Short answers, pulled from the story.
In 2455 AD, Dr. Toshiro Ebihara asks swordmaster Hiro Miyamoto to rescue his daughter Mikiko from Kage Mishima who stole the Daikatana and altered history. The story follows Hiro as he travels through time to ancient Greece, Dark Ages Norway, and 2030 San Francisco to defeat Mishima and save humanity.
The death of either companion results in failing the current level immediately due to poor artificial intelligence implementation. Programming complex behaviors like jumping running fighting and solving puzzles proved extremely difficult for the development team leading to buggy unresponsive characters that critics called a disaster.
Christian Divine created Superfly Johnson originally named Super Williams honoring Jim Kelly's character from Enter the Dragon. Divine designed him with French descent roots based on cultural documents found in the apocalyptic future setting before revealing his true identity at the story's conclusion.
PC Data reported domestic sales reached 40,351 units through September 2000 which became one of the biggest commercial failures in video game history. Ion Storm projected sales of around 175,000 copies in their 1996 business plan while reports indicated forecasts of 2.5 million units were necessary for profitability.
Frank Sapone started an unofficial patch project known as Daikatana v1.3 after receiving source code from Romero and shelved the effort for five years before successfully compiling it. The first version released in 2014 remains under active development today to fix various issues including bug fixes faster loading times and graphical fidelity improvements.