znix said:
I feel sorry for all you haters. I actually played the game and it kicked ass!
It is highly recommended to anyone who likes fast action.
As long as they've already played all the other games that do this better.
X-Blades is, essentially, the most average videogame in existence. It does some things quite well, the hypersaturated colours make a nice change from next generation brown, and the architectural design is quite cool, but the textures and enemy models are bland, all of the modelling attention having gone on Ayumi herself, some of the bosses are interesting (like the last fight with The Dark, or the Spider Queen), but for every one of those there's another one which is pointless and annoying (like the giant moth, or the last boss, who you can kill before he can run across the room to you by going to light form and spamming light bolts, keeping him stunlocked).
The everyday combat is a bit bland, it's not got the flair of Devil May Cry, the power of God of War, or the tecnique of Ninja Gaiden, most of the combos mean nothing and their timing is fiddly, you just spam on Fire Blades and hack or shoot away, occasionally using an area move when you get surrounded so you don't get hit and lose your combo bonus, but there are at least a couple of variations to break things up (enemies that need you to shoot, or use area attacks, or shooty magic).
The worst thing is the double tap dodge, because the gap where it'll still recognise a second tap and do the dodge rather than a normal jump is huge (at least 1.5, maybe 2 seconds), and that
will kill you repeatedly on The Great Divide.
As for Ayumi's character, well she's kinda bratty and not terribly bright, so exactly the sort of person you'd
expect to get grubby finger marks all over your ancient artefact of doom (see, this is why, if you have an ancient artefact of doom, it is imperative that it not be
shiny). If you're going to do the "accidentally unleashed evil power" storyline, you might as well have a protagonist who
would accidentally unleash the evil power.
Still, it's not exactly long, though the way they extend it by making you go through every area twice with changed lighting is shoddy.