Blade and Sword

Rating:
Summary: Blade & Sword, OK but it could have been better.
Review: For fans of the ever growing ARPG market (Diablo-esc) this might be an interesting hobby game. It takes place in medieval China and involves the invasion of the human realm by the demon realm. This is an interesting game with combo systems and refinement systems that are highly reminiscent of Diablo 2 (read copy-paste). The game definately has potential, but it has some serious flaws that can not be over-looked.

Gameplay:
This game is hard - without a doubt one of the hardest ARPGs I've played for a long time. The problem is that it's tedious hard rather than difficult hard. Rather than just hack+slash your way to freedom, this works off the arcade concept of combos. If you hit someone too many times without varying your attacks they fall down and you have to wait for them to get up before you can resume with the killings. While this is fun for a while, you will eventually get yourself some 30 hit combos and the entire game will consist of you combo-ing, waiting for your chi(mana) to refill then doing it again. When it comes to the boss fights you might find yourself doing this for 60 minutes straight.

One of my biggest gripes about this game is the save system. It's best compared to saving in Diablo II when you play online. In other words, your quests and waypoints and inventory get saved, but it stops there; in addition, saving requires you quit the game so if you save you have to be ready to start from the last waypoint. This can become a problem when you have to go through screens of baddies over and over again if the game decides to crash on you.

One of the best examples of how tedious the game is comes within the final battles, now without spoiling anything, the final battles consists of 9 duels, and unless you are a power gamer, each duel can take upwards of 40 minutes. Just playing on normal, from the time I started the first battle I knew I had to play through until I beat the final boss and it took me 4 hours. All the while I was sweating bullets, hoping the game wouldn't crash on me. Again, it wasn't difficult to beat the duels, just insanely time consuming.

Graphics:
It's a 800x600 isometric slasher, EXACTLY like diablo 2. There is a way to bump it up to 1024x780 through the use of cheat codes, but you'll find yourself unable to use some of the menus because of border clashes. In terms of the sprite or background artwork, there is nothing wrong - things get kinda bland, epecially in the second chapter where everything ends up being a shade of white, but it definately wasn't hard on the eyes. The problem comes with the game never being optimized. I run a 4 ghz p4, with a 128 ddr GeForce 5200 and 1 gig of RAM and the video lag was horrendous. If you have anything running in the background, loading times can become terrible as your character teleports around the screen.

Sound & Music:
The sound effects are adequate. Nothing special, just bland like the video. Because of the way combo systems are set up you'll hear your character grunting so often you won't be able to forget it.

The Music is exquisite and does stand out in quality from the rest of the game. There were times when I would just alt+tab out of the game so I could chill to the soundtracks.

Overall
Though I have brought out a lot of bad points, the game still has potential. It is an import so I decided not to bring up things like the confusing grammar and such as it is easily overlooked. Yet, this is a good game if you are truly bored and want to try something new. Besides, it's quite affordable and can provide lots of playtime if you decide to look past the flaws, or enjoy tedium.

Rating:
Summary: Blade & Sword, OK but it could have been better.
Review: For fans of the ever growing ARPG market (Diablo-esc) this might be an interesting hobby game. It takes place in medieval China and involves the invasion of the human realm by the demon realm. This is an interesting game with combo systems and refinement systems that are highly reminiscent of Diablo 2 (read copy-paste). The game definately has potential, but it has some serious flaws that can not be over-looked.

Gameplay:
This game is hard - without a doubt one of the hardest ARPGs I've played for a long time. The problem is that it's tedious hard rather than difficult hard. Rather than just hack+slash your way to freedom, this works off the arcade concept of combos. If you hit someone too many times without varying your attacks they fall down and you have to wait for them to get up before you can resume with the killings. While this is fun for a while, you will eventually get yourself some 30 hit combos and the entire game will consist of you combo-ing, waiting for your chi(mana) to refill then doing it again. When it comes to the boss fights you might find yourself doing this for 60 minutes straight.

One of my biggest gripes about this game is the save system. It's best compared to saving in Diablo II when you play online. In other words, your quests and waypoints and inventory get saved, but it stops there; in addition, saving requires you quit the game so if you save you have to be ready to start from the last waypoint. This can become a problem when you have to go through screens of baddies over and over again if the game decides to crash on you.

One of the best examples of how tedious the game is comes within the final battles, now without spoiling anything, the final battles consists of 9 duels, and unless you are a power gamer, each duel can take upwards of 40 minutes. Just playing on normal, from the time I started the first battle I knew I had to play through until I beat the final boss and it took me 4 hours. All the while I was sweating bullets, hoping the game wouldn't crash on me. Again, it wasn't difficult to beat the duels, just insanely time consuming.

Graphics:
It's a 800x600 isometric slasher, EXACTLY like diablo 2. There is a way to bump it up to 1024x780 through the use of cheat codes, but you'll find yourself unable to use some of the menus because of border clashes. In terms of the sprite or background artwork, there is nothing wrong - things get kinda bland, epecially in the second chapter where everything ends up being a shade of white, but it definately wasn't hard on the eyes. The problem comes with the game never being optimized. I run a 4 ghz p4, with a 128 ddr GeForce 5200 and 1 gig of RAM and the video lag was horrendous. If you have anything running in the background, loading times can become terrible as your character teleports around the screen.

Sound & Music:
The sound effects are adequate. Nothing special, just bland like the video. Because of the way combo systems are set up you'll hear your character grunting so often you won't be able to forget it.

The Music is exquisite and does stand out in quality from the rest of the game. There were times when I would just alt+tab out of the game so I could chill to the soundtracks.

Overall
Though I have brought out a lot of bad points, the game still has potential. It is an import so I decided not to bring up things like the confusing grammar and such as it is easily overlooked. Yet, this is a good game if you are truly bored and want to try something new. Besides, it's quite affordable and can provide lots of playtime if you decide to look past the flaws, or enjoy tedium.