It Has been many years since I played this first time round so I thought why not give it a replay and see how its held up….. Kind of wish I didn’t. this turned out to be the longest 6 hours of my life!
Playing it on the PC second time round using the keyboard was a complete pain so I had to end up using my PS4 pad instead witch was the correct choice in the end, how ever I did have problems when it came to combat rolling forward in the end I had to do this with my keyboard just to be able to get past two parts of the game.
X-Blades is a third person hack and slash with some gun play and quite a bit of magic you are able to use to help mix up your combat options. as you progress thought the game you will collect souls off every enemy you kill this is what you use to unlock new spells, gun ability and health regen. The hack and slash is a case of hitting one button over and over again, there felt like no challenge in just doing that. you are able to hot key four spells which allowed you to dispatch enemy’s with ease, well at least it did early on in the game. the gun play was easy to use pull the trigger to shoot (has a semi-auto lock) pull one to lock on to enemy’s and the D-Pad to change what kind for gun ability you want to use.
The Map was not massive and the areas small, the time in each area only extended by how many enemy’s you had to fight to progress. You have to do two laps of the map before you can reach the final part that is the castle. Now this felt lazy with only the time of day and a few different enemy’s in the areas that made the difference and even then it was small. It got boring going in the same areas, and at time you had to go back to grind in order to progress.
There where very little enemy’s thought out the game (spiders, lizards, ghosts and elements) not including the bosses. once you got over run with the spiders you could not move due to the silly attack speed and range getting stun locked and losing a lot of health made this a pain. the elements where just as bad not in the way they attacked but how you had to attack them, if you did not have the right spell you could not do any damage to them meaning you had to go bad and grind in order to buy the spell to take them down. Not know what was in the next area till you arrived was a pain, you had to wait to buy spells you needed over the spells you wanted.
The first boss you come across is a wolf who is easy to take down at first but you meet him three times in total and each time he gets, no so much harder just more annoying many it be having to kill loads of enemy’s before you can hit him or gain having the right spell to do some damage to him, this became more and more important in order to do damage to more and more enemy’s. There where so many bosses that when badly designed and where so annoying to take down I found my self shouting at the TV in frustration.
The last two bosses (which where the same person) tuck so much longer than it need to. with him freezing you in place every ten seconds and having ghosts flying around witch stop you hitting him with your magic and having to get rid of them first while being frozen was a complete pain. I did finally finish the game and a sense of relief come over me when I did.
Would I play it again? Not a chance.
Did I regret starting it? Yes
Would I recommend it to anyone? No
Stay clear, save our money and buy something better.
Now to find me a better game to play
Leave a comment