Realms of Arkania

The Realms of Arkania PC games, also known as the Northern Reaches Trilogy, are three RPGs based on the third edition of The Dark Eye. They were developed by attic Entertainment Software and initially not planned to be released outside Germany, but due to the first game's success, it and its successors were translated into English and published internationally.

In the first part Blade of Destiny (released originally in 1992, internationally in 1993), the player's party of adventurers is tasked to find a legendary sword Grimring in order to stop an Orc invasion. The objective of the second game Star Trail (1994) is to find and deliver the Salamander Stone, a symbol for an alliance between Elves and Dwarves. Shadows over Riva (1997), the third part, has a more elaborate plot about Elf-Orc crossbreeds, a secret underground organization and telepathic worms.

Gameplay takes place in three perspectives: First Person Perspective (in pseudo-3D in Blade of Destiny) in towns and dungeons, Isometric Projection in combat, and a World Map view when travelling (except in Shadows over Riva where travelling is not possible). The trilogy was and still is popular for its depth and complexity (owing to it being a relatively faithful conversion of the pen and paper system), its open world, immersive atmosphere and its plot.

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Tropes used in Realms of Arkania include:

• Alchemy: Potions and poisons can be concocted by a character with an alchemy set, a recipe, the ingredients (usually mostly herbs) and appropriate skill.
• All There in the Manual: In an optional encounter with gryphons in Blade of Destiny, lack of knowledge about the setting can result in the loss of a party member.
• An Adventurer Is You
• Arbitrary Headcount Limit: While an unlimited number of characters can be created and exchanged in temples, only six player characters and one NPC can be in the party simultaneously.
• Booze-Based Buff: Being drunk affects all attributes. Although slightly more of them deteriorate than improve, it can be useful in some situations, especially combat against non-magic users. In Shadows over Riva, however, outside of combat being drunk will cause staggering movement.
• Class and Level System
• Critical Encumbrance Failure: Averted. Carrying too much gradually slows characters down.
• Crystal Ball: An item that improves its carrier's Danger Sense talent.
• Dialogue Tree: Blade of Destiny was among the first Western RPGs to use them.
• Dismantled MacGuffin: A Treasure Map in Blade of Destiny.
• Do You Want to Haggle?
• Duels Decide Everything: Should the party win over the orc chieftain in a duel, his whole army will go and rampage elsewhere.
• Guest Star Party Member: Several in each game, usually optional.
• Guide Dang It: Especially trigger-effect relations are often unobvious.
• I Fought the Law and the Law Won: One way to lose involves fighting endless waves of city guards in the Fortress of Riva.
• Inn Security: Twice in Star Trail.
• Jumped At the Call
• Kleptomaniac Hero: Deconstructed. The heroes can break into houses, but not only will they rarely find anything useful, they may also be arrested by the city guard.
• Leaked Experience: Averted. While all active party members gain the same amount of experience from combats, unconscious, dead and absent party members miss out. Some actions and events, such as picking locks, grant experience only to the characters directly involved.
• Level Map Display:
  • The spell "Penetrating Wood and Stone" reveals previously unvisited areas on the automap.
  • The rather minimalist maps in Blade of Destiny can be somewhat annoying. They cannot be annotated and do not distinguish between taverns and inns or between types of shops.
  • In Shadows over Riva, a complete, annotated city map can be bought. Alternatively, of course, the party can explore the city on their own.
• Mage Tower: The party will see, and sometimes enter, a few of them.
• Mana: Called "astral energy".
• Mana Drain: The spell "Astral Theft".
• Mirror Match: In Shadows over Riva, the party fights against mirror images of themselves. Subverted in that more mirror images join the battle after a while, and some of their values differ from those of the originals.
• Mix-and-Match Critters:
  • The Holberkians are Elf-Orc crossbreeds.
  • Apart from meeting various hybrid enemies, player characters can learn a spell to create such creatures themselves. Unfortunately, the spell requires additional paraphernalia which cannot be found anywhere in the trilogy.
• Monster Allies: Magicians can summon demons and create undead. A couple of Guest Star Party Members also qualify.
• Never Trust a Title: In Star Trail, finding the eponymous throwing axe is merely a sidequest.
• Nipple-and-Dimed: Only female characters start with shirts, and when the Orcs besieging Lowangen take the party's equipment, they get to keep their armors.
• No-Gear Level: At a few points in the games, the party will lose most or all of their equipment, in one case even permanently (and in another permanently in regard to gameplay but not story).
• Non-Human Undead: Elven vampire anyone?
• Non-Lethal KO: Heroes with five or less health points are unconscious and will be ignored by some enemies. However, enemies can inflict much more than five damage points, so dying without previously fainting is common.
• Only Mostly Dead: A god may choose to resurrect a dead character if the player is pious (i.e. donates generously to their temple) and lucky.
• Optional Party Member
• Outlaw Town: Daspota in Blade of Destiny.
• Pervert Revenge Mode: Characters not wearing pants in towns will attract attention and possibly be beaten up by offended townsfolk.
• Player Party
• Puppeteer Parasite: You get to know a couple of telepathic bugs.
• Religion of Evil: The party fights the cult of the Nameless God on a couple of occasions.
• Rocks Fall, Everyone Dies: Sometimes without any warning.
• Save Point:
  • Downplayed in Blade of Destiny: unless it is done in a temple, saving costs experience points... not enough to be a problem, but enough to prevent Save Scumming.
  • Averted in the other two games.
• Sorting Algorithm of Evil: The games' nonlinearity averts this. Since the heroes' power grows relatively slowly, they are unlikely to meet vastly superior enemies nonetheless.
• Squishy Wizard: Most magically talented classes start with less health and are subject to severe weapon and armor restrictions.
• Sword of Plot Advancement: The eponymous Blade of Destiny, forged by cyclopes, ravager of orcs...
• Taken for Granite: The spell "Paralyze" temporarily petrifies its target. Some enemies know a permanent version.
• Total Party Kill: Offending dragons, powerful demons or gods is often a bad idea.
• Trauma Inn: Downplayed. In the dormitory, the cheapest room available, the main advantage of an inn is the impossibility to fall victim to attacks or theft. The better rooms also provide faster regeneration, but it will still take several nights for severely injured characters to completely recover.
• Treasure Map: Dismantled MacGuffin of the Blade of Destiny main quest.
• Turn Based Tactics: The combat system.
• Unbreakable Weapons: Averted. Weapons (except a few magical ones) can break when their bearer critically fails an attack or parry. They can be repaired, however.
• Unwinnable by Design: Leaving certain locations becomes impossible after performing (or failing to perform) specific unobvious actions. The player will rarely immediately notice when it is too late.
• Useless Item: There are several items, talents and spells with no or negligible use.
• Vendor Trash: Justified. All useless items that shops buy would make sense for them to sell (e.g. jewelry).
• We Buy Anything: Averted. There are three kinds of shops, for weapons, herbs, and groceries (as well as a few unique, very specialized shops), and none buys goods of a type it does not sell.
• Welcome to Corneria: In every town in Blade of Destiny, when entering a house whose inhabitant lacks special dialogue, they will all say the same line (usually something unfriendly).
• We Sell Everything: Averted, see We Buy Anything above.
• What the Hell, Player?: The game will tell you that scaring an old woman, thus causing her to faint, and then marching on without giving her any further thought is not very nice if you do so, and if you push it too far, the game may even reset the computer.
• Wide Open Sandbox: The first two games score 5 to 6 on the Sliding Scale of Linearity vs. Openness, while Shadows over Riva is only a 4.
  • In Blade of Destiny, the main quest primarily consists of traveling from town to town (in random order) and talking to people. While doing so, the party will inevitably have various encounters and discover numerous dungeons. The game does have a time limit, but it is so generous that unintentionally missing it is nearly impossible.
  • The main quest of Star Trail is slightly more linear, and there are less dungeons, but most quests are still optional, and the game has no time limit.
  • Shadows over Riva does away with the travel system, restricting the player to the city of Riva (which is much more detailed than any city in the previous games) and its surroundings. It has comparably few sidequests, and many locations can only be entered after completing parts of the main quest.
• Wizard Needs Food Badly: Without food and water or beer, the characters will eventually die; however, since an accordingly skilled character will seldom have trouble acquiring those (either by hunting game and searching water when resting in the wilderness or by simply buying them), the primary problem is balancing between having enough food to avoid starving and not carrying so much of it that it encumbers the characters. Throughout the trilogy, several items can be found that eliminate hunger and/or thirst.
• You All Look Familiar: Not only do some enemy types share the same sprites, some may even look like the player characters (depending on their class and sex). In Blade of Destiny, this can result in enemies being indiscernible from party members until their first turn.