Pros & Cons
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- Rich and unique action combat.
- Fantastic, highly stylized art style.
- Impressive environments and visuals.
- Interesting martial arts fantasy premise.
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- Run of the mill questing and character progression.
- Classes are racially restricted.
- Current release lacks newer content of other regions.
- Most dungeons are short and uninteresting.
Blade & Soul is a highly stylized Korean MMORPG inspired by martial arts and Asian mythology. The free-to-play PC game launched this month in America and Europe, but originally debuted in Korea four years ago. As a result, Blade & Soul's Western release benefits from years of balance tweaks and patches. Blade & Soul stands out from other MMO titles in the market thanks to the blend of combo-centric action, lush Asian fantasy locales, and bombastic artwork by manhwa artist Hyung-Tae Kim. The combat is amazingly well balanced for both PvE and PvP, and the game looks great and runs well. The downside? Blade & Soul has a relatively unimpressive questing and leveling system, and most of its dungeons are linear and boring. The lack of level 50 content on launch is also disappointing, too. Nonetheless, there is a lot to enjoy with what's launched so far.
Dungeons & Brawling
Blade & Soul doesn't reinvent the wheel when it comes to undertaking quests, forming parties, or looting dungeons. Enemies give negligible amounts of experience per kill, so the bulk of your leveling is done through quests. Quests are all varied and interesting, if you take the time to read the quest dialogue. They run the gamut from grandiose quests like helping a resistance militia sabotage an encroaching empire, to more menial tasks, like collecting pearls for a vain villager. Because reaching the current 45 level cap is so fast, its easy to mash the accept prompt and skip the stories' more nuanced branches. You can reach level 45 easily if you undertake most quests in each area you visit, which shouldn't take you more than a day of in-game time, total.
View All Many quests involve what Blade & Soul generously describes as dungeons, but these are anything but. Most dungeons in the game are hyper-linear caves filled with enemies and Asian-inspired ornaments. They feel less like dungeons and more like enemy gauntlets. The few dungeons that have substance, like the Blackram Narrows or the Tomb of the Exiles, don't do enough to enliven the experience: they are simply longer gauntlets with more embellished architecture. Final Fantasy XIV by contrast, has massive, multi-level dungeons filled with interesting gimmicks, despite having more traditional rotation-based MMO combat. It would have been nice to see more dungeons approach that level of complexity, but outside of the end-game supply quests, the dungeon experience is utterly banal.
