Blade of Darkness - Playthrough Part 1

Blade of Darkness is a hack and slash game released in the early 2000s on PC, which was now ported to the Switch. You start by picking your character and the options are - knight, dwarf, woman archer and a barbarian. I went with Conan... I mean Tukaram. Each character specialises in a different weapon type, so if you pick something outside of your class your won't be able to use it efficiently. The combat here is really awkward. You perform special moves and combos by pressing the directional button plus the hit, but it won't always come out, so the basic combo is reliable in most cases. Unfortunately you have a stamina limit, so you can't really perform long combos. I say limit since you can't see the stamina bar until you start swinging. You have stealth walk, but so far it never worked for me and it's not like you have instant kills - I guess the possibility is there to get a free hit on the enemy. You can pick up and throw items from the environment like chairs, but this rarely does much damage. I eventually developed a strategy to throw weapons I cannot use at enemies, since they are a bit more effective. You can eat food to restore health and can pick up some potions in your inventory for later use, while others you consume immediately. The combat is pretty clunky - you can lock onto a single enemy, but they are usually stronger and faster than you so you'll have to wait for their attack animation to end and then retaliate. Dealing with more than one foe is a pain. The game is pretty challenging and there are no checkpoints, so saving often is recommended. Can't say much about the story. At the end of the first level a mysterious voice spewed some cryptic nonsense about some demon. Then you get to select your next level and I picked a knight's castle.