Bladestorm: The Hundred Years' War

"It May Take a Hundred Years to Beat"

Bladestorm is quite the unique game to find from the long time strategy game maker KOEI. KOEI has produced tons of strategy games from as far back as I can remember. At one time, I had picked up some Super Nintendo games dealing with the American Revolution and another game that were interesting concepts, but were very tough to get into. Bladestorm is unlike any strategy game you may have encountered so far. The setting is once again placed in the historical context within the time frame of The Hundred Years' War that lasted from the 1300's to the 1400's. The game focuses on the use of mercenaries who eventually replaced knights and nobleman and who would conveniently switch sides throughout the war to be paid by the highest bidder. Bladestorm enters you in as a new mercenary who somehow has a long life span. The game gives you the impression that the most notable, famous, and infamous heroes of this time period all lived during the same time frame. So you will get to battle along side Edward the Black Prince as well as Joan of Arc as the same mercenary. These two figures of history lived generations apart.

Aside from the concept of the game, you run into more problems along the way. Beginning the game, you get to select what type of mercenary you want to be as well as select the gender. Character selection is very pointless when it comes to choosing only what you will look like. There are no special character attributes to assign or anything like that but along the way you build your character's fame and skill level by surviving battles.

Bladestorm works a lot differently than your average field of dreams hack and slasher such as 99 Nights and games along that line. You can control your character throughout a battle but he or she is going to be practically worthless when it comes to achieving your objectives during a major battle. You begin your work as a mercenary by starting off in a tavern where you meet all of the friendly neighborhood mercenaries as well as the nicest barkeep I have ever come across in either video games or real life. The barkeep lets you select what contracts you want to pull and informs you of anything big brewing. A merchant will sell you upgrade items for you and your units, and you can check out all of the latest gossip from other mercenary characters or patrons as well as check out some tips they offer. Here the game does an excellent job of keeping you informed about the historical aspects of the game where you can check the campaign progress and read up on all of the major historical figures found in the game. I do not know how the barkeep manages such a friendly atmosphere with plenty of both sides in the same room and a lot of blood money being passed around, but even once you select a battle to start on the barkeep will tell you he is praying for your safe return. What a nice guy.

Once you do start your quest for fame, money, and blood the contracts you choose will depend on difficulty and your overall success. Once you win a bunch you can choose new battles that open up along with the story (if you can say there is an actual story to this game) but the battles you choose will either be short two to three day battles where you have to capture a specific fort, or open-ended battles where the battle only ends with you capturing the objective. Some battles allow you to choose where you want to start and you can work your way across the miniscule map of France to your objective or start one fort over. The battles themselves are not spectacular and a day in miniscule France is only ten minutes. I use the term "miniscule" because you can storm the beaches of Normandy and be halfway down the country within the short ten minute time limit of the battles. A day in miniscule France is ten minutes so the battles normally stretch out for a few days so you have time to complete an objective. However, the battles can be as open-ended as you want them to be with the reward being that you earn money for victories and with no real consequence of finding yourself getting poked and prodded in the middle of a higher level unit of enemies. All you simply do to win is find a unit you can control and lead them straight into an enemy fort and hold down the RB button. Your guys will hack and slash and the more units you take out the more rallying points they gain so that you can earn a “Bladestorm” and charge through just about anybody for a limited time. Each unit has their own particular special moves where you can shoot salvos of arrows with bowmen are use power hits with other units.

The problem of the ten minute battles is that they quickly become repetitive. All of the objectives besides the rare secondary objectives in some of the major battles are simply based on capturing a certain fort or defending one. You may have multiple ones to attack and defend but with the objectives comes how you defend and attack. Your mercenary can only lead one particular unit at a time. That means if you spent half the game leading guys with pointy sticks then you will have to spend the rest of the game with them if you want to beat more superior forces. You have to work with each unit that you unlock to build each of their own little skill levels. Too many times did I start a battle with a new low level unit that I had to give up to go find a particular unit I could do damage with. I guess the main idea of the game is to build everyone up equally so that your bowmen are as equally effective as your cavalry or sword and shield soldiers. As you gain fame and fortune you unlock more units such as axe throwers and even elephant cavalry. But you have to give the game a lot of patience if you want to build these guys up and finish the game. Bladestorm takes a tremendous amount of time to finally beat, which is excellent in all respects because that is what I expect from a real time strategy game, but the repetitiveness of it all takes away the patience that I tried to afford to Bladestorm. You can buy certain units to make magically appear in times of need but when you start a battle you have to rely on whatever is immediately available so you cannot simply grab your nearest favorite unit but either have to wait for them to appear or go with whatever is immediately available. A lot of times I charged in with a low level unit only to be massacred before I realized my mistake.

The game play is not all that bad. The mechanics work very well as far as leveling up, collecting money, and knocking out enough enemies to draw out the base commander. All you have to do to fight is hold down the RB button and even your own character does his or her own sword swinging. Some of the units are really fun to play around with and having every scenario as open-ended as it is allows for you to work on building skill. It is not about how many battles you win or lose but how you gain skill throughout because Bladestorm is as directionless as the historical Hundred Years War was. Your main goal is to become a famous and feared mercenary and only now and then do you get a chance to play a major battle. But either way you play the game, there is no shortcut to the end and it will take a long time to become a five star rated mercenary.

The graphics in miniscule France are not worth boasting about. The only things in fourteenth century France (according to this game at least) are castles and trees and the occasional village and deer. The landscape is horrendous with Bladestorm trying to scale France down to size. You can conquer France ten times over by running end to end within the ten minute battle time frame. There is nothing special about the characters and battles as you press special buttons that knock out swaths of people that disappear upon death. Even your guy disappears if you get killed during a battle. The scenery is okay, but there is nothing that stands out and the scaling issue is probably the reason why. There are plenty of videos that follow the characters like Edward and Joan but of equal concern are that all of the characters in this game (except for the awesomely nice one-eyed barkeeper) look like they should be gracing the packaging of baby wipes rather than wielding double edged swords. A lot of the characters look way too baby-faced or elf like to take away even more from the realism of this supposedly historic game. The game does a great job of recreating historical battles and such, but the realism is just not present.

On the bright side, the music is really cool. It is very over the top and puts you in the right mood for going castle crashing. The videos featuring the historical figures are cool to watch and as you continue through the game, you run into more and more scenes.

On the downside you will probably only play Bladestorm once through if you can manage to survive the repetitive torture that is having to gain fame in this game. You have to keep doing most of the same things over and over until you reach major battles where you get to fight along side some of the historical figures. The replay value just does not exist with Bladestorm. There is nothing to do online, no multiplayer anything to do, and the achievements can all be acquired by taking your time with the game, and this game pretty much well forces you to take your time. All of the achievements are in the 50's and require that you find certain items that unlock more units to play with. You can easily get these by defeating the other mercenaries during battle. If you are into this particular time period or need some inspiration for your Middle Ages class, then you can read up on a lot of the historical contexts in Bladestorm. There are bios on all of the fictional and non-fictional characters as well as a journal that details the events of the major battles and campaigns.

Final Recommendation 6/10

I have to give Bladestorm its credit for being unique and very different from other RTS games as well as the hack combo slashers. The repetitiveness takes away a lot from this game as it drags on without much direction. At first I wanted to play only on the side of England because who really cares about the French, but eventually I realized it does not matter whose side you are on. This game does not end until you become a famous mercenary. It is a good historical game but the realism is nowhere to be found. I could not find the motivation to make it to the end of Bladestorm but even so I think there are plenty of people who would thoroughly enjoy it. And like any game made by KOEI you always have a game that will have a great resell price or high trade in value. If you are a fan of previous KOEI games then you will probably enjoy Bladestorm.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 09/14/09

Game Release: Bladestorm: The Hundred Years' War (US, 11/06/07)