time. But it's also true that due bad design Daikatana can be also irritating and annoying game to play at times. Not to mention the unfortunate miscalculations in marketing of the game has gained the game a notorious reputation it doesn't really deserve. In general Daikatana is a fair 7/10 or 8/10 mediocre shooter.

It should be kept in mind that Daikatana is a pure hardcore 90s FPS with astonishing amount of variety and content. One of the design goals of Daikatana was that it will keep always introducing player's something new between the levels.

Daikatana has generally three maps per one level and in total Daikatana has 24 levels. Levels are split between four episodes. Each episode has its own unique theme and level design style. The game will take player from cyberpunk Japan to ancient Greece. And to medieval Norway and finally modern day San Francisco. There are 64 different monsters to fight with. And 25 different weapons each with its own unique characteristics to make use of. That makes Daikatana a massive game, or more precisely, four smaller FPS games, in a single package.

Writer of this guide believes that Daikatana is the very final of the "big" AAA 90s shooters that got released. The reason for that is that Daikatana summarizes everything that was both good and bad with the 90s FPS games.

The Writer of this guide also hopes that by reading this guide people gain better understanding how the core gameplay works in Daikatana. This guide will instruct how Daikatana's HUD works and how skill-points are spent and how to spent them efficiently.

Guide will explain how to get the best out of the companion bots (Superfly and Mikiko) that follow the player though the entire game. That is one of more important parts of the guide. Guide will be updated until it covers everything that beginners need to know about playing the John Romero's Daikatana.

Hopefully people will write some feedback about the guide. Especially would be important to get feedback from the people who are first-time players of Daikatana so guide can address their issues in a more direct manner.

Have fun playing Daikatana!

Basic Adjustments

These are the very basic adjustments to the game everybody should do before starting a new game. I've tried to explain them in detail below.

• Set "brightness" to around 60% in "Video" options. When in-game adjust the value +/- 10% using eye measurement because different monitors require different brightness settings.
  
• Set "intensity" to 3 in "Video" options. That's a good basic value for average LCD's displays. CRT's probably want +/- 1 change depending on the colour calibration of the CRT monitor.
  
• Force V-Sync off from your display drivers for the Daikatana (if running version 1.2).
  
• Use Task Manager to set Daikatana's process's "affinity" to "0". (if you're running version 1.2 of the game on a modern hyper threaded multi-core CPU.)
  
• Enable "Unlimited Saves" in "Options" menu item.

Brightness

By default the Daikatana is too bright to play on most LCD displays. Reducing the brightness allows player to see the game in correct colours without player running into the "white smoke screen" effect (i.e. lack of colour saturation) when the intensity is adjusted to the correct level. This may sound weird considering that unless player adjusts the Intensity the game is likely to look too dark. But read on...

Intensity

The "Intensity" setting controls the overall brightness of the textures in Daikatana (i.e. the amount of light textures reflect). By default the Daikatana uses intensity of 1 which is way too low for modern LCD screens and the game is almost pitch black. A good general value for intensity is around 3.

If the Intensity value is set too high, the game will look washed out and dull due lack of colour saturation. There also won't be any shadows or they're really faded out. Players will loose ability to see certain important things on the screen.

That includes but isn't limited to certain switches and important items. Players also won't be able to see though the transparent water correctly (which helps to locate the first Greek alphabet in episode 2 as part of the "AEGIS" puzzle).

Daikatana also has beautiful static light effects which are lost if there's too much intensity. The whole reason the game was delayed so much was the switch to Quake 2 engine so that the artists working with Daikatana could have the ability to paint the world with certain coloured static lights.

Lights are pretty as long as the brightness and intensity are correctly configured. Having too much "intensity" causes loose of visual detail in significant amounts.

Loading screen "ticks" and V-Sync

In version 1.2 Daikatana has a bug which will cause game loading screen to be visible much much longer than it should be. If V-Sync is enabled for Daikatana, the game will wait for each "tick" sound to play out before moving to load something else.

Forcing the V-sync off from the display driver control panel for Daikatana circumvents the bug and the loading screen will function like it is supposed to work. Installing the community made patch 1.3 also resolves this issue and player can have V-Sync with 1.3 if screen tearing is a huge issue for the player.

Mouse lag and loading issues

It's known that in version 1.2 the game has issues running on hyper-threaded multi-core CPUs. This can for example show up as a really irritating mouse movement(s) where moving the mouse makes movement on screen stop for a less than a second several times in a row while moving it (aka. teleportation issue). Or mouse movement in-general could feel very laggy. The multi-core issue also could cause loading and sound issues.

These are known issues in most of the older games running on top of the Quake 2 engine and are not Daikatana specific. To the knowledge of the writer there are no good fixes for multi-core problem other than disabling the execution on all but one CPU core by setting the affinity of the process to 0.

Installing the community-made patch 1.3 does resolve some of these issues. It should be noted that the developers of the patch 1.3 suggest that if players experience very laggy mouse movement or other mouse issues they should try to:

• Disable the mouse smoothing (i.e. setting "m_filter" to 0)
  
• Disable the V-Sync
  
• Disable the Triple Buffering
  
• Reduce the amount of frames which are rendered ahead
  
• Set "gl_ext_sgis" to 1 (if your system supports it)
  
• High mouse polling and/or DPI (>500Mhz, and >1800DPi) might cause issues with the game.

These are very likely to solve majority of the mouse related issues. There can be other causes and in-turn other solutions for issues regrading the mouse (and joystick) problems in the Daikatana and other Quake 2 engine based games. That's something to keep in mind.

Save Gems and Unlimited Saves

Daikatana's original save game system takes inspiration from JRPGs where the saving was limited to certain points and to limited amount of save states due hardware limitations. However players generally were able to freely save but only at certain points and they only had approx. three different save game slots.

Daikatana breaks that model in several ways that doesn't really work in a first-person shooter like Daikatana. First of all the saves are limited to "save gem" items. Players need to search for these from the level to save game. One "save gem" is exchanged to one save game state. They emit a sound that assists player in finding them.

Players can save at any given time. However, while there are several "save gems" available, player can only carry three of them at any time. Once player finds the fourth "save gem", player is essentially forced to save the game. That makes this system a really crappy early showcase of an automatic save points which are commonly used in modern FPS games.

There's only one occasion the game will make an automatic save. That's when game has loaded another map and player enters it. Now imagine what happens if you die within seconds after entering a new map. You'd be stuck in an eternal cycle of dying and loading screen. And since you didn't want to spend your precious save gems to make save point in earlier map before the map changed, you're forced to go far back to last time you did save.

On hard mode there's only one save gem per level (around three maps) and it's hidden in most cases. That forces player to search for the secret areas. So just enable the "unlimited saves" from the Options menu and walk away.

Missing intro video

Intro video of Daikatana doesn't show up when players start the game. It can be viewed by double clicking a blink video executable located at Daikatana's folder. To fix it players can write a batch file which e.g. when run shows the Daikatana's intro first and then launches the game with CPU affinity set to 0.

Sound quality

If players install patch 1.3 they can improve the sound quality vastly by going to sound options and increasing the quality from 22khz to 44khz. That's also recommended course of action if they're broadcasting the Daikatana for example at Twitch and stream's sound quality is set to 44khz. And don't forget to adjust sound levels

Sharper textures

If player has installed the patch 1.3 players can apply up to 16x AF from the in-game video menu. Doing that makes the textures look much much better. Also the 32-bit texture fixes that come with the 1.3 make the game look much sharper as demonstrated by this screenshot from a popular multi-player map. (1.2 users can force the AF from the display driver control panel.)

Patch 1.3 Pre-Beta for Windows

The final official patch Ion Storm released for Daikatana is 1.2. Steam's version of Daikatana is already patched to version 1.2. It's all fine and good to play, but downloading and installing the community produced patch 1.3 (which is still in beta) is highly recommended.

Patch 1.3 for example adds support for the widescreen resolutions with 16:9 and 16:10 aspect ratios thus people can get it working in fullscreen mode on their widescreen monitors. It also corrects the infamous loading screen "tick tick tick" bug by disabling V-Sync while loading is in progress (also removes the "tick" sound).

Patch 1.3 features

• Corrects issues regarding the V-Sync.
  
• Removes the "tick" sound from loading screens.
  
• Updated render.
  
• Adds support for widescreen resolutions of 16:9 and 16:10 aspect ratio.
  
• Adds support for custom resolutions.
  
• Adds support for additional mouse buttons.
  
• Adds glowing textures.
  
• Adds 32-bit textures.
  
• Updates maps regarding certain map bugs.
  
• Gamespy's master server has been switches to QTracker's master server.
  
• Corrects AI path and nodes to a great extent (bots will not get stuck so often).
  
• Companion bots have more life and will not die so easily, and on easy difficulty setting the sidekicks are immortal.
  
• AND MORE! Refer to the README.txt inside the package.

Updating Daikatana to the version 1.3

WARNING: Save games made in 1.2 are NOT compatible with 1.3. If you're deep into the game and you want the community patch 1.3 you need to use "map" command to jump where you were and then use cheats to give yourself some weapons and ammunition. Alternative is to restart the whole single-player campaign.

There are few choices for 1.3 but I strongly recommend that people get the 32-bit full package. They can download it from here:

https://bitbucket.org/daikatana13/daikatana/wiki/Downloads

After you've downloaded it install it into Daikatana's folder. If you have Steam installed to it's default path Daikatana's folder is located in:

C:\Program Files\Steam\steamapps\common\Daikatana\

(or if you're running 64-bit Windows):
C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Daikatana\

If it asks if you would like to overwrite any files, do so and overwrite the files. End result is that when Daikatana starts you can see in the right bottom corner of the red area in main menu "1.3" instead of "1.2". You're also able to access for example the HD resolutions from the Video menu.

If player starts playing multi-player with Daikatana community, they are also going to need so called Pak9 that includes nearly all community made maps for the Daikatana. Players can download it from here:

DKCustom.rar (Pak9)

http://dk.toastednet.org/Maps/pak9_032616.7z

You extract that package into the data folder inside the Daikatana's folder. Default path is:

C:\Program Files\Steam\steamapps\common\Daikatana\data\

(or if you're running 64-bit Windows):
C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Daikatana\data\

Reporting issues with the patch

This is important! If you guys encounter bugs and stuff go report them:

https://bitbucket.org/daikatana13/daikatana/issues?status=new&status=open

Important to know
For playing the multi-player mode patch 1.3 is essential since it changes the now dysfunctional Gamespy Master Server to QTracker Master Server.

Important to know
Patch 1.3 breaks the save game compatibility with the version 1.2. If you've started playing the game with 1.2 and you install 1.3 then you will be unable to load previously made save game files. This is an issue in most of the Quake 2 engine based games and there's nothing that can be done about it. If you're deep in the game you probably want to play the game first through and only afterwards install the patch 1.3

Important to know
We have 64-bit version available but it's very unstable and has a great number of bugs. If you're not interested in helping debugging the game, please use 32-bit full package instead. Thank you!

Patch 1.3 Beta for GNU/Linux

If you're using GNU/Linux you can now run Daikatana natively on your favourite distribution. There are some library restrictions. Writer of this guide uses at the moment Debian 8.1 "Jessie" and has not encountered major issues.

The patch has been tested to work with:

• Ubuntu (14–16 LTS)
  
• Debian (7 and 8)
  
• Fedora Workstation (21–25)

You're going to need to install some libraries to make it work. In most cases you should already have these but if you're running x86_64 platform then you have to install 32-bit version of the following libraries:

List of required 32-bit libraries

• libstdc++6
  
• libGL
  
• libopenal1
  
• libasound2
  
• libpulse
  
• libc6

You can get them the usual route using aptitude, dnf, pkcon or whatever you're using. You might need some extra libraries not listed here for it to work but you probably already know how to figure out what you need. If not then write a comment and community is likely to help you. Note that some of the required libraries (e.g. SDL2) are bundled with the game.

Installation is that you make a folder "daikatana" into any where you wish. I'd recommend something like $HOME/Games/daikatana. Then you copy "data" folder from the Windows version of the Daikatana into that folder. Afterwards you need to unpack the patch to any tmp directory. Then copy the contents from the patch folder (e.g. "Daikatana-Linux-2014-12-30") to the Daikatana folder you created and overwrite any files it has a conflict with.

You're also going to need the updated maps and textures to play the game through without issues. And if you plan to take part in the multi-player matches you're going to need the map pack with all the custom maps. Extract them into any tmp folder and then copy them into the Daikatana's data folder. (e.g. $HOME/Games/daikatana/data/)

https://bitbucket.org/daikatana13/daikatana/wiki/Downloads

Any and all data produced by the Daikatana like saves, config files, screenshots, etc. will be saved to $HOME/.local/share/Daikatana/. Hopefully this will get you started with the game. If you need help write down in comment section. If you encounter a bug or messages about missing functions then please come to Bitbucket and fill in a bug report.

Go to this address for "support" and bug reports:
https://bitbucket.org/daikatana13/daikatana/issues?status=new&status=open

UPDATE

Simple instructions:

1. Download latest Windows 1.3 patch.
   
2. Download latest Linux 1.3 patch.
   
3. Get the game files from GOG or Steam. GOG setup unpacker is included with the Linux package.
   
4. Unpack the Windows 1.3 patch on top of the Daikatana folder.
   
5. Unpack the Linux 1.3 patch on top of the Daikatana folder.

Patch 1.3 Beta for OS X

Community patch 1.3 has been made available also for the Apple's OS X. It should work on any Mac OS X 10.6 and newer. Writer of this guide doesn't own working Apple hardware to test or help with it.

OSX pre-Beta version from 2016-03-07
https://bitbucket.org/DGibson/daikatana-1.3/wiki/Downloads/Daikatana-OSX-2016-03-07.zip

Keyboard and mouse bindings

Daikatana has extensive system for binding functions to both mouse and keyboard. The default biddings in configuration file "current.cfg" are confusing. Not to mention how hard they can be to learn for most of the players. It is recommended that players rebind all the important keys as they choose. However it's recommended by writer of this guide that binds are done in a following manner.

Mouse

Button	Function
mouse wheel up	hud prev
mouse wheel down	hud next
mouse button 1	fire
mouse button 2	use
mouse button 3	hud use

This allows operating Daikatana's HUD with mouse enabling e.g. spending skill points without touching the keyboard. Daikatana's HUD has five modes: Sidekicks, Weapons, Inventory, Save Gems, and Skill points. Most of the game you cycle between Weapons and Sidekicks.

Keyboard

Function(s)	Button(s)
moving and strafing	w,s,a,d
weapons	numeric keys 1-7
swap sidekick	Tab
scoreboard (status screen)	F1
save	F2
load	F3
next weapon	e
prev weapon	q
hud cycle	r
crouch	shift
run	alt
jump	space
sidekick commands	z (get), x (come here), c (stay), v (attack), b (back off)
Look up/down/left/right	arrow keys up/down/left/right

What this does is that it maps keys that player most frequently will use to keys that are near by the fingers in classic WSAD movement keys. This makes the gameplay a lot smoother. Adjusting the mouse related sensitivity settings is also recommended.

Pressing "swap sidekick" button switches the HUD into Sidekick mode automatically. Pressing any of the weapon selection number buttons switches HUD into Weapons mode automatically. However there are are situations where pressing the HUD cycle is handy.

Important to know
You can noclip through the maps by pressing 'n' on keyboard. Pressing 'n' again will turn noclipping off. This is useful if you get stuck somewhere, or you'd like to explore map freely. It's not a shame to use noclip in game like Daikatana where switches that make something important to happen can be hidden from plain sight or require platforming.

Gameplay

Moving

Daikatana is a fast paced game where players are supposed to be moving all the time. If player stops to shoot something the game will become increasingly more difficult. Player needs to be continuously on move, sidestepping and shooting. Daikatana's levels are designed in most cases so that there are small arenas where to take out monsters player faces. Some of the levels become much easier if players know jumping tricks (such as bunnyhopping).

Health Items and pickups

Daikatana has a variety of health items at player's disposal. Player's can also accuire various items like MegaShield, MegaHealth, Invunerability, and Invisibility during the game. Generally players can pick up the health packs or health vitals.

Players can also utilize the Half-Life-stylish health stations called "Hosportals" (ep.1) or "fountains of life" (ep.2). In Episode 1 players can also eat berries while in swamp. In-general Daikatana provides lots of heath items. But the consumption rate can be fairly high for beginners making it feel like the game doens't provide much health items at all.

Fuseboxes

Daikatana early on will teach player that there are obstacles that can be bypassed either by running and jumping, or by destroying "a fusebox" next to them. Daikatana even underlines that in the cutscene that happens when player enters the second level "E1M2a" of the game. Almost all of these boxes take approx. four hits from Ion Rifle.

Fuseboxes usually control a door or gun turrets in episode 1 and destroying fusebox causes the destruction of gun turret or the unlocking of the door. The apparearance of the boxes alters a little bit between the maps. But usually there's somekind of wire coming out of these things of they're "sparking" or releasing "smoke". For example the controlbox that kills the laser defences in the jail level doesn't connect to anywhere but releases sparks.

Monsters and other opponents

The cyborg frogs player meets right at the beginning of the game (and two levels later will never see them again). Tactic against them is almost the exactly same as Half-Life's "Headcrabs" that are a similar small creature.

When the frog jumps at player players are supposed to take few steps back and then shoot them in mid-air with Ion Rifle or punch them with fists. Punching with fists is the recommended course of action for new players as Ion Rifle shots can reflect back to player's face. Also at underwater the Ion Rifle causes area damage and hurts player as well as anything else in the area in a similar manner to Quake 1's Lightning Gun.

The cyborg mosquitoes are easy to take out. Player can hear them from a distance. Their eggs are easy to break. And when you hit them once, they always correct the flight path a little bit in a similar manner and dealing second shot to them takes them out on normal difficulty level. Three shots are required in hard difficulty mode. Mosquitoes don't deal any extensive amounts of damage unless they're moving as a group. They're mainly there to distract player's attention away from more serious monsters.

The werewolves will not die unless they're gibbed with a silver gauntlet. A good strategy is to shoot them from a distance with a projectile weapon so it falls to ground and starts faking death, then equip the silver gauntlet and hit body of the werewolf a few times to gib it.

Once upon a time there was a wise man who said:

it isn't all just frogs, guys.

Commanding Sidekicks (companion bots)

The most important button player needs to use in Daikatana (after the obvious keys like firing a gun) is the one that swaps selection between the two sidekicks. Also the commands which you can issue to those companion bots are important.

Sidekick commands "get", "come here", and "stay" are frequently used in Daikatana to instruct companion bots to collect ammunition, to hurry them to come to you so that you know if they get stuck somewhere, and "stay" to avoid them falling into places where they don't know how to come up.

Daikatana is significantly different FPS from the most other FPS games of its time due player being accompanied by two AI companion bots the whole game. These sidekicks will assist player in various situations, they'll shoot opponents, shout out taunts, try to joke around the player, and in generally are there so player doesn't have to feel alone in the game world.

Player is supposed to role-play the Daikatana and treat these bots as party members in a similar fashion to role-playing games. Player has to decide how to split the available resources between the bots and player itself. This adds some strategy and tactical elements to the Daikatana.

Unfortunately these companion bots don't always function as well as they should and there are tricks to them. One important thing to know is that these sidekicks will not be able to pick up and use for example sidewinder rocket launchers. There's two kinds of weapons the sidekicks can pick up. In episode 1 those two are the "Ion Rifle" and "Shotcycler".

Also if you bunnyhop the sidekicks will stop moving. Bunnyhopping is useful in Daikatana allowing you to get faster through the long maps but it also slows down the bots.

Sidekick UI

Note the the Sidekick status is visible at the bottom left and right corners of the screen. The red bar shows how much health the sidekick has. The yellow bar indicates how much armour the sidekick has. On top of these two is a small icon that shows how much ammunition a sidekick has for his or her weapon: Green colour for "plenty", yellow for "running out of ammunition", and red for "no ammunition". The face image reflects the sidekick's general condition.

Superfly specific things

Superfly's AI works mostly ok in most situations. And that is great because player spends around half of the game with Superfly being the only companion player has.

Superfly requires issuing "stay" and "back off" commands in certain situations. For example if player doesn't share the available ammunition and weapons with him, Superfly is known to make kamikaze attacks attacking very strong opponents with his bare fists and also get caught into the crossfire between player and the opponents while doing so. There's also a chance that in small narrow places Superfly will block the player's path. That's easy to solve with "back off" command.

Superfly is likely to obey commands to pick up resources and he's smart enough to pick ammunition himself half the time. Also issuing "attack" command functions more or less giving players ability to direct Superfly's gun fire a little bit.

Superfly in general doesn't get stuck anywhere. But there's a one location in the episode 1 where there's a 40% chance that Superfly will get stuck in a door when he is himself trying to open the door and then that door will kill him. Issuing "stay" before player visits that small security area at beginning of second map of the "Crematorium" level is recommended.

Mikiko specific things

Writer of this guide believes any amount of fixing is never going to make Mikiko work properly. It's a fact of life and should be accepted that Mikiko's AI code has bugs that were not debugged properly. This is not complete list by any means of things to be aware when Mikiko is following player. It should be noted that most of the issues with Mikiko's AI are probably waypoint related and thus bugs in maps themselves.

Generally

It doesn't matter what episode is in question, Mikiko can and will get stuck in ladders, doors, alleys, airducks, etc. and stops moving despite her efforts to run forward. While it can also happen to Superfly it's most likely that Mikiko will be the one to do so. Issuing "back off", and "come here" can resolve most of these situations. Alternatively player can try to shoot Mikiko in frustration and she will sometimes stop doing what she was trying to do and start moving in ladders while complaining that player shot her.

Mikiko is the first one usually to refuse to pick up health items that you're ordering her to pick up. Even when she's on the verge of death she might refuse picking up health item, body armour, or weapons and ammunition in general.

If player has full health or ammunition, player can try to go to stand near by the health or ammo box, and then constantly issue "come here" to get Mikiko as close to player as possible, and if she gets close enough, she's likely to walk over the health or ammo box and thus will "accidentally" pick it up whenever she wanted it or not.

Greece

Usually only Mikiko requires the extensive use of "stay" command. Most often when near by water fountains in Episode 2. Mikiko also does heavy failing in the military base elevators in episode 4 and issuing "stay" order is recommended for that small portion of the map.

In episode 2 it's also possible for player to move so fast, that when Mikiko tries to follow the player, the speed Mikiko will come down hill to a certain bridge can make her fall through the bridge if it happens at a suitable angle. Then Mikiko will be stuck in a place where she cannot get out from and player has to load game from the latest save game slot.

San Francisco

In level Tower of Crime Mikiko is likely to get stuck in airduck or the pipes that player and Mikiko use to get to the airduck. This is the part were player and Mikiko are entering the building from the basement. There's a 50% chance Mikiko will get stuck. It's easy to resolve by calling Mikiko from the other direction but it might take few tries for Mikiko to pass. In patch 1.3 this seem to be less of an issue.

Apparently the Daikatana's Quality Assurance team only play tested the game on Shogun (hard) difficulty level. That has had silly consequences with certain maps on easy and normal difficulty mode having certain scripted sequences that don't work or activate properly.

For example in episode 4 there's an elevator cart shaft in military research base that's supposed to be protected by a metal grating. On normal difficulty mode it doesn't exist and Mikiko is stupid enough to fall to her death because of that flooring is missing. Player has to issue "stay" command for Mikiko at that place for a moment while player uses the elevators to pick up the keys which are required to progress in the game.

However on hard it does what it's supposed to do and it works as intended. Notice on how in this screenshot the floor's metal grating extends to the edge of the elevator cart.

Level Up and Skill points

In Daikatana every time you level up you get to spend one skill point. Skill points are used to make player better in five skill categories:

• POWER increases damage rate the player's weapons do.
  
• ATTACK increases fire rate of the player's weapons.
  
• SPEED increases the running speed of the player.
  
• ACRO increases how high player can jump.
  
• VITALITY increases maximum health of the player.

Five points per skill is the maximum value player can upgrade skill. There's a cap on how much points player can spend on each skill in episodes. In episode 1 player can only spend two points per each skill. In episode 2 player can spend total of tree points in skills. In episode 3 it's four points. And in episode 4 it's all five points.

Skill points should be spent primarily into ATTACK and POWER. However at the beginning of the game VITALITY can be useful for new players of the game. But it's entirely possible to play the Daikatana through without spending any points to VITALITY on Shogun (hard) difficulty level.

The difficulty level of the game generally means more stuff to shoot at, some more sophisticated platforming. Daikatana's monsters are stupid buckets and game isn't significantly more difficult on Shogun difficulty. It's actually easier on Shogun in the later parts of the game because player is able to gain a lot more skill points.

Player can see their progression towards the next level in UI. There is a tiny bar that shows when player will gain next level. It can be a bit hard to see.

Important to know
Skill points do not accumulate. If player doesn't spend a skill point before receiving another level up, the new skill point will disappear. It's important to spend them right away.

Important to know
There are power ups in Daikatana that player can find from secret areas and such that temporarily upgrades one of skills to full five points.

Important to know
On Shogun (hard) difficulty level, if player is able to kill every monster in the game (that includes four hidden Dopefishes[www.dopefish.com]), by the end of the game, it's possible to have every skill fully upgraded. However it's unlikely that players can kill all the monsters in the game. So choose carefully what you're aiming towards.

Weapons

There are several important things to know about the weapons in the Daikatana. Some of the weapons have more than one function.

Daikatana (available in episodes 2, 3 and 4)

The elephant in room, Daikatana as a weapon. Player will receive Daikatana for use in the start of the Episode 2. And at first Daikatana will be pretty under powered.

However by using Daikatana to kill monsters, the sword, not the player, will receive the XP from those kills. Player can level up Daikatana up to level five which will turn the sword into a ridiculously over powered close combat weapon which can kill anything with almost first strike except mid-bosses and level bosses. The negative effect is that the player won't receive those five level ups to spend on power, attack, speed, acro or health.

When Daikatana is at level five and player uses it to kill monsters in the game, the XP will flow to player again normally. Daikatana will only eat five levels from player when used. That isn't very significant thing. If player so chooses, it is possible to ignore Daikatana and not level up the sword at all. Using other weapons, player will receive the level ups for player to spend on skills.

However author of this guide strongly recommends that players spend majority of the episode 2 upgrading the Daikatana to level five. The sword will be incredibly useful once player learns to land strikes with it.

Using Daikatana as a weapon doesn't mean that player can just stand somewhere and hit stuff with it (although player can do that if he or she wants to). Once attack with the Daikatana has been initiated, player has to watch which sword strike animation is running on screen. Player then has to move view based on that for a maximum impact point to hit on monster. This can be practised against walls for example to see which animations land what kind of strikes to learn them.

Important to know
Player can see the Daikatana's current power level and progression towards the next level by pressing scoreboard/status button which also shows the total amount of monsters killed, time spent playing the map and other information.

In episode 1

The C4 launcher fires explosives that stick on walls and which explode when anything comes to near by. Players however can remotely explode those sticky bombs. Usually weapons are binded to numbers 1 to 7. C4 launcher is weapon number 3. Players choose weapon by pressing 3. Player can then shoot anywhere.

And while C4 launcher is selected, by pressing 3 again will detonate the explosives in the environment. It's possible to create small minefields with C4 launcher which have up to five mines. Shooting sixth C4 will blow up the explosives player has shot.

Player can find a chainsaw addon to the basic hydraulic fist weapon. That makes it really powerful melee weapon that can literally take down anything. However the chainsaw is a powerup that consumes gasoline.

When gasoline runs out player will lose the chainsaw. If player doesn't use the chainsaw it stays in player's inventory. But after player has used it certain amount it goes away and player has to find another one. There are several available in the episode 1.

Player can use Shotcycler as a jet pack. It packs enough power to kick player into air if player correctly jumps and shoots with it. It can be used to access secrets and do various other things in the game.

For example Shotcycler also works as an airbreak. That's important to know since in map E1M7B (in the screenshot) there's a long fall to elevator platform that can cause serious damage for the player. Using shotcycler player can drop down safely.

In episode 2

Save ammunition for "Eye of Zeus" for the final fight with the Medusa. That makes the fight much easier.

With Trident of Poseidon selected, it's possible to stay underwater an unlimited amount of time. It is required to access certain secrets without drowning. It also doubles as "rocket launcher" type weapon that can be used to perform "rocket jump" which is required to gain Eye of Zeus much earlier during episode 2.

In episode 4

The shotgun also doubles as a grenade launcher. Pressing the weapon key twice will load grenade which you can then shoot. Pressing weapon key again will revert it back to being a shotgun.

Story related things

Daikatana was made during time when video game industry had not yet learned how to create highly cinematic Hollywood cutscenes in big budget AAA video games. Or even how to most effectively tell a story like this. Writer of this guide argues that Daikatana was painful but important lesson about the story telling in first-person shooting games in general.

Daikatana demonstrates that having a good story isn't always enough or even necessary in a game. What matters is how that story is told and how bits and pieces of that story are exposed to the player.

John Romero's games usually started immediately after player started the game but with Daikatana he wanted to have a good story for his epic and high cinematic game. Thus Daikatana starts with a long and boring exposition of all things that are happening in the game world. That cutscene lasts about 10 minutes.

Daikatana's story can be bit convoluted. And especially the ending can be hard to understand because Daikatana by default when it launches doesn't playback the short pre-rendered intro video that shows some really important stuff happen that gives valuable clues to the player about the story.

Most important of these clues is that Usagi Miyamoto is shown wounded and running with the Daikatana in a forest and being chased by assassins to a near by volcano. This will not make any sense even if the player watches the long exposition. But it all comes together when Mikiko Ebihara at the final minutes of the game reveals the "shocking" truth about everything to the player.

That also explains the reason why spirit of Usagi Miyamoto "haunts" the people that are seeking Daikatana through out the game. And depending on their goals helps or works against them.

Important to know
Player can skip any cutscenes at any time by pressing esc. If players want to prevent loading of the in game rendered cutscene they can enable "don't show the intro" from the "options" menu. Then the Daikatana will jump right into the first level when new game is started.

[Xan]

after leveling daikatana to lvl 5, it still sucks exp to itself rather than Hiro himself :(

[Norbody]

You can level the Daikatana to 5 in episode 2 if you kill every enemy with it (Except those flying succubus things). Once it gets to three you can just grind through enemies no problem. The key to killing enemies with it without taking damage is to stay back and let them touch the blade, as soon as the hit connects back off. You will kill them without taking damage 95% of the time.

[Evil Tiger]

Nice chat gpt

[Sly-Scale]

Video game scoring has two languages, Dekonega. I'll see if I can clear up the confusion for you.

The first "language" I'll talk about is the one that the big media outlets use. IGN, Polygon, PC Gamer, etc. all use this. They rate games between a 7/10 and 9/10, in the style of the U.S. school grading system which generally expects a 70%-90% scoring. Not above where your peers get jealous, and not below where you'd look bad. So, these big media outlets never deviate from the 7-to-9 scoring. Games get scored by those outlets like this, making all games seem decent, good, or great -- never terrible, and never exceptional. So that investors will just throw money at these games, not understanding how gaming really works.

[Sly-Scale]

The second language is what I'd charitably say is an unspoken ruleset, unwritten by gamers and not even whispered to one another. Where some games are a decent 7/10, others are a terrible 4/10, and anything going below 4/10 is when the game itself is also violating laws. And they often get these scores, based on how bad the worst part of that game is. It could be something as innocent as... having your health regenerate. But a game that has no such flaws, can possibly get that 10/10 rating.

With all this said, an unpatched version of Daikatana would probably get a 7/10 from reviewers today, while gamers would throw a 4/10 at it. A patched version would totally get a 7/10 from everyone. Maybe an 8/10, but that'd be a hard one because the sidekicks are so glitchy.

[Dekonega]

That's a good question. I didn't think about it too deeply when writing this some years ago. I'm from Finland and here the school grading system goes from numeric 4 to 10. And so the score of 4/10 means failure. The 5/10 score is absolute minimum required to pass. And so if you score 7/10 or 8/10 in a test that is the middle "mediocre" score which is fairly easy to attain by just following the lessons.

[Evil Tiger]

Who the hell rates something 8/10 as mediocre? mediocre is 5/10

[ChubbiChibbai]

Thanks for putting this guide together.
I've only just discovered Daikatana after reading Masters of Doom and wanting to see what the game was like... so the first time i experience it is with the 1.3 patch and with this guide and honestly i'm enjoying myself.

[Dekonega]

I tend to agree with that.

However I should say that I've played the 1.0, 1.1, 1.2 and 1.3 with save gems (limited saves) and it's not impossible to make constant and fast progress. The issue becomes that you can only carry three save gems and when you get fourth stone then you absolutely have to make a save there and then. That system just isn't fleshed out all that well.

I personally don't think that the episode 1 is overall the worst one. The problem with episode 1 is that it starts with the three worst levels in the whole game which are the swamp, sewer and jail. After that episode 1 is rather fun to play when you have Superfly, some weapons and mostly ok'ish levels.

I've also hit the character limit in Steam guides have so it's rather difficult to make changes.

[gast128]

The 1.3 patch is essential since with limited saves it's almost impossible to progress. Perhaps also warn first time users that episode 1 is the worst of all and that the rest is much better. Without teammates; skip episode 1 and unlimited saves the game would have been in better condition for release back in 2000.