Koei Tecmo is an interesting and mixed bag. Imagine your favourite ice cream, cold and sweet and enticing, and imagine grabbing one out of the freezer and opening it up to discover that someone has already sucked on it profusely and put it back.
Anyway, enter Bladestorm, a mix between Dynasty Warriors, Total War and refined garbage.
In Nightmare, you are a mercenary in the Hundred Years War. Don’t worry, you won’t need this fact or be able to forget it, because this will be told to you over and over again. You’re a mercenary. Get gold, get fame, get your name out there. Because you’re a mercenary. Also, you will be facing other mercenaries who likewise are trying to get their names out there, as that’s how you make business and whatnot, because you’re a blade for hire, a swashbuckler, a dog of war, a sellsword, a freelancer.
AKA a mercenary.
For some odd reason mercenaries are being hired to lead random contingents of troops. More oddly, it seems to be acceptable to do so knowing full well that you are completely new to the mercenary gig. Had I never worked in an industry where people with no experience were employed to be your boss, this concept would be completely alien to me. But that’s just how McDonald’s operates, so I guess I can’t complain.
If you’re thinking ‘perhaps that’s a little bit nitpicky’, or that pointing out such a quirk is the sign of someone who either masturbates too much or not enough, my focus on story is something I can’t escape. Stuff like that sticks out to me more than a nun at an orgy, and is compounded by how terrible and terribly the dialogue is and is delivered.
Bladestorm has a heavy flavour of Total War about it, something I quite enjoyed as an enormous and almost completely disillusioned fan of the TW series. It basically boils down to a paper-scissors-rock mechanic, with various tastes in between — for example, cavalry beats swords, swords beat spears, spears beat cavalry. It gets more complex in that there’s two handed swords, which are great at attack but have almost no defense against missiles, halberds which are ok in infantry engagements and fairly effective against horses, mace wielding warriors who are quick and lightly armour, crossbows that are great against armoured units but are incredibly slow on the move…there’s a great variety of troops with their own unique place on the battlefield.
Each unit has a normal attack and three special attacks which may or may not have any kind of real use. For example, the double handed swords have a ‘horse smasher attack’, which, when getting charged by cavalry, will make them pay dearly for running you over. This level of nuance was pretty amazing to see – it doesn’t stop the charge, it just makes it costly. However, then you have things like ‘defense’ on some units which doesn’t seem to do anything. Or nearly any of the missile units special abilities. Or leg breaker on the polearm. Maybe it trips them over? I couldn’t really see or tell.
As <insert your mercs name here>, you enter a unit of choice and try to figure out what the hell is going on by looking at the mini-map that looks like it hasn’t been updated since the 2007 edition of Bladestorm. After giving up on that completely, you run into battle with little to no coordination with the rest of the army. From what I understand of what I think the game was trying to tell me, you could increase your control size and do mass attacks. Which have a use. I think. Maybe.
Yeah, kind of — it’s the kind of game you can play while listening to a podcast and pretending to listen to you partner. The level of skill and strategy involved is minimal, and the mechanics and tutorials don’t encourage anything other than ‘go and kill mindlessly’. There are pretty enough colours that your eyes won’t get bored, and it has to be noted that the armour, arms and aesthetics of the troops looks amazing.
Oh yeah and there’s a nightmare mode where you verse fantasy creatures instead of other human beings (or ARE MEN THE REAL MONSTERS!?). It suffers the same problems.
It’s frustrating to see that such a great concept wasted. It feels like it tried to do something interesting and brave and was pulled back into the safety of what’s already been done. I’m the first person to admit that my history with this particular franchise is incredibly limited, and that I have no idea how the game is received in Japan, but I would have really liked to see the concept more fully realised or refined.
If you like Dynasty Warriors, you’ll probably like this. If not, then maybe give this one a skip.
Bladestorm Nightmare was reviewed using a promotional code on PS4, as provided by the distributor.
Review: Bladestorm Nightmare
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