X-Blades

The basic plot of good vs. evil can go way beyond the limit of the imagination if put into the right hands. Sadly this idea was placed into the hands of Gaijin with the disappointing result of X-Blades. To be frank it's not the worst game out there, but certainly not one of the best either.

The overall look of the game is polished; subtleties such as sun glare are apparent, but that’s almost all of the polish and praise that can be said about this game. The story isn’t particularly gripping and in places it feels like it just keeps dragging you on, though occasionally the pace is fast enough for you not to beg to move on to something else.

The overall size of the game’s map is not huge nor even large for that matter and to make it even more of a buzz kill, the map is cut down into rooms (only some of which them have anything exciting inside of them) in which you must fight hordes of monsters in order to progress to the next room, then you have to repeat the process. This does get tiresome after a while, especially since there isn’t that much variety to the monster's attacks or even too our heroine Ayumi’s attacks until you pay a ridiculous amount of collected points in order to gain new ones (some of which cost several million).

The boss battles however are in a league entirely of their own. These fights usually last way too long, the bosses take off way to much health than they should when they strike you. Also most of them can be killed with the same type of magic spells and almost none of them require some form of thinking beyond ‘hack, slash and dodge attack’ until you get a lot closer to the end of the game. The models for some of the monsters don’t particularly look good, and they tend to be more annoying then hard, kind of like when you get bugs munching away at what's left of last night's pizza, you want to stomp them all but it gets tiresome.

Certainly there is a lot that doesn't work, but not all of it is bad; some of the areas are well thought out and even some of the bosses (mostly the later ones) are worth having a go at. The battle music for the game was actually alright and there is also some decent looking scenery at some locations even if you have to fight a horde of monsters just so you can have a decent look at it. If you’re up for having a game that’s been made to just kill random stuff, then this is straight up your alley, just don’t expect for this to last you more than a day or two whilst you are accomplishing that.

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