Fights in Blade and Soul are more simple yet tactical affairs

Blade & Soul, NCSoft’s latest MMORPG, launched in North America on January 19. In development for nearly ten years, it has been available in Korea since 2012, so by now, most of the rough edges have been smoothed out and at least some of the MMO birthing issues should be minimal. While it’s not Hardcore Gamer’s policy to review an MMORPG at launch, I had the chance to jump in early and take a couple of characters to level 10, so this is less of a review than first and early impressions. We’ll do a full review a little later on.

Everything that the game does right - the visuals, the sounds, the gameplay, the plot - all come together to form an excellent game that I would wholeheartedly recommend to anyone who likes MMORPGs, fighting games, or video games in general. While this doesn’t make any kind of logistical sense, it’s an enormous breath of fresh air in a genre that has long been stymied by the problem of integrating players into the story in any kind of interesting way. Blade and Soul deals with it by simply pretending it isn’t there.

Graphically the game is hit and miss, definitely showing its age in places with a lot of jagged edges, even on the opening title sequence the lettering was pixelated, a couple of character textures were a little rough, but the actually environments were stunning and some of the most picturesque we’ve ever seen in an MMORPG. Three years ago when the game was released in Korea it would have been at the height of graphical capabilities for the most part, with only a handful of MMORPGs beating it for how it looks.

Whilst combat-focused MMOs such as Vindictus and TERA are nothing new to the gaming world, fights in Blade & Soul are more simple yet tactical affairs. At any given point during combat you have a set number of techniques to choose from, depending on which one you select, more techniques open up allowing you to perform combos on your opponent. Defend yourself with a counter, for example, and you can then follow up with a counter attack. If that is successful then more attack options are made available to you. It takes a little getting used to at first, but once you get your head around it, battles begin to flow smoothly as you begin to master your various abilities.

All stats will be the same, the only difference will be the amount of skills/skill points a player has over the other player due to being higher leveled. At end game you will most likely never 1-2 shot anybody. It will take strategy and patience to decide how to take out your enemy. You might think you have the upper hand but your opponent can use a block which will then trigger one of their combos. If you don’t know what that means, it means sexy as fuck!

Moving through the environment was more interesting than it is in most MMOs, especially in the early game. Minutes after rolling a new character, I could sprint and glide through the air like the heroes of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. I didn't need to save up for a mount before I could haul ass, which is a huge relief, and there are more traversal skills to learn as you level up, such as mid-air dashing and diving down on enemies.

All in all, Blade & Soul does exactly what it intended to do and more. It created an open world where players could master martial art combat, explore professions and guilds to make money, and a story that is easy to follow and interesting to keep up with. The game has masterfully designed gameplay and combat that makes the game fun to play, even if you're not fighting enemies. Movement and combos are fluid and everything makes sense; the game is so fun that it is sometimes addicting.