Die By The Sword has innovative controls, but the actual game is fairly average.
- In Die By The Sword, you control this medieval knight guy called Enric. The gameplay is simple; Run around in dungeons and slash & hack anything that moves. I have not touched the story mode that much since it's pretty damn hard, or maybe I just suck at it. But there are two other modes, Arena and Tournament. Arena is the most fun mode. Basically you choose your character (you can play as the enemies from the story mode) and your opponent(s), select time limit/kill limit and the arena, and then you fight. It's incredibly fun, because Die By The Sword has full dismemberment. If your head, or both or your legs become dismembered you die. Your one leg and your both arms can be chopped off and you can still continue to fight. But if your right arm falls off you are basically defenseless and without any form of attack, ie. doomed. The tournament mode is essentially the same as the arena mode, except you will fight various battles, which get more and more challenging if you win. Even though the game has a really innovative control system (more on that below), it gets repetitive after a while.
Controls: 8/10
- So, you control your sword with your mouse. But unlike almost any other game, you don't have any pre-animated attack moves. You just swing your mouse where you want to attack. While this is was really innovative for the time and the system hasn't been used since in any game that I know of, it's quite difficult to control. You can do all sorts of different slashes, but some of them are hard to execute and hit rarely or do far too less damage. Basically the best attack is to slash your sword from left to right and right to left and turning your body to give the slash extra speed. The system feels quite clunky at times, but you get used to it. The game also does have an option of not using mouse to simulate the sword arm... you just press the keypad to move the mouse, or even simpler, you just press buttons to use pre-animated attacks (which removes all the fun.)
Atmosphere: 4/10
- I must say the game is not atmospheric. At all. The story is cliche and the environments feel bland. The game doesn't need to be atmospheric though, since the fun gameplay makes up for that.
Graphics: 7.5/10
- For 1998? They're great. Everything is nicely detailed and quite high-res (for the time) It's not the strongest point of the game, but they're definitely good.
Sound: 6.5/10
- Meh. Music gets boring after a while, and sound effects are bland. One thing that's great is the main character's voice. With classic lines like "Bloody hell!" and "Ah, that's gotta hurt (after slicing the enemy's arms and legs)", it's kickass.
Physics: 8/10
- You know, the game actually has quite good physics. Even the falling/death animations almost look like they used ragdoll. Good stuff.
Replay value: 5/10
- You probably aren't gonna play through the story mode more than once. The arena gets repetitive after a while. There is an online mode, but no-one is playing it anymore and it's hard to use. LAN games are pretty fun though.
Value for money: 6/10
- It's hard to find. And I mean HARD. If you manage to find it, it's probably under 20 € or so and the game is fun, even if only for a short while.
Bugs, Stability & Performance: 7/10
- The game crashes occasionally, but it performs great on any machine older than 8 years, so... But the frame rates seem to be rather poor on any machine I have played, so I guess it's either bad optimizing or it has the maximum fixed frame rate of 20. In any case, the game looks like it's lagging all the time, which can be annoying but it's not THAT bad.
Will this game be remembered by old school gamers as a classic after 10 years?:
- Nah, but it had innovative controls which aren't surpassed by any game to date. So it was really innovative for the time, but the actual game is nothing that special.
Who would I recommend to buy the game?:
- Gee... Well. I dunno, anyone who likes dismembering limbs I guess? The game is really hit or miss, you either love it or you hate it.
Final score (not necessarily an average): 7.0/10