A Century of Switching Sides
BLADESTORM gives Omega Force naysayers the very thing they've been asking for: something new. It also gives them more fuel for the fire.
Published: November 18, 2007
Not only does this ability to summon forces into battle factor heavily into some of the late-game clashes (for instance, you might need to thin out some defending squads while you roll in trebuchets to chuck boulders at a castle's walls to breach it), it sculpts how you pick the squads scattered on the battlefield to begin with. See, just by using a squad and offing enemies with them, you'll level them up, but you can also level up your own baseline abilities, gaining more heath, defense and strength, part of which is imbued in any squad you command.
Not only do those squads level up their baseline abilities, but they pour points into those specific weapons disciplines. In between days where you fight or back at the tavern, you can then spend those points to add more soldiers to a squad, make them stronger on attack or defense, or even unlock new abilities. These books for each of the disciplines can be leveled up too, eventually uncovering master techniques that let you roll through battles like walking medieval tanks. These RPG elements are like crack to someone who loves to level up abilities, and I ended up losing hours to just running around and finding squads to level up in addition to attacking the usual contract objectives.
Now granted, the actual fights themselves aren't terribly exciting. The hands-off nature of just holding down a button and watching attack animations cycle while squads lazily jostle and bump against each other is going to be instantly polarizing. If you adopt a technique of using your squads' special attacks properly, they can be nail-biting tussles with armies that should utterly wipe you out, thumb poised above an attack button just waiting for the meter to fill. Still, it's hardly a fully interactive experience, and some craving a Dynasty Warriors-style hack-and-slash-fest are going to be disappointed.
There's reason to be a little bummed about the game's visuals too. Sure, you'll see some massive clashes between dozens if not hundreds of soldiers all going at it, but the French countryside is almost painfully bland, with little in the way of variation beyond the odd castle and rolling hill pockmarking otherwise greenish plains and smatterings of forest here and there. It is, frankly, rather bland, both in terms of presentation and style. The soldiers' animations are solid enough, but you'll see plenty of repetition in them carried over from one group to the next.
It gets even worse when the audio is factored in. The music is actually terrific stuff, filled with little harpsichord bits during your stay in the tavern and plenty of undulating string movements. The pre-planning stages have plenty of pep and the actual music while you're running around battle-blasted France is great stuff... and then you hear someone speak. From the absolutely hideous accents during fights to the laughably delivered lines from the bartender in the tavern, BLADESTORM's voice acting ranks up there as some of the worst in recent memory, though it's almost oddly charming -- and yes, we're talking about that bartender.
It's likely that BLADESTORM is going to be an absolutely polarizing affair. Plenty will hate it for not being Dynasty Warriors while commenting in the same breath that the Dynasty Warriors games aren't different enough, while others will find the RPG elements and light strategy to be refreshingly different. Obviously I count myself among the latter camp, but that doesn't mean I can't see that the game is going after a very specific audience. It's most certainly not a Dynasty Warriors game, which is going to disappoint some, but I applaud Omega Force for trying something new. If by some stroke of fate the game manages to get a greenlit sequel, I'll be there on day one (and likely well before) to check it out.
