Review: Blade & Soul

Hey all, Little Miss here again. Well, it's official: I've graduated college! It's surreal to say the least. I don't honestly feel like I've graduated. But I digress; I'm sure that's not why you came here, is it? You're probably demanding me to get on with the review.

(Sorry, I couldn't help it. As soon as I said "get on with," this is the first thing my brain thought of. You can attempt to throw a brick at me if you like but... I wouldn't recommend it.)

Anyway, yes! The Blade & Soul Review. Without further ado...

Game Basics:
Title: Blade & Soul

Publisher: NCSoft

Genre: Fantasy Martial Arts MMO
Website: http://www.bladeandsouldojo.com/

Cost: Subscription, I believe

Ratings:
Graphics: 4/5
Character Customization: 1/5
Beginning/Tutorial: 1/3
Class Skills, Character Development, etc.: 3/5
Story, Quests, Content: ??

I've been eagerly awaiting for Blade & Soul to come out since I first heard about it... a year? Two years? Eh, some year(s) ago. My initial thoughts was that it looked REALLY FRIGGIN' PRETTY and that the art style was designed by Hyung Tae Kim, who is known for his work in the Magna Carta series. I knew of Hyung Tae Kim's artwork through the internet. I LOVE his art style in terms of colors and detail of people, even if the women are... well, scantily clad the majority of the time. His costume construction is relatively simple in terms of pieces of clothing but the colors, detail, and overall shading of his pieces made my eyes drool at the sight of the glorious candy. If I was willing to overlook the obvious objectification of women for this art, you KNOW it's damn good. (Of course, that's a subjective statement, but everyone I've met, both those who like and don't like Hyung Tae Kim's artwork, admit that it's very pretty to look at.) 

Yes, this is basically what the in-game characters look like. Pretty if not definitely slutty.

I was really disappointed to learn that there weren't any healing classes or... really any healing skills available to players aside from potions and food. Of course, I should have expected this from a Martial Arts MMO; there's more of an emphasis on combat and less on... class mechanics or party dynamics that traditional MMOs utilize with their class developments. So, since I couldn't play a healer, I created a Force Master first and a Kung-Fu Master. The former is a mage-type and the other is.... well, a fists type.

Before I begin the actual review of the game, let me clarify: I haven't played official Blade & Soul; I've played on what seems to be a private server which uses the game info from the Korean second closed beta test. So the information I use to review might not be accurate to the actual game itself. Once Blade & Soul is released for English beta testing, I'll try to get in on it and review the game once again. In the meanwhile... Enjoy!

I'll start off with the fact that this is a Korean CBT. The server-thing I'm playing on was kind enough to translate "important" things in the game, such as the tutorial elements, most skills, and most items. But other than that... I really have NO friggin' clue what's going on. Quests, cinematics, dialogue, hell, even NAMES are still in Korean, so I cannot tell you what was actually going on in the game. All I can tell you is that my roommate watched me play for a while and donned a horribly not-PC Chinese-esque accent and... well, I can hear our tickets to hell being printed out as I type this. Needless to say, making up lines for dialogue was very, very, entertaining.

On a side note, I'm rather surprised that their "official" site has next to no information the game itself. It has a promo video and that's about it. If you want any actual information on the game, you have to go to http://bladeandsouldojo.com, which is why I've listed it as the game's website. I'm sure that as the Korean game launches and the team works on developing an English equivalent, the official site will definitely expand and have actual information but for now... It's strange.

The beginner's tutorial itself is neat. It's basically a zoned-in area where you're, from what I gather, a new student at some martial arts academy of some sorts. There's a mini-story line that teaches you basic movement, techniques, and combat and then it whisks you off to another area for reasons I really don't know. You go from zone to zone in quest patterns and basically level up through quests and grinding.

The graphics, as I mentioned earlier, are REALLY PRETTY. I recall in a text transposed interview with one of the directors, Team Bloodlust (a division of NCSoft) said they wanted to create highly detailed, vivid, lush environments and characters while still having low requirements for computers to run them. One of the directors' computers was an older-than-dirt computer, I think from the 90s?, that they used to test the game on and it worked perfectly there. And hell, if it worked on THAT computer, then it meant it'd basically work on a normal computer, which was music to my ears.

DROOL OVER THIS IN-GAME EYE CANDY.

The skills are beautifully animated, the characters flow really well (though my roommate pointed out that the Kun--an all-female race--that I was playing as ran funny), and the environment feels alive. There are critters such as birds and rabbits that will flee if you run at them (which I found out and was both saddened and amused. As my roommate noted: "You're running at them at high speed, of COURSE they'd run from you!"), water moves, and I believe I saw environmental plants swaying in the breeze. It's wonderfully detailed and very lush, grabbing your eyes' attention for sure.

Character customization, as of CBT2, is extremely limited. They have preset character aesthetics to choose from, perhaps from about 20-30 (which isn't bad, really). I've seen in CBT3 that customization is a lot more in depth, allowing players to choose different faces, hairstyles, etc., to create a custom look. The races are a little... strange. There's the human-esque class called the Jin which have both genders; there's the Lyn, which are basically small people with animal ears and tails and also have both genders; the Gon, which are basically huge hulking creatures and so far I've only seen men, and then the Kun, which are the typical, long-and-slender all-female race. I played a Kun and a Jin, females each. I was tempted to make a Lyn but I already had a Force Master and wasn't going to make another one. They look cute, really, kinda like children with plushie parts attacked to their bodies. Not all races can be all classes; I know the Lyn were restricted to just being Force Masters in CBT2, but in CBT3 the introduction of the Summoner class features the Lyn as Summoners. 

In terms of gameplay itself, I enjoyed the Force Master class very much. It's basically a Martial Arts version of a mage; you manipulate Chi and turn it into elemental attacks as well as being able to manipulate monsters' chi and strangle or throw them, for example. It relies on mostly long-range attacks but also has several close-range ones for an equal balance. Plus your weapon has a colored ribbon that is very pretty to look at when you're moving I swear I'm not a cat and I don't have ADD. I'm less experienced in the Kung-Fu Master but it's basically a fist-fighting monk-like figure. You get knuckles as your weapons and, to be expected, your attacks are physical, close-range ones. You also make use of your feet, if I'm not mistaken, which is a nice change of pace from the typical one-two punch styles of most other MMOs.

My favorite feature is the running and gliding feature(s). When I think of a Martial Arts movie, I think of those Asian ones where people can leap twenty feet in the air, run ridiculously fast, and do impossible stunts. This game takes those elements that one things of and incorporates them into the gameplay itself. It also balances this out through a stamina system so you're not running all over the place like a boss.

This video captures the running and gliding within the game very well. Essentially, running takes away stamina and gliding (for some reason unbeknownst to me) restores it. You also later get a feature that allows you to glide faster, which consumes stamina.

The quests in the game are your typical MMO ones: delivery, item gathering, and monster killing. You tend to move through zones rather fast so you're not going back and killing the same enemy three times for different quests. Certain quests also have you go into what I assume are instances. You enter them through a portal which has its own loading screen and so far, I've been the only one who's been in the dungeons (which have been almost always caves from what I've seen...), so I'm going to call them dungeons for a lack of a better word. Dungeons have special quests and sometimes special boss monsters you need to defeat. I've also gotten treasure chests from some of them, which was cool! I don't know if later on in the game there are traditional, party-based dungeons. As of right now I'm in the high teens (17 or so?) with my Force Master and as of right now, there are only the single-player dungeons.

I was surprised that there weren't any mounts available from what I've seen. Then again, I haven't hit level 20 yet. And you also get that running ability so travel is really fast, really. I was also shocked that there wasn't a talent system to my knowledge or anything similar that would have allowed for character customizatiob. But this is still CBT2, I know, I know. I'll have to wait for the English beta tests I guess and hope that these sort of features have been developed. There is however, a Bo Pae system that's basically a form of enhancement. It's this 8-piece circular thing (it kinda reminds me of the pie and pie pieces from Trivia Pursuit...) and each piece gives certain benefits. The more pieces you get of a certain set, the more benefits you get. Think of armor set pieces from WoW for example. As of right now, the only "armor" you have is a "costume," which doesn't have any stats right now, but you have to have costumes in order for your Bo Pae to work, which is different. You basically go for different aesthetics instead of stats in this game, so far. Your weapon has stats and sometimes extra beneficial stats.

There's also a crafting system but I really didn't understand it when I had tried to sign up for different professions. I think it's where you choose 2 gathering and 2 production professions and what you gather doesn't necessarily automatically give you materials to work with in your crafting professions. Kind of like how most other MMOs have, like, skinning or mining and blacksmithing or leather working-- each of these professions are independent of each other and you can choose blacksmithing without having mining, for example. Unfortunately, all of the information about this was in Korean so I don't know what each profession really does. The translated names weren't completely clear all the time, either, but that might just be due to the server's translations and not the game itself. I tried finding information online about it but with very little success; I think the most I got was a chart of what gathering professions correlated to what crafting ones but no actual description of what the crafting ones produce.

Overall, I'm rather pleased with Blade & Soul so far. I definitely want to play it when the English beta tests come out, so I can get a proper sense of the game's story, character development, crafting systems, and other things. By the time they get to English beta testing, I imagine that most of these systems I haven't seen in the CBT will probably be implemented. After all, they're introducing an entire new class in CBT3, so I can imagine that more developments will occur in the middle of testing. Things are pretty to look at within the game and the classes are refreshing hybrids of traditional class archetypes and martial arts fighting styles. A lot of the animations are very fluid, the skills are very pretty (even the physical ones!), and the world seems very much alive. I'll definitely look forward to more content and development from Team Bloodlust in the future! I'll probably post more reviews as more things come out.

If you have any questions, comments, or anything else, feel free to comment below, on the Facebook or Twitter pages, links on the right. Want to suggest a game? Feel free to drop me a note any time, I'm happy to do request reviews! This is Little Miss Squish, over and out.