X-Blades Game Sample - Xbox 360
0X-Blades is a mediocre action game (or more specifically, hack and slash) developed by Gaijin Entertainment, who are perhaps best known for their flight simulation games. The game was released for Xbox 360, PS3, and PC. The game has awkward controls, an annoying camera, a strange targeting system which targets enemies almost randomly, extremely repetitive gameplay (even more than this genre is typically known for), a thin and rushed plot, and an average soundtrack (The title theme, Golden Despite, is nice though). The graphics are pretty nice when the framerate doesn't chug to the teens (it's typically 30FPS, 60FPS during menus and loading screens) with nice lighting and good environmental details, but it's pretty obvious that the game's main selling point is the sex appeal of the game's anime-inspired heroine, Ayumi, throwing most of the conventional wisdom behind fun action games out the window with style over substance.
The story basically deals with Ayumi, an extremely arrogant and brash Treasure Hunter who wields Gunblades. She doesn't back down from a challenge and loves treasure and loot more than pretty much everything else, and she doesn't want to settle down like the other women she knows, preferring her independence. Ayumi discovers a map about one year prior to the start of the game that leads her to an ancient ruin which she believes may hold a great treasure. As she travels the ruins, she discovers a strange orb which is protected by a creature known as "The Light", who warns her that she shouldn't touch it or she might doom the whole planet. Because Ayumi can clearly do it all, she ignores him and states that whatever happens will happen and that she can handle it. Well, "The Light" wasn't lying; Ayumi touches the orb and is cursed by the forces of darkness, causing her to unleash demons wherever she goes and occasionally controlling her body. Still not satisfied with this turn of events, she continues to explore the various surrounding ruins, where much of the explorative elements the game spoils you with in the tutorial level disappear and the game becomes a series of boss battles or trials where you're locked in one room and survive a series of challenges. She hopes to find treasure and a cure for her curse.
With a few tweaks, this game could've been pretty good, but there's a lot of little annoying problems with it. For one, targeting who you want can be a struggle in and of itself. Normally, a game with massive swarms like this actually doesn't have particular targeting traits, which is partially to blame. The other part of it is that because you're often fighting enemies who you'll target who aren't even on screen or where they can't be hit (like ghosts who can hide in walls) or you'll want to hit a particular floating enemy who is out of reach and can only be shot at (where targeting is required) or you'll want to use a close range skill which targets a random enemy in your vicinity instead of who's targeted, fighting in the game is an unnecessary pain in the ass. Another problem is that almost every area has tight corridors where seeing the action is difficult or big open spaces where Ayumi's touchy controls can easily make her fall to her death (pits kill instantly) and Ayumi has this really annoying habit of dashing after she uses certain special attacks, which can also get her killed.
If that wasn't enough, attacks are fairly weak even when Ayumi is powered up with her skills and you're constantly chased by mobs of enemies as fast as Ayumi herself when fighting bosses, which is almost all the time unless you're doing some pretty pointless trial like avoiding a series of spike traps or dodging guillotines. Sometimes, you're helped by another (male adventurer) named Jay, but you won't really notice him as he contributes next to nothing to a battle. Another factor to the game is "Rage", which is needed to use specials against mobs every few seconds, but it goes down when you're not fighting, which is a little annoying. One of the things that annoys me most with this game though is that sometimes when you clear a challenge or beat a boss, you might get a story cutscene but it happens so abruptly that it's practically mid-event, so you're still hitting buttons and skip it by accident, by which point the game auto-saves for the next scene. Atrocious.
It's criticized for being a Devil May Cry wannabe, but that doesn't concern me in the slightest. My problems, besides the aforementioned, is that the game is just plain boring and you spend a lot of time learning skills that contribute little to battles and there's little payoff for completing the game besides a new difficulty setting (but you can't keep your points and abilities, so it's almost like "why bother") and a couple new costumes. It was a nice try on their behalf, but if this is the best they can do, they should stick to flight sims and racers. This is a video of the 360 version.