List Price: $59.99
Sale Price: $12.99
Today's Bonus: 78% Off
This was South Peak's last chance with me. After the travesty that was Two Worlds I was skeptical of even this purchase. I will admit the cover caught my attention. While not the best illustration in existence, the concept of playing a scantily clad female wielding two devastating gun blades heavily appeals to me. So, with some reservations, I made my purchase. I figured it was a hack and slash, a very simplistic game concept, so how could South Peak really screw that up. Oh my, let me tell you how!
Pros:
+Beautiful levels
+Scantily clad female with dual wielding gunblades
+Excellent magical abilities
+Awesome combos
+Well developed booklet
+Leveling up mechanic is interesting
Cons:
-PLAYING THROUGH THE GAME TWICE!!!!
-Levels are the size of my room
-Bosses are really easy to beat
-Items are incredibly easy to locate (because there is only one room!)
-Ayumi's in game figure looks weird
-Lame story line
-Bad voice acting
-LEVELS ARE THE SIZE OF MY ROOM!
Details on the above list:
Actually, I'll start off with the good aspects first. The levels look beautiful. The texturing is quite impressive. Aside from some "too bright" lighting on the outdoor levels, I really had no issues with this part of the game. I did like their level up system quite a bit. You basically kill a bunch of creatures and you get soul points then you spend these soul points to get upgrades. The upgrades were really cool. You can get fire burst, ice, earthquake, and lightning magic. You then bind these to a button on the controller and when you get enough rage from hitting your enemies you can execute these special magical attacks. I actually did like this mechanic throughout game play. You can also upgrade your gun blades to get different kinds of firing options. These were pretty decent also. No machine gun option though... would have been cool, but very unrealistic.
One aspect that some people may be divided on is the way you heal. You heal by spending your soul points or hitting green crystals distributed throughout the levels. Maybe being able to essentially heal whenever you want seems like a cop out to some people, but if you run out of souls, you're screwed, so I actually liked this mechanic in the end. Plus the game has a built in element where it gets more expensive every time you use that feature, so I think this balances it out. I opted to save up my points and go for the regeneration feature. Of course you can always double back and replay levels you know you can beat and collect millions of souls to activate all the upgrades before the end of the game, if one is so inclined.
The booklet for this game is incredibly comprehensive. It gives you a full background on what your character is doing there and so forth. It gives you a run down of all the enemies and a few tips on beating them. If you're really getting into trouble there's a strategy guide section that you can read for tips on how to beat certain bosses. It also has all the normal stuff that goes over spells, upgrades and user controls.
All of that sounds like it should be a fun game shouldn't it? Yeah, I thought so too until I actually started playing through this game! Okay, I know I haven't mentioned it yet, you play as a girl named Ayumi. She's supposed to be a treasure hunter; yeah I thought there might be a Tomb Raider influence as well. Anyway this story is outright lame. I know my low rating might not make sense in context of my good review for Onechanbara (which also was recently released and is a hack n' slash). Let me try to explain, they both have fairly stupid story lines. I wasn't expecting anything incredible from X-blades, but I was expecting a little bit more from them. I mean, this company attempted to write an RPG and failed miserably, but I figured they'd try to at least learn from their mistakes. If you read the introduction in the booklet you already get annoyed with Ayumi. We're clearly engaging in a fantastical world and she's complaining about her parents wanting her to be a pharmacist! Seriously, read the booklet if you don't believe me. Luckily none of that makes its way into the game.
Okay, so the story is bad, but the script is even worse. Coupled with terrible voice acting, once again (just like in Two Worlds), makes the cut scenes atrocious. Okay, the voice acting is a little better than two worlds, but any time Ayumi talks it just doesn't feel like the voice actress fits with her. I can't really put my finger on why, but it just doesn't feel right to me. I know it's a minor quibble. But then they introduce Jay, whom you can also read about in the booklet. He's apparently supposed to be some sort of "love interest"? Worst execution of this I have ever come across. There is ZERO character development in this and that's what I had a huge problem with. At least Onechanbara attempts to have character development and they do a better job of it compared to this.
I was expecting Ayumi's figure to be a bit different. They boasted something about the combination of Anime and this video game. They're trying something new and I'm not really docking them harshly for trying out something different (read below to find out why I'm actually giving this a low rating). But I think people should be aware that Ayumi's figure (the one you control) in game and in the animated sequences does not look like something you would normally expect from the average video game. They don't appear to have used the usual rendering techniques on these main character types and her skin texture looks really bizarre to me. It's tough to explain and I don't know what they did on a technical level, just thought other buyers should know that it is not what you'd normally encounter.
Alright, onto what playing the game is actually like. Now, I don't do game reviews unless I successfully beat the game or at least get to the final boss. I beat this game. I suffered through every single level. Here's where X-blades does a face plant in the world of hack n' slash. The levels are incredibly small. Beautiful looking elements, as I said above, but I'm seriously playing on a level the size of my room! Here's how this game works. You enter into a level; it's mostly a gigantic room. Lots of monsters spawn, you kill ALL of them, and then you get a screen that says level complete! Are you kidding me?! This is ALL I have to do. There's nothing to explore, there's no hidden passages. Nothing! You can walk around within the one room and break jars or coffins to get items that give you souls, but that is IT. There is then a door on the opposite side from where you came in and you go through that and you get a stats screen showing your accomplishments. You are then brought into another room to repeat this process over and over again. There are a couple one room levels where you simply have to make it across something like spinning blades, but there are only three levels like that and they're both incredibly lame and very un-puzzle like. I'd rather be in the one room killing hordes... at least I get to do something semi-interesting.
I know, that sounds incredibly boring. At first cutting down tons of monsters is quite a lot of fun. As you encounter new monsters they get put into your bestiary (accessed when you hit start) and if you're having trouble the bestiary will tell you how to beat that monster. The bosses are less than challenging. Consulting the bestiary and learning the exact method to beat them puts their life span at about five minutes. The only one that took me a little while to beat was The Dark in one section, but that's because some wind weapon he used kept blowing me back so I'd have to walk back up and get close again. Other than that they're all incredibly easy to beat.
The small levels are by far NOT the worst part. If that's not bad enough you have to play through this game TWICE. It's the most ridiculous thing I've ever encountered. I know doubling back in some games for a level is one thing, but seriously... an outright replay! You make it to one side of the map you beat The Dark there and THEN you have to go ALL the way back. You go through all the same exact levels again! Sure they have different bosses and slightly tougher enemies, but you still see the same exact level design over and over. What a waste of time! What lazy design!
I still can't believe someone managed to mess up one of the easiest game concepts in existence. I'm seriously giving up on this developer. Maybe someday they will produce a stellar game, but I will no longer be purchasing their items on release day. This was far from a good game and there are far superior games out there. If they could only capture some of the cooler mechanics they had and harness them into a well written game they'd have quite a gem on their hands.
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X-Blades was ok. It was semi entertaining for me, and the hack and slash type game play was kinda fun. Im dissapointed in how short the game is, considering for me it was beat in only 7 hours. I would rate it a lil higher would it have been a longer game. Only other complaint i have is it was a little too linear in the game play. Had there been some side story like optional missions or something of the effect that too would have caused me to be more optimistic about the game. Overall it was decent if youre into cheesy humor kind of gamesBest Deals for X-Blades - Xbox 360
With the asking price of X-Blades it is now a worth while buy.So here is the good the combo system is amazing and very free flowing the developers of some of today's games needs to pay this game a visit to learn from it.
The story was weak for it's launch price but with it's drop in price it is now strong.
OK comes the ugly.
The Achievements are over all great with some that has no place because they are almost impossible for the casual gamer.
Graphics are very dated and borderlands comic book styled.
Some times the targeting tends to be a hair clueless but not to the point where it makes the game unplayable.
I recommend a game studio give this game the orange box treatment face lift the game to look more realistic and iron out the targeting some and implement the download content into the game story mode and add a costume editor for fun.
Honest reviews on X-Blades - Xbox 360
This game is slightly broken but playable. It's a clone of devil may cry, tomb raider, and assorted other games. It's incredibly repetitive and pretty boring. The graphics and character design (of the enemies) are actually really well done for what was probably a low budget game (kudos to the developers). I'm not sure why the main (playable) character is wearing a thong while she's treasure hunting though. The gameplay is kind of stiff (and that's not a double entendre); might be a framerate issue or a character animation issue.However, it is dirt cheap both new and used. It's not exactly a bad game but it's not exactly a good game either. Would I pay 7 bucks new for it? Probably. I paid around 2.50 used disk only and I don't feel ripped off. I've payed more for far worse.
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