The amount of MMOs out there is quite insane (or too damn high as the meme goes) and I can say that I’ve tried the lot of them, yet so far I haven’t really seen anything that would captivate me or at least make me want to come back after I’ve grown bored of it. In truth, no matter what anyone tells me, World of Warcraft is the MMO, which sets the standards of other MMOs and if I have to be precise, when I try out something new, I see so much of WoW in it, that I just go like “Why am I even playing this, when I can just go back to WoW?”. This is not because I’m a hardcore WOW fan (I like the game … very much yes) and everything else sucks, but rather because developers don’t really do anything that would stand out and grab my attention.
I know it’s hard to be innovative when it comes to MMOs, because there is only so much you can change. In the end you’ll always have your standard classes, your typical fantasy or sci-fi world, gameplay and the storyline. Now if we consider how much of those things can actually vary, we come to the conclusion that it’s not a lot. However, that doesn’t mean that a game cannot be captivating even with many similarities in it. It doesn’t need to be a completely new and innovative deal and most game developers don’t see that. They either make something boring and repetitive or something boring and “new”. Like I said there’s only so much, which can be changed, but as I like to say, not the quantity of the changes matter, rather than the quality.
I’m so glad I came across this particular MMO and I’m even gladder that I decided to give it a shot. It’s something you don’t see every day and I’m oh so happy that finally it reached us on the availability scale (and by us, I mean America and Europe). I’m talking about Blade & Soul, an MMO I can quite easily give the badge “one of a kind” and if you want to know why, then keep reading along.
First of all I like to say that I’m happy to see MMOs evolving, the new gen ways. What do I mean by that? Well, the biggest change we can see is in gameplay, no doubt, which I believe is one of the most important aspects of a game, because this is the primary bond between the player and the game and this is actually the aspect, which sets aside a game from a movie and a book. Interactive media is what I call it, and as a gamer, I can’t deny that it is my favorite media. Gameplay and execution are the deals, but enough generalization, allow me to begin being more specific again.
Let’s talk about gameplay first, since this is actually the part I really want to emphasize on. I mentioned a few lines earlier that MMOs are evolving when it comes to gameplay and in Blade & Soul (I’m going to call it BnS for short), we see exactly this new gen type of play. In order for you to start understanding me I’m going in depth about the combat system of the game.
If I had to use one word to describe the combat of BnS, then that would undoubtedly be dynamic. Indeed we can observe a new way of fighting battles in MMOs, not the generic point and click way. Now, it resembles that of the hack ‘n slash game genre, which is a very action-oriented, dynamic way to implement battles. The player actually gets to engage in the combat and here we’re talking about engaging in depth when it comes to action and have a bit of the tactical side here and there. By tactical I mean the involvement of dodging, parrying, countering, etc., which are not automatically happening, such as in World of Warcraft, where you have for example a 15% chance to dodge and your character automatically dodges the incoming attack, on a rating based off of those 15%. In BnS if the player wishes to dodge they have to move dynamically, if they wish to counter, which is the main aspect of some classes, then they have to activate moves, specifically for that class, in order to counter and more so, it has to be done in the precise moment.
Speaking of classes, the available ones are: Blade Master, Destroyer, Kung-fu Master, Force Master, Summoner, Blade Dancer and Assassin. In the time I had with this game, I managed to try out 2 classes – the Destroyer and the Force Master, a.k.a, for those not familiar with the terminology, a warrior and a mage.
Let’s begin with the destroyer, since I managed to have a bit more experience with it. All of you MMORPG developers, you listen to me and you listen well! When I play a warrior class, this is exactly how I should feel. In all of my years of trying out different MMOs, BnS was the only one, which made me feel really powerful as a warrior and by powerful I don’t mean as a class, rather than brute force. When I’m single handedly swinging that giant axe, which was my primary weapon and when I stomp the ground, quake it with my weapon or throw an enemy down, I felt really strong and not only did I feel that way, the game expressed it to me – visually and by sound. This is exactly the thing, NCsoft got right, the feedback the player gets, when they perform moves from the class. To give an example, I will do so with Tera, since this is an MMO, which supposedly has battle style system based on the newer hack ‘n slash method. Now, I can’t really say that I had positive experiences with that particular game and I’m not saying it’s bad (I’m here to review BnS after all, not Tera), but I’m giving it as an example, because I had the chance to test out most of the classes there. In Tera, there are 2 types of warriors – the tanky one and the damage-dealing one. I played the DPS warrior, which supposedly had to make me feel really strong … well nope, nope and a big fat nope to me. My character was a strong female (one of those of the draconic-looking race, I really can’t remember the name now), again I had this huge axe as a weapon, which by the way was larger than my character, and believe me she was quite tall, but when I started swinging my weapon around, I felt like I was swinging a small knife. Why is that? Because the feedback I was getting sucked real bad. Only small cracks on the ground? The enemies barely faltering? What was that? Lame, is what it was … really lame. In BnS not only was I dealing tons of damage (some people will get the pun), but I could also handle receiving tons of damage. This is also something balanced out really well. As a destroyer, you’re effectively able to tank and deal damage, not like most other MMOs do – chunk a damageless tank class in the choice and the player who takes on that role, just stays there like a dummy receiving hits. And if by any chance he or she wants to hit back, well that would be like a child caressing a tree.
The force master was the same. The player gets two unique systems of play, which represent the spells from the fire and ice magic types, and it all intertwines. The game expects you to be able to perform precise combos, in order to execute all of the magic spells, which by the way look visually stunning, but I’m not going into detail about graphics yet. Indeed as a mage I managed to do whatever I want with my enemies from afar, not needing to kite them at all. This is a problem I face in most MMOs when I try out a caster class. When I attack an enemy I have to kite like an idiot, and 80% of the fight I kite the enemy, while the other 20 I actually spend time casting any spells, since by the time I cast one spell I have to run back again. Now most games are unforgiving and the enemies are quite fast, catching up to the player and the stupid thing is that you don’t have enough crowd control effects to prevent this problem. BnS tackles this problem perfectly, since combos are dynamic, there is barely and casting, I can move and jump around as much as I want … and to top it off I do it with style! Indeed I really loved the idea behind the weapons, force masters use (especially the little dangly illuminated cloth thingy).
I’m sure the other classes are just as well executed as these two I managed to try out myself. A friend of mine tried out the assassin and the blade master and I can put in a few words purely from observations. The assassin was stealthy, quick and always jumping around, making him really hard to catch (which is a good thing, since they aren’t exactly a class to hold well on hits … talking from personal observations here). Same with the blade masters – a lot of countering and precision with the swords, making you feel like you really are holding a sharp weapon in your hand, cutting down everything in your path. But I can’t really go into more details based on actual combat systems, since, as I said, I haven’t tried them out myself.
Enough about combat, I believe I managed to make my point clear. I wish more MMO developers would put this much effort and detail into their combat systems, since it consists of the two most important things for this genre – diversity and mobility. In other words, it keeps the player interested for a long time, having this itchy feeling to see and experience more and more (indeed I was so enthusiastic every time I had a new move to test out and intertwine it with different combos).
Before I move on I wish to make a point about the combos as well. As I said before, BnS is a game heavily dependent on performing combos, in order to be effective with the class you’re playing with. Therefore, as a game executing this type of combat, a lot of diversity has to be at present, in order to keep the player fully engaged with their character at all times. Luckily NCsoft manages to pull off everything exactly like this. Not once did I feel even a slight amount of boredom, when playing with my class. This is not only because of the variety of moves at my disposal, but the variety of combos a player can perform with them. This is actually a very positive thing. Not only that, but the player has freedom, to some extent, to construct the different combos by themselves, meaning that a class can be played in a variety of ways, matching the playstyle of the person, engaging with the character. For example I myself had a more suicidal and brutal fighting style with my destroyer and a more elegant and perky combat style with my mage, giving preference more on the ice magic spells. However, with my warrior, I could also execute a more passive playstyle, when the enemies were stronger and I had to protect myself more and also be more aggressive or passive with my mage, again depending on the situation. This is what I meant when I said that one class can be played in a variety of ways, depending on the tastes of the player and the situation.
The only thing I was actually disappointed about when it comes to classes is that there isn’t a healer or at least a support class. Now, I’m not saying that’s a bad thing, I was disappointed purely from the point of view that I love playing that role and those types of classes and I know many people do too, so NCsoft, maybe it’s something to consider as a future class.
Let us move on to exploration and traveling and I really want to talk a bit about this, because BnS pulls it off very uniquely and in a very interesting way. The exploration mechanics in this game are not as plain as running around the map … exploring, or using a mount for that matter. Yes, we do run around, but we have a fast version of the normal running. This reminds me of 9dragons, a martial arts MMO, which did the same thing, but here we have a few interesting extras added to it. Besides the normal running, there is this feature called gliding. You perform this by double tapping space which is basically the first jump and the glide. Gliding is not something I’ve seen anywhere in another MMO and it gives time for the player to actually explore from above and may see stuff, which weren’t visible by foot on the ground. Also another improvement to the running is that obstacles are not really problematic, because you do get an upgrade where you can actually jump over fences, rocks, etc. with the precise push of a button. Now, I personally had trouble executing this, but it’s something easily done, once you get used to it. Also I have read that it gets even more interactive further on in the game, but I still haven’t actually reached that far in order to test it out myself. My only complaint about this is that the stamina bar, when running or gliding, runs out too fast and up until the point where you get the advanced version (which again, I have not reached yet) it can be a bit annoying and tedious.
The other unique travel system are the so-called dragon jumps. This is a very acrobatic cutscene, where your character moves from location A to location B and is usually used for short distances. I have to say, even though it’s a non-interactive cutscene, every time I used this feature, I was simply at awe, watching the movements of my character. Of course, if it could be interactive, it would be even better, but I was pretty contempt with the way it is now. However, dragon jumps are not very often seen and the first ones are quite far into the game, so as a side note here to the developers, I wish there were more dragon jumps available for use.
Apart from that, we have our usual fast travel system accompanied by a loading screen and an awesome “superman” flyout animation, as I like to call it, and landing animation afterwards, which look pretty cool. But there’s nothing really out of the ordinary here (at least I’m glad the game utilizes fast travel).
I’m going to end the gameplay section by stating the following. Thank the lord there are many quests and the game avoids grinding experience. Many games … oh so many (9dragons, flyff at the top of my head) do not have enough quests and force the player to mindlessly grind for experience, in order to unlock a few more quests only to continue grinding afterwards. So here I like to say, thank you NCsoft for developing quests and preventing mindless grinding. The only time I grinded something was some tokens (I forgot their names) to buy a costume from an NPC, but that is completely optional and does not affect gameplay at all (you’ll understand why later on).
Let’s get into the visual part of this review. Graphics – oh the beautiful world of BnS. I have to say it’s not something I haven’t seen before and it wasn’t something utterly captivating. Visually everything looks amazing, yes. I could see that the developers have put great effort into creating the world and it’s not something repetitive or something which gets boring after the first time you see it. In fact, the world of BnS is quite simple and realistic, if I can put it that way. It’s not overly fantastic and quite far I’ve seen stuff which could be easily inspired from the real world. Now, for the amount I’ve actually managed to explore, I’ve been in the entire first region, which is pretty much villages, forests, green plains, beaches, caves, etc. and part of the second region which is a rockier, dry, desert-y area. Like I said, nothing over-exaggerated and actually the beauty of BnS’ world lies exactly in its simplicity and reality. I’ve seen a lot of fantasy worlds and they have their own beauty, but I quite enjoyed this style, which takes me to a more Asian setting, actually matching the themes of the game. Combine this stunning visual world with not a single glitch experienced and that equals to a very positive experience.
When talking about visuals we can’t miss character models and customization. First of all, let’s mention all the races, available for choosing, which are the following: Gon, Jin, Yun and Lyn. My destroyer was a male gon and my sorceress was a female yun. Visually all of them pretty much look like humans, with the exception of the lyn, which are very small child-like humans with tails and ears. Why the hell does every Asian game need to have one of these? Why … just why? Some people may like them, I definitely didn’t and never will. Everyone can be female or male, with the exception of yun, who are an all-out girl race (I feel as if every other MMO thinks it should have these birds in them … and by that I mean an all-female race or clan or whatever). Even though all of them look like humans and you can easily tell the little lyns apart, that doesn’t acquaint only to them. All races are made to be distinguishable one from another by their features. For example the gons are taller, darker-skinned, more muscular (for men) or more curvy (for women), while the jin are not as tall, their skin palette vary and they can be either curvy or frail (for women) and quite teen-looking (for men). Model details are amazing and in the customization there are so many options to choose from. I actually spent time creating one character from each race and from each gender, just to explore the options and I was amazed at how different it can be every single time. What is this? More customization options than the Sims? It’s actually a good thing, because I for example am one who likes to spend time creating my character and making her look pretty and badass or him look handsome and strong. The only thing I disliked from the customization is the shiny skin option, which luckily can be turned down or removed at all. And of course like with any games, which have such detailed customization a lot of funny “accidents” can occur (yes, I’m guilty, too, I also created a freak of nature), but we all have our fun moments. One last thing I want to mention and that is the “gon boob” glitch as I call it. In character creation, some outfits make the female gon’s breasts look very pointy and sharp. I consider this a technical glitch, since in-game I tested out the same costumes and everything was completely normal … luckily for me. It’s not something huge of a problem, but it’s nice if it can be patched.
And since we’re talking about how things look in this game, let’s have a little section about armor. Now armor usually gives your character stats in MMOs and that depends on what class you play (both the stats and how it will look visually), but not in BnS. Here armor is purely cosmetic. Its only value is to give your character a different appearance and it does not affect gameplay in any way. Now, I had the privilege to look around the wardrobe menu and the store and examine some different costumes and I have to say that I was positively surprised. I’ve tried a lot of Asian-oriented MMOs and I know how armor looks in such games and in particular how unrealistically revealing it is (so much fan service). However, in BnS, despite the fact that, yes there is revealing armor … costumes … a lot, but most of them are actually quite stylish. And to top it off, the player expects cool-looking clothes, since that is their only purpose, while in other MMOs they give me an armor for a female warrior, with which I feels as if I will go battle on the road (if ya know what I mean), not on the battlefield and they say “oh yes, this will protect you and it will give you + 30 strength and + 100 HP bonus” … for example and here I stay not believing any of it. The other thing, which made a positive opinion in myself was the diversity of clothes for races. Now male and female aside, because of course there will be different-looking clothes for a man and a woman, but I was actually very pleasantly surprised that every piece of clothing has slight adjustments in order to match the character of the race you are equipping it on and that is great. Most MMOs do not provide racial diversity for their armor at all, the only other I can think of is Tera, to some extent, but here even if the changes are really small they matter, because they personify your race. So not only do I get cool-looking clothes, but they are also unique, depending on what race I play. And a bonus here is that the game actually provides quite the mount of free armor, going along in the storyline and not everything is in the shop. If I remember correctly by the time I reached level 20 or so, I already had about 7 or 8 clothing pieces.
Okay, so we talked about gameplay and we mentioned graphics, let’s end with some details such as story, sounds and game value.
Story is consistent throughout my journey. It’s a good balance between main and side quests, mixing gameplay with cutscenes to really engage the player in the story. Yeah, it wasn’t something mind-blowing (I stand by my opinion that nothing can beat WoW lore), but it was still pretty interesting to experience and here I will value it on the following feature. I actually read the story and followed the questlines, not just skipping the text or not paying any attention to it and this is something I do only with one other MMO, which is WoW. Other games couldn’t really keep my attention when it comes to lore, but good job here as well NCsoft, I applaud you for succeeding.
On the topic of sounds and music, it’s nothing that I can’t enjoy but also nothing really mind-blowing. The environmental sounds are very well executed and timely and it all contributes to the atmosphere. From rain drops to wind and also the voice actors of the characters (you can actually chose what voice your character to have in character creation and there are a variety of choices), the sounds from battles (clashing swords, cracking ground, etc.). I feel as if music was absent most of the time and some was present only in key moments, but the fact that I cannot recall any OST, means that maybe a little bit more remembering soundtracks should be used. All in all, as I said, nothing I can complain about from what we actually got in-game.
As for value, BnS definitely has a lot of content value and quite the amount to keep the player occupied. Not only that there are 7 classes to try out, each of which have unique combat systems, but also the game provides the player with a very consistent main questline and other interesting small side or daily quests for cool bonus items. Also there are dungeons for all levels and you don’t have to wait till max level to go raiding and fighting cool and powerful bosses. Now I can’t really talk about end game content, such as PvP and other dungeons, since I have not yet reached there and I have not yet battled another player, but I’m sure NCsoft executed these features in a positive way and I’m really looking forward to finding out, since I will definitely play this game when it comes out of beta. I just hope PvP is balanced because this is one of the hardest things to pull off. As far as I’ve seen, BnS manages to keep my interest and makes me want to come back to it again, something very few MMOs can pull off so successfully. And I’m sure more new content will come in the future after the game has been released.
Now since this was a beta test originally, I have to mention stability and running issues as well, and it will be my concluding statement. Surprisingly for me, I had absolutely no technical problems with the game, apart from the long loading screens, but it’s not so much of a technical problem, rather than the game actually taking time to load the beautiful graphics. I read in the feedback topics in the forum that many players were complaining about not managing to start the game or the game crashing a lot, however, I had no such problems. Everything was running smoothly, from launch to termination – there were no bugs, no glitches, no fps drops or errors. So from a server stability point of view, everything is a-okay, at least for me.
As a concluding sentence I can definitely recommend this game to players out there and since it’s such a unique experience, go try it out, it comes out on the 19th of January, 2016 and I myself cannot wait.
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