Just by looking at the case of X-Blades, you can tell one thing.
Whoever came up with the design of the character is obviously trying to
sell the game on sex appeal alone. When it comes down to it, I don't
have a problem with that. If the game is good, then a bit of eye candy
doesn't hurt anyone.
X-blades tells the story of a treasure hunter, who goes by the name of
Ayumi. The game's opening scene starts off with Ayumi finding the other
half of a relic she owned. The relics fuse together to reveal a map of
the location of two powerful artifacts, the dark orb and the light orb.
These two orbs contain the power of two entities that ruled over the
world. Ayumi is on a mission to find these orbs and make them her own
treasures. The game begins with Ayumi already at the dark orb location
and starts off with you fighting against a guardian of the dark orb.
Unleashing the dark orb has released the dark entity and infused the
island's monsters with darkness. Ayumi's quest is to cure herself of
the curse and get rid of the darkness. The story isn't the game's
strong point as it's quite forgettable.
Instead it seems the makers of X-Blades, Gaijin Entertainment, were
more focused on creating the game's heroine. To say Ayumi is battling a
horde of infested spiders, monsters and other weird creatures, she
doesn't wear much armour; actually she wears next to nothing. The box
art for the game shows exactly what she wears in it: a bra and a thong
so thin that it might as well not exist. The model in the game looks
like she doesn't even have anything covering her arse crack; you can't
see the thong unless you zoom closer to it. I advise you not to do that
unless you know you are alone in your house. Don't want some unexpected
guest coming in catching you looking closely at some polygon
anime-inspired girl's bottom.
When it comes down the meat of things, X-Blades is purely a hack and
slash game. Looking at screenshots, it gives you the vibe that the game
might be something along the lines of God of War or Ninja Gaiden. I'll
state right now that it is nothing like those two games. X-Blades falls
more into the category of Dynasty Warriors or Onechanbara (yes, that
game that features hot girls in bikinis killing hordes of zombies)
because as a game, it is a lot shallower than the two big giants
mentioned above.
Instead X-Blades feels like an arena based fighter. The setting is an
island, split into areas by loading screens. Finishing an area will
display character data information about what you accomplished in that
zone. The bulk of the game requires you to guide Ayumi to these
locations. Whenever you enter a location for the first time, you'll be
trapped in the area by those infamous red walls that block you from
leaving. Enemies will then spawn into the area and it's down to you to
kill all of them before you move on. There's a bar at the bottom right
of the screen that indicates how many you need to kill.
And many you will kill, because X-Blades sends so many enemies at you
to slay, it feels like you are committing genocide. The fact is that
you never really know how many you need to kill. The red bar that
measures the amount of enemies that need to be defeated moves down
slowly as you kill them, but you can never figure out the exact number
from it. It leaves you just hacking away till the enemies don't spawn
anymore. Multiply this for all the areas in the game, and it gets very
repetitive.
Boss fights are done in the same way as well. The red bar in the bottom
right represents the boss's health rather than how many enemies you
need to defeat. A lot of X-Blades' boss fights just take too long. The
Galapagos boss took me the best part of 20 minutes to defeat. The
bosses focus too much on using your magic skills, rather than just
hammering the enemy. The game forces infinite spawning monsters on you
to build up your rage metre. Then, the rage metre is used for the
effective magic skill that the boss is weak against. Rinse and repeat
this and you have your X-Blades boss fights right there. They're just
too drawn out and tedious.
The fighting itself at times can feel satisfying. If Gaijin
Entertainment had not clogged down the gameplay with blocked arena
based fighting and instead pushed it more onto the action adventure
side, X-Blades would have been better. As it stands though, X-Blades is
a perfect example of taking the hack and slash genre and turning it
bland.
Fighting is controlled mainly with the square button. Square uses your
twin blades to attack enemies. The blades also have built in guns,
which are fired with the R1 button. Attacking enemies with these moves
builds up your RAGE metre. Using magic requires a certain amount of
RAGE, so you need to be slicing and dicing a lot of enemies to keep
your RAGE metre built up.
The one thing X-Blades gets right is the amount of moves you can
purchase. Accessing the skill menu can be done at anytime throughout
the game with a simple press of select. The further you delve into the
game, the more skills are unlocked. Skills need to be purchased with
the souls you collect from the enemies. Ayumi sucks in the enemies'
souls to use them as currency. The skill menu also allows you to heal
yourself at the cost of your soul collection. The setback is the more
you use it, the more expensive it gets, so it's best to only use it
when you really have to. It's a nice feature, because they are points
where you can't find any health to pick up, so a simple purchase of
health puts you back on track.
Ayumi's blades and guns can be upgraded by finding hidden coloured
artifacts. Players don't have to be hardcore to get an idea of where
about the artifacts are hidden. Leaving an arena brings up the stat
screen which shows you how many artifacts are in that section and how
many you need to find. The stat screen also shows other random stats,
like how much of the scenery you've smashed, and how long you took to
pass through the level.
Even though Ayumi's pleasing round bottom is all out to see, X-Blades
is a pleasant looking game artistically. The game uses a hand-drawn
anime style look for Ayumi and while it doesn't reach the detail of the
anime cut scenes that are incorporated within the game, the model is
still fairly detailed. The levels themselves are occupied with great
architectural designs that have a clean sharp look to them, bordering
on detail that looks realistic. The game doesn't have the polished
graphical look of Ninja Gaiden, but it's not too shabby either.
There is, however, an abuse of the bloom effect in X-Blades. Stepping
into the light requires the player to squint or put on some shades, the
bloom is so powerful. Ayumi's character model glows so bright and her
swords are sparkling constantly when you explore in the daylight. If it
had been toned down a little, it would have looked fantastic, but as it
is, it just seems like Ayumi is suffering from some sort of crazy sun
burning, while the level looks like it's roasting in the blooming sun.
Guess her skin colour makes sense now when you look at it.
Usually a game is mediocre because it's either broken or just doesn't
have the standard to hold up well. In the case of X-Blades, it's
different. As a game, it could have actually been decent enough for
hack and slash players. The designers really did make some bad choices
when it comes to the bulk of the gameplay; a simple focus switch of the
gameplay from the arena style combat to more fluid type of exploration
gameplay would have done wonders.
It also doesn't help that X-Blades likes to reuse a lot of the
locations. Once you've reached the end of the island, you have to
backtrack all the way back in an alternative "night" version of the
levels. It's just the areas at night time and feels like it was tacked
in to extend the game time.
Some gamers might enjoy this for what it is: a simple hack and slash
game, with some annoying design flaws, and frustrating boss fights that
will test your patience. There's plenty other choices for gamers on the
market, but if you've exhausted all those options then the invisible
g-string of Ayumi might supply some fun from time to time. Just don't
expect to get anything more than an average shallow game.
