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Not a completely phoned effort
Benjamin Franklin once wrote: Nothing is certain except death and taxes. He's right, but in the modern era of the game, I'd like to add some extra certainty to this list: that your favorite video game franchise will one day release a mobile entry. It is very rare that a smartphone derivative product matches the magic of the original series, but some fit the format beautifully. Some start well and keep improving, others find a solid foundation before slowing down the experience, as they are not profitable enough.
It's too early to say which way The Elder Scrolls: Blades will take, but at least the game has a good starting base.
The Elder Scrolls: Blades (iOS, Android)
Developer: Bethesda
Publisher: Bethesda
Release: March 27, 2019 (Early Access)
MSRP: Free-to-play w / microtransactions
The Elder Scrolls: Blades Players play in the role of a member of the Blades, a group of highly skilled warriors formerly employed by the Empire. At the beginning of the game, the blades are no longer and your created character returns to his hometown to find him smoldering. Many of its residents have fled or been captured. As the most skilled warrior, it's up to you to rebuild the city and find out why it was targeted.
blades is Bethesda's interpretation of what The parchment of the elders should look like a free mobile game and it's important to know what it means. This is not an open world game, with a vast landscape to explore and the relative freedom to proceed as you wish. It is rather a largely structured experience centered on rebuilding your destroyed city. To rebuild buildings and other monuments, you need supplies and to get these supplies, you have to get into jobs and rescue quests of captured inhabitants and loot collection. The more people you save, the more quests you unlock and the more buildings you can build. It's a solid configuration as long as you can handle the limitations of the format.
The main limitation lies in the different timers that the game contains. blades do not limit how much you can play – and you can play ad-infinitum in the abyss – but this limits the number of times you can be rewarded for your efforts. At the end of each task or quest, you will receive a safe. Each type of chest is associated with a timer indicating the time it will take to open. Wooden chests, which are commonly found in linear dungeons and wooded areas as you explore for jobs and quests, only take five seconds to open. This time increases considerably when you open silver and gold chests, which take respectively three and six hours. You can not open more than one chest at a time unless you spend gems.
Gems are the central microtransaction of this game. There is no (yet) booty chest, but you can spend up to $ 100 in a single gem purchase to unearth your character. Gemstones can be spent on weapons and limited-time urban structures, or to open a safe instantly, make a new piece of equipment, build a new building, or do a job you just do not want to do. You can win gems at stake, but I would not say that the system is generous, as it is now.
The best way to win gems in blades is to take quests and jobs. The jobs are updated automatically and according to the time. Therefore, if you do not do it someday, he may not be here the next day. The quests are unlocked by chatting with the people of your city, which serves as the hub of the game and is the only aspect of the game. blades it even looks far away from the origins of the main series of the main series. Once you have accepted a quest or a job, you will be directed to a small linear dungeon or wooded area. There are very few exploration opportunities when you are on a quest, although some areas have secrets waiting to be discovered. Unfortunately, most of the areas you cross tend to blend into each other. There are a limited number of assets involved here and it does not take long before every job starts to smell bad. Seeing the same stairway, the same bridge, the same cabin abandoned in all the other quests in which I boarded, I wore well before I reached level ten.
Exploration is therefore not quite an asset for the game, any more than the fight. I have never been a fan of Old scrolls combat system, although blades does his best to fold the design into a mobile format. The fight is always played in real time, but once you are locked in combat, you can not move. Your only options are to attack or block. There are three different types of attacks in the game: standard, magical and skill. Standard attacks activate when you hold your finger on the screen of your phone. A circle meter will appear and fill up, and if you are able to lift your finger as it reaches its apex, you will perform a powerful attack. Raise your finger too early and you may not attack at all. too late and you will do damage to your opponent.
Magic attacks and skills are learned as you level up. You can only equip three at a time and these are activated by pressing the button corresponding to the screen. Magic and skill attacks are related to their own counters that update as quickly as the fight continues. Although the attack is obviously important, blocking is the key to the fight. By holding the shield button on the screen, you will get your shield or the corresponding feature of a two-handed weapon, such as the handle of an elongated ax. Set your block correctly and knock out your enemy, creating an opening for a magical attack or an address attack. Enemies can also block, with or without a shield, and I was quick to understand that the key to every fight is to be reactive rather than proactive. Waiting to use my shield to stun an enemy can lengthen the duration of each fight, but at least it almost always guarantees that I will survive.
So the fight is effective but not really engaging. Fortunately, blades is smart enough in the campaign to keep quests and jobs short. Most can be finished in minutes and when taken for a bite, The Elder Scrolls: Blades is a decent mobile game. Moving from one quest to another, working on my city, making new supplies and equipping my hero does not really become commonplace. It's when one of these activities eclipses the rest that I start enviously watching the other apps on my phone, and that there is no element of blades it tires me faster than the Abyss.
Abyss is unblocked early enough in the countryside. Available in the main menu, the mode is a multi-storey dungeon that rewards players with better loot as they venture lower. It also highlights the weaknesses of the package. The Abyss is ridiculously repetitive in terms of layout and design, and one battle after another shows how limited your options are in eliminating your enemies. I went to the tenth floor of the dungeon on my first try and I could probably do it further with my current equipment, but I just do not buy what he sells.
The Abyss, as well as the rest of the game, can be played in landscape or portrait mode, each with its strengths and weaknesses. Portrait mode is the way I spent most of my time with the game. Using simple touch controls, it's pretty easy to move my North around each dungeon to get it find exactly where I want it. There are some odd quirks with the controls – several characters of my character stopped and slowly turned around. – but the system works well when you play on my phone.
On my iPad, I mainly used the landscape mode. By playing in this orientation, you have the option of using standard touch controls or using virtual joysticks. The movement of the joystick can be calibrated to your liking and the game even gives you the opportunity to move the button of the shield. It would be nice if the latter option was also available in portrait mode because its central location is poor when playing on a larger screen iPad. I just want to point out quickly that my iPad and phone accounts are the same. Because blades still online and because it uses a Bethesda account, connecting to the game from one device is no different than accessing an account. Elder Scrolls Online account from another computer.
Since the publication of this review, I have participated in the Advance Access for a week. treat blades like I do my other free games – something that I play a few minutes at a time throughout the day and that reminds me to start the process of unlocking my chest – worked well. I have not yet wanted to move on and I even felt a real sense of accomplishment after completing a handful of challenging quests. The ability to browse the area after reaching a goal is nice and the game even allows you to keep all the loot and XP you win if you fall during a job or quest.
I just hope that the warm feelings I have towards this game last. I've seen how decent mobile games can escalate and there is a myriad of ways The Elder Scrolls: Blades can blow up in the future. There is a PvP Arena mode not currently available in advance access and I wonder how – if at all – the game will handle games between players who have not spent a dime and those who have no problem dropping large batteries for superior equipment. But it is a concern for a complete review at the end of the line.
Right now, as I get closer and closer to the revenge of what has happened to my city, I am curious to know what Bethesda has planned to do. blades in the future, what types of events of limited duration I can hope for and how will the game reward those who play in addition to those who spend. The current situation is a good start, and I can only hope that this game as a service is developing, it encompasses the best of the free game model and not the worst.
[This scoreless review is based on a copy of the game downloaded from Google Play and the App Store.]
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The Elder Scrolls: Blades Reviewed by CJ Andriessen
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