Developer: Gaijin Entertainment
Publisher: Konami (Xbox360, PS3) Iceberg Interactive (PC)
Price: $29.99 – $39.99
Genre: Action Adventure
Release Date: Out now
While not a perfect game by any means Blades of time is one of those kind of games that you will find much enjoyment out of it despite a few flaws. The Treasure Hunters Guild is suddenly ransacked by a couple characters named Zero and your main character who you play as in this adventure:
Ayumi
As a Treasure Hunter herself, she as a character shows off a few traits of being arrogant and self centered. She was also in the previous title “X Blades” Weirdly she has grown a British accent and has better taste in clothing. While playing through the game her constant chatter about the things around her did provide some sort of foresight. It also became a tiny bit tiresome. Beside this minor complaint her move set and freedom of choice with her attacks and abilities were well introduced. Almost instantly granting you a lot of her power early on. The attacks are somewhat simple to perform leaving a good taste in your mouth. Combat is much like Beat em ups of old. With a new style mix. While most of the AI is pretty sub par, having more or less brutal motives to just bum rush you all at once, Reducing any sort of thinking. As this pace is pretty up there in difficulty, they do offer you health recovery once you combo up enough attacks in sequence. Boss enemies in the game feel somewhat to simple to over come to somewhat challenging. The scale is at times uneven.
The look of the game is fantastic to glance at. Aside from uneven voice to mouth sync, the characters all look great. The weapons you uncover along the way from hidden chests through out the game grow up to be briskly powerful. Or useful for certain abilities you grown a custom too. Each weapons has its own design, from the Rifles to the Twin Katanas you wield for melee based attacks. All of the moves in this game are pretty much Crowd control, with a wave like design.
Outbreak is a notably fun mini game. With the feel of a action based DOTA game, you pick from a few unlock able characters and push your units to different towers. However there can also be another player trying to do the same, or play along side you in co-op to push back those pesky foes. Your Units have allot of damage reduction giving them more freedom to fully take on Outposts which are apart of your objective is to completely wipe out those said Outposts and there Chaos Tree. A simple and addictive little game mode.
One complex thing that raddled my brain, is the story. While once I slapped together a web of events together with a spread sheet I managed to crack the code that is the games story. While it was all over the place like a running hose with holes here and there. For me to even explain it would ruin the point to uncover it yourself, it really was unclear and could have been paced a bit more clearly. Some bits I can explain however is this: Ayumi breaks into the Treasure hunters Guild. Lands into Dragonland. Discovers some treasure with the compass she some how boot-legged from the Guild Master(how she did this is even a mystery to me). From then you are presented with a few more chains of events. At this time, I began to slightly lose interest in the story in itself up til I managed to really piece together the puzzle. Once solved, the story became decent at least to me. So in conclusion to that, a somewhat weak story, that has some sense within it.
Closing Thoughts:
For the price of the game you are given quite a bit of content. Smooth controls, along with great puzzles. The price might not be high, the game itself stacks to be a cult hit among many across the board. With some replay, such as locating and finding all of the treasure chests, to unlocking new outfits and weapons on Outbreak. A lot of potential is in the sights of this game in the AAA market. The story lacked a bit to truly be anything sound to the mind. The game itself does have a few game crashing glitches. The bosses were not as difficult to really face, specially with the fact you can use the time-shifting ability and make it all easy mode. The combo of weapons in this game are interesting, with stats that help in certain departments such as more health or extra damage on certain elements. By far my favorite weapon I used was the Skyguard Rifle. Not only did it scream Halo, it looked sporty. While many will try to compare this game with God of War or any other AAA title, I can honestly say besides, Prince of Persia: the Sands of Time, this game carries some original artwork and ideas. That if in the right hands can turn out a ton of great games to come in the future.
7.5
+ Great “Slow Time” mechanic
+ Interesting storyline that requires a lot to piece together
+ Fun Game play
+ Good valve for the money
– Annoying voice acting
– Camera at times does its own thing
