Thought I’d better give my first impressions since I’m about to go back to Blackthorne for the 2nd time. My absolute first impression was surprise at only seeing 2 disks in the box when I opened it. I was wondering if some had gone missing but apparently not. It must be a sign of the SNES roots that it doesn’t have a couple of floppies worth of animated intro tacked on like your typical PC/Amiga games of the era.
I got as far as level 5 on my first go. I struggled a little with the controls at first. There is nothing inherently wrong with them but being so bunched up on the keyboard it’s all too easy to shoot the wrong way or use an item by mistake. I was getting to grips with it by the end.
So far, everything is very derivative of Flashback – Prince of Persia with a shotgun is spot on. The only truly original aspect (apart from the cool backshot) is covering during combat. Since I love Flashback and have played so few other similar games, it hasn’t bothered me at all though. By the time Blackthorne came out, Flashback had gone full 3D with Fade To Black and I’d much rather be playing this.
The pixel graphics look great, the sound effects do the job nicely and the difficulty has been ramping well. It’s a bit slower paced than Flashback and maybe a bit more puzzly.
I can see why I would have missed this game at the time. It’s not exactly showy compared to all the FMV epics that were around back then but it’s probably aged far better because of it. Looking forward to getting a bit further.
