Normal maps are evil

Darnit, my original post got lost. Not only are normal maps evil, blogger seems to be evil too!

Anyway, what I had to say was: Normal maps may seem very versatile, but they are actually very specialized. This puts lots of pressure on the gfx artist (me). Anyway, my current problem consist of staying low-poly while still getting more detail without having normal-map errors. I think most of the errors come from hard/soft edges, but I have faith in my newest attemt. Here I will use no hard edges and bevel all edges that are supposed to be hard then turn them soft. Except the blade, which I will keep hard so it gets real hard (hopefully).