Bladestorm: The Hundred Years SLAUGHTER!!! - 9/10
*** WARNING ***
This review is biased, if you're not a fan of dynasty series please subtract 2 from the total score...
Now moving on to the crunchy bits!
- Story:
The story this time around is based in the 100 years war between France and England and despite the fact that they have been "japanised" the developers have done a very good job of recreating the locales, accents and facial characteristics...
You assume a role of a mercenary, creation of which is limited to 8 faces and 3 voices. All the armor purchased in the game will change on your character and there is a surprising amount of "sets" to collect...
Once the quick creation is over, you are in a tavern. Your "between the battles" shopping, recruitment and gossip area. From here it's easy to start doing a selection of missions for either side.
Doing regular missions at higher star rating than you are levels your troops up quicker and grants access to story and request missions, there's multiple different mini stories going on through out each with their own reward! (Suggestion to beginners, sell all art apart from Jewels and Rare paintings (will show up as yellow).
The story missions you unlock will depend on which side you fight for mainly, although sometimes you will need to complete fights for the "other side" in order to progress. Once your fame bar reaches max for that level, you will shortly (sometimes not so shortly) unlock a special story mission which can be played for either side (ie. Raid on Champagne (english), Defense of Champagne (french)).
All story mission are accompanied by nice cutscenes featuring celebrities such as Edward, the Black Prince and Joan of Arc! Cutscenes are skipable, but brief and most of the time very enjoyable (the battle of Crecy come to mind (10000 longbows vs 1000 cavalry)).
As your fame increases, access to better books, armor and weapons gets unlocked for purchase in the tavern. Sometimes you will find books and special items (Hint: when you hear the merchant says "I have something you might be interested in..." instead of his normal spiel, it means something nice is up for grabs). Once you complete the final story mission (going from level 4 to 5 fame) [Beware: final story mission is decided by which side you played for most, hence it's not a standard "fame advance" battle and can ONLY be played for one side].
The king of respective country rewards you with a special sword (1 handed for england, 2 handed for france) and access to red star missions is unlocked, here you can unlock post game weapons (including weapons from Dynasty/Samurai Warriors series) [Beware: 1 red star = 10 normal stars (so if it has 5 normal + 1 red = 15 normal, so all squads are uber)].
- Gameplay:
Now here is where we start seeing some differences! Instead of running around by yourself and feeling like a 1 man (or woman) army, you now have the ability to recruit squads, you can do this in 2 ways: by pre-purchasing the recruits in the tavern before the mission or by finding a "free" squad on the battlefield. You can control the squads you have the books for (books include heaps of variety, spears, swords, knives and elephants to name a few) and their levels stay from mission to mission (effectively you need to "level up" each book to get 100% in the game).
Essentially the system is a GIANT rock-paper-scissors system, what makes it great is there is no one squad overly superior. I got maxed swords and even with a unit of Executioners (elite greatswords with skullmasks!) which come in a pack of 30 lemmings per drop, I still get wiped on harder missions! (Hint: hold down R1 with MOST squads to issue a generic "attack at will" to make em rush in in front of you, sit back and watch your lemmings go to work).
The more you use a certain squad, the more "experience" that book gets, books have multiple pages (swords has: sword, sword & shield, greatsword, dual sword, special greatsword, weird sword (kinda like a 3/4 sword made to reach around shields - Abyssian), in each book you can "level up" each page, to increase their attacks (and at 3rd level sometimes add extra things like poison or fire) as well as the generic stats that apply to all pages to max out attack, defense, health and amount of units in a squad.[Hint: for each book max out research first! It gets you more exp each level!]
Unfortunately the xbox 360 seems to be plagued by freezing issues and long loading times as no installation to hard drive is possible (unlike ps3, but it does install 2.6gb).
- Graphics:
This is also one area the game excels in. Despite the fact that the models of units and enemies isn't as detailed as say in Ratchet & Clank, but the fact that sometimes you can have 600-700 units on the screen at once, all attacking and running around with no slowdown, more than makes up for it!
Landscape is also more than adequate, everything from castles apearing way off in the distance to rain and snow effects is in here, nothing that screams WOW!, but not lame-o either... aint nothing more satisfying than charging downhill with you 15 Royal Lancers to watch 5 squads get annihilated under your hooves (as they fly in all directions).
It is nice to see the developers to model the castles as to what looks to resemble that century though. Paris has the Notre Dame, etc. All appropriate effects are there in regards to water (sometimes instead of bridges, there's shallow water, both act as bottlenecks... great spot to charge through, and looks AWESOME!)
- Sound & Music:
Everything is as it should be here. From arrows whistling as they fly through the air to painful screams of their intended targets moments later. Metal on metal clashes, trampling charges all accompanied by nice amount of classical music (as you would expect for that century). I must admit, after 60 hours in this game, the music does lack variety, but similar can be said for other long gameplay games (ie. Oblivion). It is interesting to note however that when playing for french the music is different than english campaign. So if you need a change, perhaps its time to do a mission for another side?
- Overall:
For any Dynasty Warriors fan, this game is a MUST buy! Run to your closest game shop and get it ASAP. You will get more replay value out of this title than out of any dynasty game! I'm not kidding. It took me 62 hours of gameplay to max out my fame... now to move onto the books (still missing 2 with only 1 book at 100%), jewels (missing 1/12) and postgame items to go! I'd say about 90-100 hrs for a collector to get close to getting everything... then onto my french guy (I've finished the english story).
For any non dynasty fan or first time dynasty player, if you enjoy running around a HUGE battlefield, slaughtering hundreds upon thousands of units and having more stuff to collect than in 2 replays of 100 hours each, then give this a go! Also a fairly cheapie to pick up at 89.95 makes a nice price new release!
Submitted by Shadowblade
08/12/2007
9
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Bladestorm: The Hundred Year War
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