Blades of Time Review (Xbox 360)

Anyway, the story in Blades of Time, while you’re there you find out that loads of other people are trapped there trying to scrape out an existence against what seems like endless hordes of bad things, including each other from time to time. You are, *yawn*, like the chosen one who like, totally has to first unlock the dragon spirit and then like totally fulfill some prophecy or something. Blah, blah blah, alright so the story is all very derivative. But it’s there and they put some decent effort into it.

What they put even more effort into in Blades of Time is a diverse array of enemies including an assortment of mini and big bosses. Yeah, normally in the Japanese games you get like five enemies and then some minor variations on each with some bosses (NeverDead anyone?!). But with Blades of Time they give you several distinct groups of enemies to fight against, each with their own art style that translates into armor, weapons, combat tactics, etc. Well, some aren’t so clever in combat tactics, but others are and that makes it all the more challenging. That makes the game look crazy good, which I don’t often say about games, but it does. They made some big, well made landscapes that almost make me forget about the totally two-dimensional leaves on some plants (how hard is it to make the leaves curve and look 3D, come on!). Plus, the action keeps rolling along at a fairly good pace, aside from the plethora of game engine cut scenes (nope, still didn’t fix that eye and mouth movement thing either). The good part is, you can find a way past the cut scenes.

So all that review and nothing about the gameplay aside from strategic button mashing? Alright so Blades of Time has an interesting combat system in that you can hit multiple enemies with big swipes and ground-pounding combos. In fact, there are even achievements for killing off a certain number of enemies at the same time. While you can lock onto a target, generally you won’t do so because there will be multiple enemies and you’ll want to be able to watch your back.

Why is it named Blades of Time you ask? That would be due to the time rewind ability you get which allows you to rewind, effectively doubling up the number of you that exist, or even quadrupling or more, I think I managed five versions of me shooting at one boss at the same time. It’s an amazingly handy feature because the previous you will draw fire from enemies allowing the current you to get into place to strike a certain object or part of an enemy, example, a health regeneration pack on the back of a boss. This is certainly not the first time rewind gameplay mechanic, but it is the tightest integration of the mechanic that I have seen in some time. It’s not just to undo a mistake or keep you from dying, it’s an actual strategic maneuver which is a necessity in some battles. If you run into some melee and ranged enemies at the same time you can wade right into the melee dudes and start swinging away, then rewind time (which leaves you standing where you are when you begin the rewind) and then dash (another ability) right up to the ranged enemies and take them out while the melee dudes are still being distracted by previous you. Simply brilliant.