Blades of Time: Game Introduction and Review

Game: Blades of Time
Genre: Hack n Slash, Action
Dev: Gaiijin Entertainment Corporation
Steam Achievements: Yes
Steam Cards: No

  Blades of Time is a game where you take the role of the treasure hunter Ayumi, who has been teleported to a strange world. As Ayumi travels through this world she finds strange monsters and beings throughout. As Ayumi battles with these foes she comes across a strange altar. The altar begins to speak to Ayumi and new powers are bestowed  upon you.  Fight through hordes of enemies and improve your battle prowess while you search for a way out of this world you found yourself in.

Blades of Time

Story
    You play as Ayumi who is a treasure hunter whose greedy tendencies land her in trouble. The story begins as Ayumi and her partner Zero are breaking into their Guildmaster's quarters. Zero and Ayumi cut through the men in front of them and make their way to a portal stone. This portal stone is said to take the users to Dragonland, a world with many treasures for those who can make their way back out of the portal.
  Ayumi grabs the portal stone and the story begins as Ayumi finds herself in this strange Dragonland.  You find yourself between two factions ready to pounce on one another. On one hand you have the Chaos Monsters and on the other end you have Sky guards. The factions don't matter to you. The only thing that matters is getting rid of those in your way. Whether those be Chaos monsters, the Sky Guards, or even other humans Ayumi will cut down any one who gets in her way.
   The story of Blades of Time was no interesting to me in the slightest. It is an incredibly dry and generic narrative. The voice acting only piled on with this feeling. The protagonist, Ayumi, had a horrible voice actress. All lines spoken by this character were incredibly robotic and it sounded like an actor in a high school play. Whoever hired the voice actress for Ayumi needs to be fired and blacklisted by the video-game industry. That is how bad the voice actress is. But in games like this I play more for the gameplay than the story.

Gameplay
The game begins with very basic mechanics. Your basic move is a slash with your twin swords. You can use this on the ground and in the air. You can interrupt the moves of your enemies with a kick. This sends them in the air where you can slash them if you so choose. In addition to these two moves you are able to dash across the battlefield. This feature adds a lot of mobility and with it you can maneuver between enemies quickly and efficiently.  After a few fights you can grab a gun. As you advance in the game you can switch between rifles and machine guns.

When you first start off the combat is nothing special. It is the basic bread and butter of hack and slash games. But if you continue playing you gain access to some interesting features.

The first is your time reversal. With your time reversal you can go back in time. When you go back in your time a clone will appear to complete the actions you did in the past. You are free while this is happening to attack in a different way. It is almost like a shadow clone.  With this you can overwhelm your enemies with a barrage of attacks coming from different directions. This mechanic is incredibly overpowered and if you are taking advantage of it nearly all fights are cakewalks.

And as you advance through the story you come across altars that give you Chaos Powers.
You can use the power of fire, ice or force magic to destroy your enemies.
When you get some of these moves combat feels a lot nicer. You can set your weapons ablaze, create a gravity portal, or slide with the power of ice.
In addition to the Chaos Powers you can collect weapons to increase your affinity with elements or even your speed. Along with the weapons are a number of armor sets which lets you customize Ayumi's appearance.


    The combat when you first begin the game is really boring. I almost quit the game after the first hour. However I stuck through it and got some more moves that made the combat much better. As your mobility increases and the enemies increase in difficulty the gameplay becomes much better. Learning how to properly use your time reversal in combat feels very rewarding. Enemies that took 5 minutes take 5 seconds after you learn how to use it. You also notice your power increase dramatically with the visuals. When you first begin a slash just cuts through your enemies, by the end of the game my flame covered sword sets entire groups of enemies ablaze. You start to notice your mobility increase as well. At first you have a single dash and a double jump. As you play further along you are leaping through the sky cutting down enemies mid air without touching the ground for minutes at a time.
  If you can make it through the first half of the game the combat is actually very fun. Now I wouldn't call the combat exceptional. The combat is mostly just mindless slashing and dodging. And once you get the hang of time reversal there really isn't a challenge anymore.
  The game was not exclusively combat, the game had a series of puzzles for the player to solve. But nearly every puzzle had something to do with your time reversal. Once you figured out on puzzle the rest of them were really obvious. To put it bluntly the puzzles suck... a lot.

Should I Play This Game


   You might think that I hate this game with a passion based on what I've written so far. I don't hate the game but I can't say I loved it either. The perfect word to describe it is "meh".  I had fun with it but I find it hard to recommend this game when there are so many higher quality titles out there. Games like Devil May Cry, Metal Gear Rising, Bayonetta, and Killer is Dead do what this game does but 1000x times better.
   Blades of Time can usually be found for a couple bucks so if you are bored this will probably give you a fun time. But the boring story, the laughably bad voice acting, and the slow beginning make the game had for me to passionately recommend this game to you. Blades of Time is a game meant for hormone driven pre-teens who will likely focus on game features of a more primal nature. And while I can appreciate those "features" I can't appreciate much more than that.

To sum it all up, its alright,

Vaaren