I want to start this review with a small question: “How are you looking for and choosing games you want to play?".
When I had a computer, it was in 2005, there were still no large stores like Steam, GOG and EGS, no high -speed Internet where you could download games, legally or not. Disks were bought for the most part in the markets for 100 rubles and, with rare exceptions, in specialized stores, that is, licenses. Game magazines were already in fashion, but few bought them, so you could learn about the standing new products only through friends, or at random. Not all games illuminated the magazines themselves, due to the limitations of the print publication. From the pirate disks year in 2007 I switched to torrent trackers. Everything that came into view was swinging at all, but only a limited amount was played. Soon Steam looked like the one who knows him now, and rushed. Gigantic sales, recommendations, reviews, buy Skyrim – all this layer of information was thrown in the face, and I just continued to press the “basket” button and accumulate a backlog. So, this game is like norms, but the reviews are mixed. I open SG, read the review, verdict "garbage", close the game, and so on. How many games I have launched or even passed, I think, you do not need to mention.
All this began to cause me apathy and a general unwillingness to play any games. I periodically launched Dota2 and CSGO for degradation and occasionally any of the parts of Mortal Kombat. Here it was possible to finish, only I found for myself a new way to find games and go through them-return to torrent trackers. Do not rush to throw stones and call pirate, everything is a little more difficult. Going to the “Games” section and its subsections on the torrent, you find yourself in a giant sheet from games that are not sorted by the release date, they are sorted by the date of creating distribution and its renewal. In fact, there is nothing except the name of the game, the year of release, and information about the publisher, tablets, etc.p. In a series of acquaintances and unfamiliar names, I opened the topics of the games interesting to me, quickly read the description, watched the preview of the screenshots and, depending on emotions, put on downloading. Yes, this is pure piracy. But, if I started the game initially, I was looking for a way to buy it. Or bought after passing. Basically, everything is on Steam and GOG, I did not have to walk further.
Why did the trackers give me something that Steam and other sites does not give me? Everything is simple – the minimum amount of information, its convenient organization and the absence of any recommendations. As a result – new sensations from games that I would never find and would not launch. And now I write reviews to such games.
Introduction
Time blades interested me for three reasons – I never heard about them, the CIS developer and this is a slasher, an extremely rare genre in our time. I will attribute the colorful picture of the game and the main character – a half -destroyed blonde in heels with a Japanese name to additional, but not defining factors. The description of the game, like the plot as a whole, cannot be attributed to the pluses – it sounds too clicked and felt: “Beautiful Ayumi, perfectly armed and fearless, goes to the ancient island in search of treasures and adventure. Saturated with the magic of chaos and complete secrets, he will delight the hunter not only with trophies, but also a whole army of bloodthirsty monsters. ". This does not scare me, so forward, conquer the rebellious.
The developer mentioned by the CIS-Gaijin Entertainment is already familiar to some of the similar game X-Blades, which was also a slasher, and the heroines are somewhat similar. But I learned about this after passing.
To my surprise, the entry turned out to be good. The video opens the video of a kind of black-black monk, who, standing in front of a gadal ball, spreads with a thought in the tree before the gathering of the same NPCs about the mission, purpose and all this here. At the same moment, two burst at the secret meeting – Zero’s treasures and the main character – Ayumi. The latter applies to the ball, the video is interrupted and more or less smoothly goes into the main screen. The reception is not new, but not yet beaten.
Just look at this sweet grandfather. By the way, he hides the second hand under the mantle, but at the end of the game I still did not understand why.
Gameplay
Next begins the game itself. The ball (aka sphere) transfers the heroine to the Dragon Valley, where we are waiting for the only and, for the most part, linear adventure. We are immediately thrown into battle. Here you have some incomprehensible stone or metal knights, find a fight. The set of movements is standard for the genre – non -stop blows with a sword, tossing the enemy, a stop, a jump, a double jump and shooting from firearms. It can be seen that the developers were inspired by DMC and Bayonetta, but in the performance of all points they did not reach. It will not work to combine blows, since it is only one. Just in the stupid to beat enemies is extremely boring and bothers after a few minutes. Throw the enemy into the air or bounce and shoot enemies from the air yourself. Firearms must be taken out, they need to be aimed, reloaded. This should be added to the game, but in fact it strongly sees the dynamics. After a certain number of blows or depending on the position of the enemy, the icon lights up above it and Ayumi can finish off. All of them are the same and also quickly bored. And when there are many enemies and they are all slightly beaten, the battle turns into porridge, where, by pressing one button, we just jump from one monster to another.
An example of finishing. At first it will arouse respect, and subsequently bothers.
In addition to waving swords and shooting, the heroine is endowed with magical abilities. There are only three plus reinforced versions that quickly appear during the game – fiery, freezing and power waves. For use, it is necessary to accumulate a scale of rage by beating enemies with swords or shooting, and then just press the desired button. Everything is logical here – everyone starts to burn from the fire, they freeze from the ice, and the power wave puts on the shoulder blades. The reinforced version can be obtained with an almost complete filling of the scale, and it differs only by a slightly large preparation time and damage in a circle, not an arc. Abilities can be pumped in special altars for the souls (something luminous) remaining after enemies or broken objects. Moreover, the number of these same shower is not displayed anywhere, and on the altar you can always choose only 2 improvements.
What else can?
You can attract to enemies, https://21coukcasino.co.uk/ you can unwind the time back, look for chests with things – swords, rings, amulets, firearms.
The mechanics of rewinding time from the Prince of Persia was reinvented in his own way. Now rewinding creates Ayumi clones that repeat past actions. This allows you to activate switches, pass through unstable doors, bypass enemies from the back and run away from an annoying, invulnerable monster. When filling out the time scale, you can strip a small army of swordsmen or a shot detachment. This is fun at first, but then it simply bothers. In the course of the game, the time will have to rewind a huge number of times, just to open the doors and activate the mechanisms. The same action has to be repeated from time to time, without a single hint of diversity. You see a green mechanism – you need to use rewinding and find the second. A couple of doors in a row revealed just like that, not a problem, on the third you will rewind time. There are puzzles in the game, but not for them they came up with a time rewind mechanics.
For rare, but very tedious puzzles, they came up with another ability – a spatial dome. You activate and you see the invisible, or you are bought up by space and time, I still do not understand. The dome is needed only for the manifestation of invisible opponents, who are not quite invisible, flirting with energy on puzzles and searching for rare chests.
By the way about chests and their search. For them, the heroine has a special compass, the green arrow of which indicates the direction of the main task, and the orange – on the chest. I used this possibility of 2-3 times, after which I simply scored on it and lost nothing. You can stumble on chests just like that or jumping into a completely obvious place for this. A set of things from the chest is extremely meager and in fact it gives nothing. Rather, it gives, according to the description, but during the game of these bonuses you simply do not notice or do not use. In the same way, the difference between the fiery and ice waves is not noticeable. Well, enemies burn and burn, froze and froze, fell and fell. In the first case, the resulting damage is incomprehensible, the enemies froze in the second, but they continue to wave their sticks in front of your nose, in the third – you can break a little lying. By the middle of the game, there is a feeling that the developers wanted to add the maximum amount of the mechanic, but not one in the end did not finish.
Bestiary
Let’s move on to our opponents. They can be divided into 5 types: ground ordinary, ground mini-bosses, large bosses, flying trail and invulnerable something. The latter is difficult to attribute to the enemy, but still he is.
It is possible to be in open space only in the shade, otherwise death. And due to the fact that it can be difficult to control the movement, you have to solve everything with a machine gun.
Ordinary ground monsters do not cause special problems. They are more made to fill in the gameplay and accumulating the energy that is needed for pumping abilities, although this remains a controversial moment, since I have not seen any units of this energy. There are ordinary opponents against which it is necessary to use the rewinding of time to knock down the shield, but this happens extremely rarely. Flying creatures are easy to shoot or finish, just drawing to them. Mostly mechanics are used on mini-bosses when you need to run from the back or make a second finishing during the first. Yes, there is such an opportunity, but we are not taught to her. In places, everything is aggravated by a rocket launcher, from which enemies of any degree of strength are easily shot. It’s good that at least it is impossible to carry it often with you, otherwise the game would have turned into a shooting range.
Training is built into the game itself and it is made extremely contradictory. At the beginning of the game, we are immediately thrown into battle, where we have to look for the right buttons to the touch, and then they say that you can jump, shoot, and magic bullets with magic. This is realized through small KAT scenes on the game engine. We fight or open the door, passing three meters-a cut-scene begins with the representation of a new enemy or something else, where we are openly hinted at how to act. Then we pass three more meters-a cat-scene, a new type of enemy or door, switch, plot turn and so on. In the first quarter of an hour, this is repeated 10-15 times, which is bored with the order. We are distracted in every possible way from gameplay. Add to this the constant chatter of the heroine and teaching new magic tricks when we are transferred to a special arena, where we need to fill in the scale and work out the ability to 10 enemy. This is convenient on the one hand, but takes time on the other.
Big bosses do not actually cause trouble. This is based on a long repetition of the same action in an arbitrary order. We dodge certain attacks, which the cat cried, beating-be-be-bee, we dodge again and so on. Sometimes it is better to make a pack of your copies and beat at all without danger on the head. It is necessary to make an additional action, but it is also extremely obvious. Bosses have no phases. I did not remember the bosses themselves, they are simply not expressive. The last enemy is an invulnerable something. The creature that occasionally appears, quickly gets to us and devours. The tactics are always alone, jump from it for some time, while the time scale is filled, to rewind everything to the maximum and perform the right action while the creature is chasing the copy. This is already nervous from the second meeting.
Faceless invulnerable creature with claws. To the very end I thought that she would have a story, but this did not happen.
The game also contains an element of collecting in the form of a naturalist notes scattered on the map. All of them spill a ray of light on the plot of the game, but do not affect it in any way. Sometimes there is a dissonance between what is happening on the screen and read in the note, when the heroine sincerely does not understand what is happening, but this is obvious from the newly found record. There is a bestiary, but there are two words about it too. This is a spider and he has sharp claws, fear. And this is a guard, he is very scary. No important features, no deep lure should wait.
Bestiary is needed for a checkmark. There is no interesting information here from a historical point of view or from practical.
And remember that Ayumi has a partner Zero, which I wrote about at the very beginning of the review? He is just a statist here, like another lady whose name I do not remember. They do not move the plot, appear a couple of times a game and perform one single function that is a spoiler, so I will not write about it.
These are all statists too. It is impossible to talk to them, you can’t trade, nothing is impossible. Although, something is still possible.
Let’s talk about good. Namely – about graphics. She is decent here. Good work has been done with lighting and flowers, they are oversaturated here, which you expect from the setting. The environment is just as well painted and blind, but it is felt alive only in statics. You can endlessly make screenshots, especially taking into account the fact that the interface is completely hidden after a while. In dynamics, these are plastic decorations for the same plastic battles. Cluses on which cannot be jumped and invisible walls quickly destroy the idyll of the first minutes of the game.
The artistic style of the game immediately reminded me of the recently pop -up "Captain Blade". It turned out for a reason. The art director of Blade until 2008 and the manager of the Blades of Time project is the same person-Alexander Nagorny. We can say the blades are partially saturated with blade.
What the game cannot be taken away is the variety and volume of locations. Here you have a jungle, and a desert, and icy caves, and even snow goes.
Under the curtain of the review, you need to describe the heroine of the blades. This is a Russian Dante in a skirt, who is not afraid of anything, climbs into a wound, throws rare, but stinging jokes, well, and fights alone against everyone, though it makes it many times worse than the original. For the whole game, I remembered only one aptly the phrase said when the flying platform moved incredibly slowly: “Well, why are they moving so slowly?". And this is rather the curtsy of the developers in the direction of themselves. Another heroine under the middle of the game begins to change outfits depending on the situation. Then Latex puts on, then fur. It looks great, but you could make an eyeliner to this, and not suddenly change everything. The heroine does not benefit and Russian voice acting. Despite the fact that Ayumi seems to be young and inexperienced, the voice turned out to be sonorous and annoying. It turned out better in English localization, due to which the heroine is perceived much better. The music in the game is also not remembered. In some places it is a middle peasant epic, and then everything goes into oriental motifs, as if copied from the Prince of Persia trilogy.
Sometimes the game also has problems in the technical part. With frequent flirting over time, the heroine may remain in it until the next kat-scene. More precisely, the process ends, and the screen remains red. It happens that the sound of shooting will get hung up or the weapon will stop recharge. Sometimes management goes crazy and then the heroine instead of a regular blow begins to scatter waves in different directions without the consumption of a rage scale. Again, it saves either a cat-scene or a reboot of the game.
I did not know how to finish the review, but at the last moment I came up with a new description for the game.
“A half -naked blonde in heels fell into the Dragon Valley without a single dragon and now shines differently to the left and right. She often talks and sometimes changes into latex. But there was nothing to catch on the island, so she can only get back, simultaneously passing a quick course of psychoanalysis ".
By the way, in 2019, Blades of Time came to Nintendo Switch. I’m not sure that the game was somehow greatly redone, but the trailer has a deceptive impression that there is a dynamics and some kind of response to actions. If anyone played, write in the comments. Just interesting.
