If all it took to deliver a great video game was to throw in some pretty graphics, a semi-naked heroine, a couple of sword-gun hybrid weapons and a shed load of enemies to send to oblivion, X-Blades would be one of the greatest video games ever. Unfortunately for developer Gaijin Studios it takes a lot more than that, and whilst X-Blades promises a lot it ultimately fails to deliver greatness.
Oooh, the sauce!
X-Blades is a third-person arena hack ‘n’ slash. Taking control of Ayumi – the game’s semi-naked heroine – you progress through the game’s stages dealing death to all and sundry. There are three types of stage: waves where you’ll face a number of waves of bad guys, boss levels where you’ll need to dispatch a boss and his minions and, less frequently, obstacle type levels. Upon entering either of the fighting stage types, the exits are sealed with magical barriers forcing you to defeat whatever the stage throws at you to continue. Obstacle levels require you to negotiate your way to the exit.
Death-dealing is taken care of by Ayumi’s “gunblades”, which can either be used to hack enemies to tiny bits or shoot at them from range, and by using magic. Magic skills – and there’s a huge number of them – can be purchased using souls collected from dead enemies. In order to use magic Ayumi must have sufficient “rage” (or MP), which accumulates when she’s in combat or taking damage. Borrowing another feature from RPGs, Ayumi can also improve her skills by collecting ruby, silver and gold artifacts which enhance her shooting ability, aerial attacks and sword skills.
Ah, magic.
The game has quite a large variety of enemies to do battle with, but although you’ll face them in significant number each stage usually only features one or two of the different types. A feature common to almost all the enemies in the game, including bosses, is that they are especially vulnerable to only one or two types of damage and other attacks do very little damage. Until you’ve figured out – or consulted the in-game Bestiary – what each creature is vulnerable to, battles can become a long drawn out affair. Boss fights, especially, suffer from this because the bosses take a long time to defeat even if you have hit on the right attack plan, and it’s not always apparent that your attacks are having any effect at all.
Another feature all the enemies have in common is poor AI, which leads to Ayumi getting mobbed far too frequently requiring the use of an area-of-effect spell or simply running around the arena to buy some space. The AI doesn’t break the game as such, but it can become frustrating when you’re constantly being interrupted by monsters attacking from behind and has the effect of turning the game into a button mash, rather than one where you can plan and execute your attacks.
Stupid enemies. Yesterday.
For the most part the controls are pretty good and responsive. A nice feature is the ability to bind spells to LB, RB, Y and B, which saves you from having to consult Ayumi’s spell book every time you want to cast. As the game progresses and Ayumi learns new attacks and moves, however, you start to notice weaknesses in the control scheme. Each of these new moves requires a combination of button presses and/or stick movements to perform, but they also demand an extraordinary amount of precision on the analogue stick and timing on the buttons. For example, the forward roll available from the outset is extremely tricky to pull off reliably and often it feels as if the game just doesn’t want you to use it.
Despite its flaws, X-Blades is not a terrible game and is pretty good fun, although it’s not one I can play for long stretches at a time as combating the waves of enemies does become tedious after twenty minutes or so. It’s pretty, the graphics remind me somewhat of Guild Wars, it has a good soundtrack and whilst the actors they used to voice the characters are sub-par, is well produced. There are also a lot of good ideas in the game and the magic system is particularly good. When the combat flows you get sucked in, making it at times an exhilarating, pulse raising experience. Sadly those moments are short lived and the game becomes a bit of a grind as you battle wave upon wave of essentially dumb enemies or bosses that just refuse to die.
Taken in short doses - when I find I have fifteen minutes to kill I’ll often pop X-Blades on - it’s a good experience. The fact that you constantly progress through the game and that the next auto-save point is no more than ten minutes away means that you can pick up and put down at your leisure, add to that the huge array of spells and abilities to unlock and there’s definitely a reason to keep playing.
Perhaps my biggest criticism of X-Blades is that it’s a schizophrenic game that doesn’t know what it wants to be. It seems to me that the developers spent far too much time and effort concentrating on what the game is not, such as the RPG elements, the nicely animated but lightweight storyline and a nod towards adventuring, and not nearly enough time on the core arcade hack ‘n’ slash mechanic. It’s a real shame, because had the developer gone the other way and tightened up the controls, improved the enemy AI and gone for a far more arcade-y presentation and feel the game would have been improved no end and this would have been a very different review – a review of an absolutely storming arcade hack-n-slash.
I like hack-n-slash games and X-Blades has all of the ingredients to be a great example of the genre, but it seems the developer under-cooked them. Had I paid £40 for it I might not be so forgiving, but I picked up X-Blades new and sealed for a very affordable £5. So if you like games of this style, are prepared to overlook its weaknesses and want something to fill those times when your significant other is faffing about in the bathroom “getting ready”, X-Blades might be worth considering.
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