Game Review - Blade and Soul UE4 Update

Game Review: Blade and Soul (Unreal Engine 4 Update) from NCSoft

Score: Recommended for solo players / players looking for story content

I played Blade and Soul with the aim of killing time before the New World launch, but it ended up drawing me in with the fantastic story. So this review is from the point of view of playing it as a solo player for the story.

Caveat: I also played for story, so I have not yet explored endgame content, group content, gearing, and other such systems. Your mileage may vary with that especially if you are looking to settle into a game for the long term and repeat the group content.

The world design looks and feels outdated, like it was designed for machines that could handle far less terrain detail, but nevertheless the vistas are really worth a look. It feels epic, different zones look and feel different, and yet the whole is coherent in its art direction as a sort of "oriental high fantasy". For "western" players, this genre isn't that easy to come by and that's not counting finding one with a great story and combat that captures that "kung fu fighting" feeling. Blade and Soul gives you all this.

Swords of Legends Online was ported to the west this year and without a doubt Blade and Soul gives you vastly more quality in story and combat. And it's free to play!

The story itself is fantastic.

• With all the talk about light and dark chi, light path and dark path, the story could be converted into a Star Wars movie about Jedi, Sith, vengeance, redemption, and second chances.
• What seems simple continues to surprise with plot twists with every story Act as the story is slowly revealed.
• Heroes and villains have complex motivations. Most major titles completely fail at trying to tell a long and satisfying story arc, and instead distill into a repetitive villain-is-going-to-destroy-the-world story. Even mainstream western movies have been like this for a long time (e.g., every Star Trek and Star Wars movie ever).
• What seems like a side trip ends up being important as characters from your past come back again and again to be relevant -- and they remember what you did for them or against them. Friends become enemies, enemies become friends. All this with poignant emotional moments sprinkled throughout, not so often to be exhausting (like Final Fantasy XIV) but they carefully spend their opportunities for powerful impact.
• It's a strictly linear story without bothering to give you the appearance of choice. This may feel disappointing, but even major "choices matter" games (like Star Wars: The Old Republic) still ultimately have to push ahead with the main story, and all the "choices that matter" ultimately affect subplots while the main story unfolds the same way for everyone.
• For solo players, the story doesn't force you into group-mandatory content so you can progress at your own pace and enjoy everything. This is a very important feature and few games (like Star Wars: The Old Republic) have it -- especially nowadays when group finder randomness increasingly puts you in groups with selfish or toxic players that just want to zoom through content and can ruin any story experience.
• Massive bosses make for epic-feeling fights.
• The artistic direction of the key scenes is exciting and cinematic even when you are overlevelled and the fights are easy. This keeps you in the action and makes you feel much more like you are part of the encounter instead of just using a cutscene.
• Later chapters have excellent scripted scenes during quests that reinforce the high-magic high-fantasy feel of the world.
• Exhilarating, epic finish to the first main story quest... (end of Act IV) if you overlook that you can kill the boss in a few good hits and maybe the Ultimate attack they gave you when you hit level 55 -- or have a very hard time if you don't control the fight early and burst down the boss. The story and cutscene is excellent, and there's a multi-person raid you can try afterwards in late endgame character development.
• And there's some after-crisis follow-up, which really not enough stories do.
• Often there are slowdowns and maybe it diverges to another intertwining story arc too often -- which lengthens the whole story arc and makes it more complex and satisfying at the end, but while you're moving through the story, sometimes there's a feeling of the pacing slowed down and you lose momentum. But stay with it. Or just take a break -- your daily login-duration rewards are capped at three hours anyway.

Even side quests are fun and well-written to feel engaging:

• Pay attention to the dialog before you talk to someone, during your conversation with them, and even afterwards. The ambient conversation as you approach them and after a quest can really add to the context.
• Brilliant use of thought bubbles to cleverly add context in a "cheating" sort of way since you're not really a mind reader. But they put it to good use, especially to add humour.
• A lot of them are light-hearted fun to switch up the mood.

Although good rewards are locked in group content, there is still a lot of solo-able content on every map if you want to grind for outfits and such.

The group content (and even solo dungeons) is short and focused.

• Instead of trying to tell a deep story for their 6-man dungeons, you just go through a few token mobs in a very small map then fight the boss. Because, really, that's what everyone wants to do: Fight boss, try to win, get good loot.
• Many games don't do this and waste your time with too big a map, too many trash mobs, too many mini-boss fights, stretching out a single "mission" too long. This just causes players to start looking for shortcuts and exploits.
• Some games even stupidly try to tell a story through the dungeon (like Elder Scrolls Online). This is incredibly stupid.
• People repeat dungeon content for the loot and can't be bothered to redo the story over and over. So they start zooming through.
• And when you force players to group up just to experience the story, those players who are actually trying to experience the story will end up with these jaded zoomers and have their story experience completely ruined by players skipping ahead while they are reading or talking to NPCs or watching cutscenes.
• Even if you get a group together who all want to experience the story, every player goes at a different speed so everyone is either waiting for the slowest person, or someone will ruin it all by proceeding prematurely. Questing and enjoying the story really is done best solo.
• Without a solo option (which games like Star Wars: The Old Republic has for their "dungeons" i.e., flashpoints), it's just a design that shows the devs are completely out of touch with how players actually play.

A lot of group content is optional if you prefer to play solo. Of course grouping up for anything can help you do it faster, but there are solo-able grind zones where you can steadily earn currency and collect upgrade materials in another way. The system is rather confusing for newcomers with the far too many types of materials and overall very poor documentation but at least it's there. Very few MMOs have a good solo option to play at your own schedule and not have to spend time looking for groups (SWTOR being a notable example).

The combat is honestly very good.

• Looks and feels like a high-fantasy kung fu movie with a lot of moving, jumping, dodging, and fast and hard hits. Fast and exciting and you definitely have to pay attention.
• A refreshing change from a lot of titles that devolve into repeating the same "rotation" of moves over and over. Some moves are available on a chance basis so you have to be quick to react to take advantage of them.
• Even so, some moves depend on other moves, so there is some strategy and resource management to line up a powerful sequence.
• The basic combo for each class is enough to get you through the story missions. But you can really excel if you can button mash quickly as well as line up your skills accurately. At level 50+ in certain grinding zones you can turn on Auto-Combat and then you will see just how much is possible. For those who like "skill based" combat, Blade and Soul offers that on top of being able to do even better if you can use your skills quickly.
• Deep complexity due to various options. Classes have two or sometimes three stances that change how skills behave or what skills are available. Every class handles very differently. Like Vindictus, but even more complex and therefore much harder to master even just one class.
• There is some strangeness to the combat as well, with some moves bursting for so much damage that you can just end a story boss with a one, two, or three hit combo which can take just a couple of seconds. Yet if you face a handful of ranged enemies you can get into trouble really fast.

Your characters look really good... most of the time.

• Some few of the outfits are awful, like "Ashes in the Fall" where your female character's boobs literally spill out of the shirt like a wardrobe malfunction happened. However, most of the outfits are intricate and interesting.
• The textures are detailed and really nice. In contrast to a lot of western titles where you don't get any designs at all, and the textures are generally about how beat-up the armour piece is.
• Although some body parts (especially the calves) close-up look like they could use more smoothing, at the typical zoom distance in gameplay, it looks fine.
• A lot of presets, but a good enough range and combined with a fair range of hair and makeup, there's a lot of character customization available to make a good looking toon. Unlike some modern titles such as years-in-development-and-delays New World where you only get a fraction of customization and a bunch of ugly face presets you can't do anything about.

Some other details:

• The world can feel big, empty, and pointless (trying to grind overland enemies for loot and levelling is mostly futile). Early maps feel this way but later maps have more repeatable quests and bosses in the field that require several players (and respawn quite quickly).
• Later maps, especially cities and palaces, are spacious and excellently detailed.
• You can see very far away and that adds to the feeling of epic vistas.
• Despite a slightly dated graphical look, it's a beautiful place to visit. And many areas are Star Wars style enormous-epic such as magnificent palaces themselves with magnificent sculptures. Take a good look around and remember to look up too.
• There also doesn't appear to be any scaling when you go back to previous lower-level maps, so those bosses in the field or even group dungeons that were too tough may now be solo-able.
• Tons of repeatable quests, bosses, and "dungeons' (instanced party boss fights), so if you like the setting and the combat, you can spend a lot of time there.
• You can zoom-zoom through this mostly empty world in a fun way with very fast sprinting, jumping, gliding, even some flying (fast gliding). And teleport/fast travel points with a 2 minute cooldown.
• With all the talk about light and dark chi, light path and dark path, the story could be converted into a Star Wars movie about Jedi, Sith, vengeance, redemption, and second chances.
• Fishing is one of the prettiest I've seen in any game -- but sadly locked behind Act IX of the main story, and that's quite a long ways to play through just to fish.