X-Blades

"A Pretty Fun Hack and Slash Game"

Since I've doing most of my gaming on portable systems lately, I decided to get back into some PC gaming. X-Blades is a game that recently caught my eye, so I decided to pick it up and give it a try. After completing it, I can say that it was a fun game overall, but there are some elements of the game that keep it from being great.

X-Blades is a 3rd person hack and slash game that follows the adventures of a young and meager treasure hunter named Ayumi. She ventures off to find a rumored artifact of incredible power, which just happens to be in some ancient ruins, which are guarded by evil monsters. Sounds a lot like a Tomb Raider game at first, but don't be fooled, this is a hardcore hack and slash game. Ayumi will be rushed into frantically paced area after frantically paced area to defeat monsters and move onto the next area. The exploration aspects of the game do not take center stage very often.

As Ayumi traverses the ruins, she will have many means of disposing of her enemies. She brandishes two gunblades, which can slash up the enemies and shoot them as well. She has the ability to learn some advanced magics, some sword skills, and can also increase her proficiencies in almost all of these areas.

Once certain events transpire in the game, Ayumi gains the ability to transmute into Light and Dark Forms, which gives her increased attack speed, attack power, and decreases the damage she takes for a short period of time.

Instead of X-Blades simply being a mindless hack and slash game that makes you slam on your mouse button over and over again, the developers opted for some strategic battles that will really test your knowledge of your acquired spells, and force you to tackle certain areas with a bit more thought than most games in the genre. This is mainly done with elemental affinities. Most bosses are susceptible to certain elements and hitting them with the opposing element will score you big damage. Half of the challenge in the boss battles boils down to trial and error and figuring out what spell is best for taking the boss down. This turns out to be a good and bad part of the game. It's good since it breaks up the monotony of simply slashing enemies to pieces over and over, but it also makes the bosses relatively easy once you discover their weaknesses.

Since most reviews of X-Blades I've read are reviews of the console versions, I'll try to skew things a bit towards the PC side of things in this review, so that anyone seeking to purchase the game on PC can make an informed decision.

I usually stick to FPS games on PC, and this is actually the first 3rd person action game I've played on PC, so I can't really say how the control layout compares to other PC games in the genre, but I thought the controls were done well overall. There were a few annoyances, but I'll get to those in a bit.

The PC controls break down like this. You can make Ayumi run in any direction with the WASD keys, and you will have free control of the camera with your mouse. Your Left Mouse Button is for your primary, slashing attack with your gunblades, and the Right Moue Button is to fire your guns. The Middle Mouse Button is used to lock onto your enemies, and the Space Bar is used to jump. Pretty standard controls. The Number Keys 1-4 will allow you to cycle through Ayumi's different firing modes for her gunblades, and you will be able to map 4 skills and or spells to the Q,E,Z, and C keys. While the basic control layout is nice, it would have been nice to have more than 4 spell hotkeys, but I was able to manage fine. Since there are only 4 spell hotkeys, you will need to go into the pause menu to re-allocate them if you want different spells on your hotkeys.

Now that I've got the basic premise of the game out of the way, I'll get to scoring the game.

Graphics 8/10

X-Blades is a pretty good looking game, and from other reviews I've read comparing the console to PC versions, the PC version has sharper graphics and better lighting effects than its console brethren. I ran the game maxed out at 1600x1200 with the following specs: AMD 64 X2 Dual Core 5000+, 3 gigs of RAM, and 2 XFX Geforce 9800 GT 512MB video cards in SLI mode. I was also running the game on XP Pro.

The cut scenes in X-Blades are cell shaded, and closely resemble the in-game models, but the cel shading can look a bit goofy at times, and I think they should have just stuck with the in-game models for the cut scenes.

All of the ruins and areas that Ayumi travels to look very detailed. The stone monuments look almost convincing, the large, open areas are entrancing, and the lighting effects are some of the best I've ever seen in a game. In spite of the nice graphics, the game never stutters or hiccups at all. The frame rate remains solid for the entire game, and it's an incredibly smooth game graphically.

The downside to the graphics is that they can get stagnant after a while. Since Ayumi is trekking through ancient ruins, you can bet that many of the areas and levels look similar. Some of the areas only really offer some new background scenery and some new enemies. The other noticeable graphic issue surfaces during the cel shaded cut scenes. Even though the cut scenes are not pushing your PC to the limits, they still seem to stutter and look a bit jerky.

What's important is that the main game flows nicely, and the environments do look good, even if they do get recycled from time to time.

Sounds and Music 7/10

This is a tough aspect of the game to score. There were times when I really liked the music, and there were times when it was just annoying. It's like the game strikes the perfect stasis between good and bad music.

The game starts off with some heavy rock tunes that get the game flowing well, but then the game breaks down into some almost pop music tones that will make you turn down your speakers for a while until it subsides.

The sound effects sound really good, and the constant hacking and slashing will be music to your ears as you rip through horde after horde of enemies.

I also feel that I should mention that the voice acting during the cut scenes is stomach turning. Luckily the cut scenes are not very frequent and are brief when they do appear. Jay, one of the main characters in the game is quite the oddity. He shows up maybe three times during the game for a few seconds, yet he ends up being a main character somehow. His lines are comic gold. Some of the things he says could make him a member of S.T.A.R.S. from the original Resident Evil.

Story 5/10

The story in X-Blades is almost non-existent. There are a few brief cut scenes after certain levels that attempt to give you some reasoning for doing what you are doing, but they are not very well done, and the bad voice acting hinders it even more.

I'm not really going to dwell on it, but I will say that the story is not really a center piece of the game and I found that it didn't detract from the overall experience too much.

Gameplay 8/10

Along with the sharp graphics, the other saving grace of X-Blades is the intense gameplay. The intuitive controls on the PC version become second nature quickly and you will be carving through enemies at an incredible pace.

In order to upgrade Ayumi's abilities, she will collect souls from broken objects and enemies, much like the God of War games. Once you amass enough souls, you can go into your menu screen and upgrade a myriad of abilities. This is one of the most engaging aspects of the game. Ayumi can upgrade her melee attack skills, her airstrike abilities, her shooting abilities, and her spells and skills. While most games give you a bunch of useless skills to acquire, X-Blades is structured in a way that you will need to use almost all of them at some point. Certain sword skills are effective against certain bosses, and the elemental spells will constantly be working their way in and out of your hotkeys to take out the appropriate enemies.

Ayumi is able to acquire quite a few elemental spells alone. She has an entire range of fire spells, lighting spells, ice spells, light spells, and a baleful list of dark spells. Each element will be needed against certain foes, so making sure you are familiar with them is a must. Having a boat load of useful spells is nice, but a problem surfaces once you start to get a lot of them: You only have 4 hotkeys. This means you will need to be switching them in the menu frequently, which breaks up the gameplay a bit. I don't see why the player is not given more hotkey options for the PC version.

In order to cast these spells, Ayumi has a constantly depleting “Rage Meter” below her life. You can raise the meter by attacking enemies, getting attacked, or by hitting red crystals which are scattered around the areas. Even though the crystals do re-spawn after time, I don't see why they made the meter deplete so quickly. It almost becomes a chore to keep you Rage Meter high when you are not knee deep in fighting enemies.

As I said before, the game offers some fast paced action. Each area (minus the longer boss battles) is broken down into an approximately 10-15 minute inquisition. Once the area is cleared, you can then explore it for treasures at your leisure. You clear areas by depleting a bar at the bottom right of the screen. With every enemy you kill, the bar goes down a bit. Once the bar is gone, so are the enemies. Boss battles are similar, but on a much larger scale.

So as you can see, it's a pretty straight forward game, with only the diversity of the strategic boss battles to break it up, but for some reason I never grew tired of the game. Maybe it was the fast paced combat, or the skill upgrades, or the smooth PC controls, but something helped to hold my interest all the way through.

Longevity and Re-Playability 7/10

I was able to finish X-Blades is a few days, and I'd say the game took me maybe 10 hours to beat, and I took my time and soul farmed for a while. There are three difficulty settings, and one “Pro” difficulty that becomes unlocked after you beat the game once. There are also unlockable costumes for Ayumi and 2 different endings. While the extras alone may not be enough to warrant another playthrough of the game, I found it to be a game that I would like to play again someday simply because I had a lot of fun with it.

Conclusion

X-Blades doesn't really do anything new for the genre, but the overall package comes together nicely and ends up being a fun game overall. While it's not without its setbacks, you could do much worse when it comes to fast paced, PC hack and slash games.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 03/03/09

Game Release: X-Blades (US, 02/09/09)