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X Blades!!!!!!!; Holy crap really?
Topic Started: Feb 18 2009, 01:08 AM (140 Views)
Ck-LockNLoad
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The King
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Published by: SouthPeak Games
Developed by: Gaijin Entertainment
Release Date: February 10, 2009
Genre: Action
Platform: PC/X360/PS3

I’m sure that most of you who are opening up this review probably don’t have the faintest idea of what X-Blades is. I myself just stumbled upon this game a few days ago and thought to myself this might be fun. I wish those thoughts never came into fruition, from the moment I started playing I already wanted to turn it off, but I decided to play it further so I could write this review for you guys.

In X-blades you take on the role as Alymi – a treasure hunter (somewhat like Laura Croft I suppose). The story narrative is in third person; she explains her thoughts and intentions throughout the game to build suspense and story. It’s too bad that her voice makes my ears bleed and her ”attitude” makes me want to rip her skull in half. Trying to get into the story is about as annoying and boring as listening to your grandma talk about her childhood.


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Could they have picked a more annyoing voice for Alymi?

Maybe the storytelling wouldn’t be half bad if they could’ve thought of something less generic and lame. To me it feels like they put little effort into building character, or maybe they thought of an idea but never checked up on it to see if it was ACTUALLY good. The story to me feels like it needs a major overhaul.

In Xblades getting “souls” are a necessity for progression and growth. These souls can be used to purchase new magical abilities and items. Every time you slay an enemy you will get souls added to your soul counter. You will also be able to upgrade your weapon and gun combat by finding different artifacts throughout levels. When you’re ready to upgrade, you can do it on the fly by hitting select and choosing through a wide variety of different things to purchase for your character. It works fine and is an acceptable way of upgrading your character quickly in a spam of enemies.

The style that Xblades was going for in gameplay feels like Devil May Cry to me except it is nowhere near as polished or well designed as the real thing. You get to use your swords (Button X), guns (button RT), and Magic (assigned buttons) in battle. Sounds alright? No. Oh where do I start? All the movement in the game is glitchy and loose. You move extremely fast, but when you go jump you feel like you stopped entirely. On top of that when you jump you’ll sometimes find yourself pressing the buttons repeatedly in order to complete a double jump. It feels unresponsive to say the least, and that goes for all the controls. Your swords and magic especially. You can assign your magic skills to 4 different “quick-buttons” in order to pull them off quickly in battle. The idea at heart is good, but sometimes won’t pay off at particular times in battle. It seems to me like the bounding in the game is off because there will be several instances in battles where you get somewhat stuck and are unable to perform certain moves and its frustrating.


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Click here for video

The game will force you to use different styles of killing on order to defeat the enemies at hand. You may need to use fire against ice, dark against light, etc. It can be cool at times but isn’t overly thrilling. At least this way you cannot spam your sword attacks constantly and expect to win. Still, most of the time it may feel like that. You see, during a boss battles the game will throw several of the same types of enemies at you. In the videos included in this review you will see just how many times I need to repeat my actions in order to kill countless creatures. To put this short – it’s repetitive and extremely boring. Boring to the point that you want to quit the game as quickly as possible (for some).

I thought that maybe the game would change up the style a bit to prevent the same old, but each level feels constantly the same. You enter an area fight a bunch of baddies and maybe kill a boss (which will usually have ridiculous health levels) to keep you stringing together pointless sword attacks or the same AOE magic spells. Once you get a bigger array of AOE spells it helps, but since you only assign 4 different magic skills in your quick launch you may find yourself going back to the select screen to use different spells. Getting bigger and more badass seems like it would be a reason to keep playing through the repetitiveness of the game, but the game gets so flat that you won’t feel the want to get bigger and better (you’ll probably just want to quit).

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Get Ready for another Repetetive Battle!

Another thing about the combat that you barley need to worry about is your health. As I explained before every time you kill an enemy you receive souls, well you can use those souls to heal you in combat at all times. While you’re fighting countless enemies when you see your health go low all you really need to do is AOE a couple of enemies and buy some more health with the souls and your instantly back at full health. As long as you have a decent eye on your health bar during combat you won’t die, no matter how difficult the boss is. The bottom line is that the combat is extremely linear and there are little redeeming factors that want you to continue playing. There are just too many issues with the combat that detract all the fun out of it. I should also say though that some of the magic skills that you can use are quite cool, but will get repetitive and lame quickly.

Nothing really stands out to me in Xblades when it comes to graphics. For starters they feel very unpolished (much like the gameplay!) and lack good detail. The game can handle several enemies on screen smoothly, during intense battle sequences. Although, since there isn’t much detail involved with everything on screen its less impressive. The animations are fluent and can be enjoyable at times; they really shine during special magic spell scenes. The HDR lighting is also semi reflecting and makes the game more vibrant. My biggest gripe is the lack of polish and detail. The main character models all look good, especially during cut scenes but I think a little more work on the environment and some creatures would have benefited the game’s art greatly.

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Hmm, should I swing my sword or use the same magic attack I just used?

The soundtracks in Xblades are intense rock tracks that are aimed at getting you immersed into battle. It’s not bad, but nothing memorable. The sound effects are quite good for the most part. The voice acting hurts though, as stated before Alymi’s voice is terrible. Aside from that the other parts aren’t horrendous.

Closing Comments

The biggest problem with Xblades is that it feels unpolished. Not enough time was put into the gameplay, graphics, or storyline. Because of this the game suffers in all fields. The idea of fighting with guns, swords, and magic is cool. The problem is that it gets repetitive extremely fast because you’ll find yourself doing the same things over and over again. Most hack n slash games suffer from this, but with Xblades it feels like the developers put no thought into this problem at all. All the things that could have made progression cool dies, because the player will get tired of the game play before they can get the cool abilities. This game tries to accomplish something big like Devil May Cry but ultimately fails hard.

Presentation - 6.0/10
The menus are amateur and the dialogue coming from Alymi is extremely annoying, at least the atmosphere feels secluded and mysterious.

Graphics - 6.5/10
The graphics feel unpolished. The frame rate keeps up with all the action on the screen but isn’t very impressive due to the lack of detail the environment and enemies have. Animations are cool during magic sequences.

Sound - 8.010
The soundtrack is suitable for the game but isn’t very memorable. Voice acting is mostly good – except for Alymi -- and you’ll be hearing her the most.

Gameplay - 4.5/10
Under polished. You move extremely fast but the jumps don’t keep up with you. The idea of upgrading your character is cool, except that in order to do that you’ll have to fight in countless linear battles. Ultimately you’ll get bored.

Lasting Appeal - 3.0/10
The game boasts 20hours of gameplay, the problem is that you won’t want to play this game for 20 hours, let alone an hour.

Achievements - 4.5/10
The achievement art is mostly the same apart from different colours. Getting the actual achievements are easy with only a few challenging ones.

OVERALL: 4.0/10 - Poor
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Sumdumsim
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FxC
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Ya this game is garbage and I knew it was going to be garbage the moment it was announced. It is a game for stupid people to admire the in game avatar and think she is sexy. They put no thought into the story and made crappy game play so they thought if the removed 98% of her clothing it would be ok.
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Ck-LockNLoad
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The King
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But don't they also remove 98% of clothing on some of the quality RPG's like Final Fantasy...
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lol.
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Sumdumsim
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FxC
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They do but they also have a great story and stuff to back it up. I read a few reviews of X-Blades and every one of them said it was trash lol. The gaming market, TV, you name it everybody knows that sex sells so they put it in anyway they can. For god sakes I was watching some PG 13 movie and they had a sex scene I was like my god.
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