BLADESTORM: Nightmare Review

Despite being crafted by the same set of hands, Bladestorm is absolutely not Dynasty Warriors. In the case of the latter, the game had you cutting about the battlefield, effortlessly smashing up whole armies as just a single warrior against the thrumming guitar of generic J-Rock serenades. Bladestorm on the other hand, boasts a more ponderous, squad-based tactical template set against the sort of epic, rousing score that wouldn’t be out of place in a period movie such as Kingdom of Heaven. Sadly, the transition from east to west and from console to PC has brought across a considerable range of problems that deeply tarnish Bladestorm’s otherwise intriguing squad-based battle template.

From the off, developer Omega Force has shifted gears in regards to the setting, separating themselves from their usual far east stomping grounds we now find them plying their talents in medieval Europe around the time of the titular Hundred Year War. On paper at least, the change should seem like a welcome one with the long-time Japanese developer having exclusively fashioned a reputation of crafting games set in the far east, yet, the toweringly ham-fisted manner in which the western conflict is depicted is both equal parts hilarious and depressing.

Aside from some truly, ear-rupturingly bad voice acting (that tavern keeper really needs to be muted), most of the historical characters just look ridiculously pretty and are adorned in the sort of threads that makes you wonder if they stumbled in from the wrong game. Take Edward the Black for example. With his luxurious, Head & Shoulders conditioned long obsidian hair, shapely chin, piercing eyes and black gothic armour, the chap looks he just came out of an audition for the latest Castlevania game. So really, if you’re looking for any sort of proper historical adherence here, you simply won’t find it.

Other than the shift from east to west, by far the biggest difference between Bladestorm and the Warriors games is in how the actual act of combat is handled. Rather than the singular arcade smash em’ up maxim that the other Omega Force developed games preach, Bladestorm instead elects for a more restrained approach where you use squads of varying class and ability to thwart the enemy.

Cast as a wandering mercenary, Bladestorm lets players link up with a squad that embraces a particular school of weapon expertise that could include everything from horseman cavalry to archery, sword and shield specialisms and just about everything you can imagine in between. Rather than having access to every fighting discipline under the sun from the get go, Bladestorm requires that players collect books through battle on the subject before allowing them to link up with that particular class.

Each class has its own little idiosyncrasies too. Archers, as one might well expect, are able to harass foes at range while horsemen can run down and stun foot soldiers with ease and in addition to such base characteristics, each class type has a range of cooldown-based special abilities as well.

Where Bladestorm undoes this class system quite spectacularly however, is in the effectiveness of one class against the each other. The game prescribes that some classes work better against others, so for instance, horsemen should fall easily against pikeman of the equivalent level and so on. Yet, in reality, it seems to make precious little difference as one class can seemingly plough through another regardless; stripping the game of what would otherwise be a key tactical concern.

Bringing a strong element of progression to the table, each completed contract supplies both money (which can be used to buy new weapons, armour and buffs for your squads) and SP which can be piled into improving any given class in a number of ways. Aside from improving base statistics such as attack or defence, points can also be piled into bettering the potency of the special abilities that are unique to each class, too.

That said, as much as Bladestorm likes to think that it’s some sort of deep, strategically-minded affair, with its myriad of squads, multiple battlefronts and expansive game map, the reality is sadly somewhat different. In practice you see, Bladestorm merely requires that you take your mercenary band from one hostile area to another, smacking up enough of the locals to prompt the base commander to come out at which point, everybody piles on top of him until he keels over and the town/castle/village is taken over. Medieval Total War this isn’t.

While pretty much the absence of any nuance and my less than glamorous descriptor suggests that Bladestorm isn’t entertaining, the opposite is actually, inexplicably, strangely true as the act of fulfilling contracts and winning battles evokes a thrill and still feels oddly satisfying nonetheless.

Where the Nightmare subtitle figures into the proceedings is in the additional second campaign which is exclusive to this version of the game. Boasting a new story with fantasy elements, this campaign takes Bladestorm deep into the magic and monsters territory that Omega Force charted in their Warriors Orochi series.

Besides the added mechanic of being able to take control of your enemies, the additional campaign plays similarly to the base experience, albeit with an uninspiring selection of orcs, skeletons and other generic nasties to fight against. As a result then, Nightmare doesn’t quite satisfy in the fashion that the original campaign does. Sure, the base Bladestorm campaign isn’t anywhere near perfect and its take on the period setting is especially cringeworthy but at least it’s somewhat entertaining, whereas Nightmare just feels like generic dark fantasy fluff that fails to make an impression.

By far though, Bladestorm’s single largest flaw is the sheer lack of polish that has gone into the PC version of the game. Absolutely riddled with crashes (the game apparently doesn’t want to be on medium or high detail settings for more than five minutes before crashing out) it’s one thing to have a game that’s a little rough around the edges, but its quite another to have one which is so unstable that you’re not sure how long you can play it before the game decides to prevent you from doing so.

Elsewhere, the discovery that the game boots up in Japanese is frustrating; especially when you consider how easy it would have been to set the game to default to English language from launch, rather than forcing players to hunt around forums for a solution to a problem that shouldn’t have existed in the first place.

Visually, Bladestorm disappoints greatly. A half-baked conversion of a last-gen console title that was originally coded nearly eight years ago, Bladestorm looks nice enough in full HD with some added effects (for as long as it doesn’t crash), but such details utterly fail to hide the game’s crusty console origins. From glitchy animations (sometimes soldiers just disappear for no reason or get stuck on scenery) to repetitive character models being used time and again and basic, geometrically threadbare environments, Bladestorm should have been rebuilt from the ground up rather than just tossed in the microwave and reheated after its sell-by date had passed.