Massively multiplayer role playing games are plodding, cerebral affairs. Much of the game is spent either clicking through dialogue boxes or navigating screens of stats and items. When called upon to protect the downtrodden or retrieve the missing ingredient of the local award winning pie recipe, battle requires you to learn the deceptive art of waiting for cooldowns to run their course. Long form quests that require slaying a heavy toll of bad-doers can turn what is a deliberately strategic form of combat into a bit of a snooze fest.
Blade and Soul doesn’t do much to change the menus and screens part, but it’s focus on making combat frenetic, active, and interesting is something that can’t be over stated. NCSoft has channeled it’s inner Platinum Games in its latest effort.
It’s not the first MMO that the Korean-based developer has attributed to it. Wildstar, the sci-fi space RPG that’s recently gone free to play, was their last big release. Technically, Blade and Soul came before Wildstar, laying incubated over in the Asian market for years before making it’s North American debut. They appeal to different markets, sure. But there’s something instantly gratifying about Blade and Soul that doesn’t exist in its contemporaries.
Much of that comes from the intense active battling to be had. There’s no real pseudo turn based action here – no attack speeds or DPS calculations to figure out. Every time to click the left mouse button, you begin a combo of varying length. Coupled with other learnable abilities, engagements with foes feel less like you’re a warrior defending Ogrimmar and more like you slaying demons as Dante.
Every battle requires timing and adaptability. With the exception of boss battles, you have to watch the enemies animations to derive what sort of reaction you need to drum up. It’s like a fighting game in this way – you begin to learn how to block attacks in real time, in order to bait enemies into exposing themselves long enough for counter attacks. Players eventually learn how to link their abilities together for combos that grow in size and spectacle as you gain levels (and skill points). A lot of the comboing is pretty free form, so a “go to” combo may vary from person to person. You can also respec your skill assignments at any time, allowing for endless experimentation within your chosen class.
The closest MMO to this sort of hands-on combat is Guild Wars 2, which was previously the most actiony MMO I’d played. GW2 focused on bringing the Everquest/WoW style of action bar management more in line with third person action games. It was a great mixture of movement and positioning focused abilities, as well as unique and genuinely interesting weapon-based ability interactions within classes and the fact they everyone was their own healer. Blade and Soul takes these tenants and runs with them. Especially on the healing front. There are no dedicated healers in this game, so a solid grip on combat is really your best defense. Challenging engagements feel the most tense, because you know that you’re only a few mistakes away from a sudden death.
My Blade Master is coming along quickly, thanks to the relatively low grind of the PvE quests, but I’m not PVP level (a.k.a max level) yet. One can only imagine how far the ante is upped when you apply this combat to other human players. I almost wish this was an option from the get go, but it’s much easier to optimize a PVP environment when you can guarantee everyone is the same level.
The world of Blade and Soul is the perfect backdrop for this. Chinese exaggerist fantasy meets Saturday morning cartoons, think Crouching Tiger X Legend of Korra. The journey to redeem and reassemble your fallen clan and take down the evil Jinsoyun is a equal parts low brow and evocative. The sometimes over the top violence is the optimal fit for this stage. The Hong Kong kung fu movie aesthetic is one sorely missing in video games, especially outside of the fighting game genre.
Im excited to push through to the end, in order to get to the PVP portion of the game, but the Free to Play design may become too much of a burden. Ill be giving it the old college try though, as the action has successfully hooked me into this wacky game. If your like me, getting swept away in this cooky MMO is a fact of life. Stop by our Blade and Soul Wiki and try to stay grounded. Let us know how you feel about the combat – and the rest of the game for that matter – on Facebook and Twitter.