This review was originally published on the Console Purist Facebook group on October 12th, 2019.
Hello again, and welcome back to the PlayStation Basement!
PlayStation Basement is a weekly review of an odd or obscure game for the
original PlayStation. Games are rated Good, Bad, or Neutral. Now, let’s go!
October continues with another horror game, this time a
fighting game called Advanced Dungeons
& Dragons: Iron & Blood: Warriors of Ravenloft. The game takes
place in the Dungeons & Dragons setting
of Ravenloft, a gothic horror world split into various domains that are each
ruled by different Darklords. This game takes place in the domain of Barovia
ruled by the vampire Strahd von Zarovich. Strahd has lured eight heroes to his
domain to defend him from an upcoming attack by eight villainous monsters under
the death knight, Lord Soth. Who will survive in this violent and vicious
battle developed by Take-Two and published by Acclaim in 1996?
The cover art presents a bad first impression, at least to
me. When I saw this game at the store, I was intrigued but ultimately not
expecting much when I saw a polygonal demon, a weird bloody saw, and a goofy
tagline – “the dark side of 3-D fighting!” The cover art has some nice colors,
but it’s just sort of plain. It doesn’t really show anything; it’s just a
portrait of a demon in front of blue electricity. The demon isn’t even a main
character; he’s a sub-boss. You may be thinking, how does he look in the actual
game?
Nothing in the game looks particularly good. All of the
characters are blocky, the animations jerky, and the backgrounds are very flat.
Some of the background colors are nice though. The animations are a real
problem, as we’ll see that the hit detection is not exactly precise. Surprisingly,
these animations were made with motion capture; they really don’t flow well.
The sound waves of Iron
& Blood don’t flow well either. The musick varies between generic-ish
fantasy, Castlevania pastiches, and
bizarre rap-metal. The fantasy stuff is just sort of muffled, dramatic
cinematics, but the rap-metal is really bad. The vocals have a gruff growl to
them, and one track literally repeats the name of the character whose level the
theme plays on. Sound effects are a mess too with slaps, cymbal crashes, and
other thin sounds. The voice acting is probably the worst. The script is full
of sarcastic one-liners and snotty gloating. I don’t feel very scared when a
vampire says “you died for a greater cause – me!” It’s just dumb. The announcer
also yells “combination” whenever a combo is input by the player. The voices
sound low quality and muffled. That goes for pretty much all of the sound in
the game really.
Gameplay follows along with more awkwardness. Advanced Dungeons & Dragons: Iron &
Blood: Warriors of Ravenloft is a fighting game made during the fighting
game boom of the 90s. It’s part of what I think of as Killer Instinct-inspired games (which are also Mortal Kombat-inspired) along with titles like War Gods, Bio F.R.E.A.K.S.,
and Mace: The Dark Age. Iron & Blood has the silly edginess
of attitude, blood, and monstrous characters, though there are no fatalities.
The game has two main modes: Head to Head and Campaign. Head to Head is a
standard arcade mode where you select a character and fight each opponent until
you defeat the final boss. Interestingly, the characters are divided into two
sides: the monstrous assassins who serve Lord Soth and the heroes who
reluctantly serve Strahd von Zarovich. Picking a character will pit you against
all of the characters from the other side but none of your own. Oddly, you
always seem to have to fight the Minion of Chaos, the Avatar of Order, and the
demon from the cover art. The final boss for a good character is Strahd, and
Lord Soth does not seem to be in the game, though I have not played through the
entire Head to Head mode as an agent of evil. The game gets pretty tough as you
go along, boss characters getting more health and damage output along with some
absurd reflexes. It gets hard to keep up. There is a solution though.
The Campaign mode is basically a team-based survival mode.
You pick a number of characters and battle the same number of characters from
the other side. This mode tries to replicate adventuring with a party of
characters in Dungeons & Dragons.
Each round offers a chance at winning a special artifact or spell in addition
to experience for a character to level up. It’s not particularly clear to me
what leveling up does, though I assume it grants additional health, damage, and
defense. Artifacts enable characters to teleport, counter magic, and various
other effects. Each side has different ones available. Spells are new attacks
for each character. The winner of the round gets whatever is offered, and the
loser loses a life. Once a character runs out of lives, they are lost.
Characters that gather abilities and artifacts can take these new powers into
the Head to Head mode or back into Campaign mode again, though a death loses it
all. The game heavily recommends an auto-save option, which really makes those
deaths bad for the player. There’s some more bad stuff too.
I have many criticisms of Iron & Blood. As mentioned, the hit detection is a mess. This
is the biggest issue, as this is a fighting game. I’ve noticed attacks miss
that I thought would hit and vice versa. The worst is when I would do a dashing
attack, hit with one of the strikes, and then miss with the rest. Despite the
missing, my character would still push the opponent around, though. There are
more issues when the opponent is a character that hovers, though this may be
intentional. It still feels inconsistent. Another criticism is that the game
starts with some weird settings. These can be changed in the Options menu, but
it’s weird to start with no time limit and a best of five match setup (or three
lives in the Campaign mode). This combination means that each match takes
forever, though I suppose it’s mostly intended for the Campaign mode where
every match is one round. Playing through the Head to Head is a slog without
leveling up, but the AI is also pretty bad, often falling for trip attacks.
Further big problems affect both players and the AI: long down times once
knocked down, damaging walls, characters that don’t automatically face their
opponents, unbalanced characters, limited jumping options, and weird
sidestepping motions. If someone gets behind you when you are facing a wall and
knocked over, your health is going to drop very quickly. You end up repeatedly
knocked into the wall and attacked on the ground while there is little you can
do until the game finally faces your character towards the enemy. Wizard
characters have basically no health, while characters like Urgo, the gargoyle,
have tons. Characters in almost every fighting game have different stats, but Iron & Blood goes to extremes,
seemingly based off of the specialized nature of characters in Dungeons & Dragons, a team-based
tabletop RPG where specialization makes sense. This game had some neat ideas, but the core gameplay just really
has issues.
Advanced Dungeons
& Dragons: Iron & Blood: Warriors of Ravenloft just has too many
problems to really be a fun game. Fights are slow and clunky, sound and
graphics are awkward, and various designs are just weird. Why make a gothic
horror fantasy fighting game? Why have such a limited UI with torches for
health? Why do the good guys and bad guys face the same sub-bosses? It’s all a
mystery to me, but Iron & Blood
can stay back in Ravenloft with its mysteries. I hope to never travel through
the mist to such a terrible realm.
Advanced Dungeons
& Dragons: Iron & Blood: Warriors of Ravenloft receives a Bad.
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