X Blades

X-Blades is a frenetic action game where you slice, shoot and blast hordes of spawning monsters on a per-room basis, all the while collecting their souls and using them to purchase new ways to kill things. Existing somewhere between God of War and Gauntlet with a splash of Heavy Metal Magazine, X-Blades is a brightly-colored, repetitive, unoriginal, overly-caffeinated sugar-bomb ADD blast of a game with B-grade anime visuals, a half-baked, incomprehensible plot, and a French language track. It is also kind of fun, if you can check your inner game critic at the door.

Plotting Points by Tan(x)
Video Game Reviews by a Very Busy Math Teacher

Game: X - Blades
Platform: XBOX 360
Played For: 8 hours

This is not a critic-friendly game. It is almost too easy to take pot shots at the shaky jump controls, the fairly broken magic system (about halfway through the game you can purchase a spell that pretty much solves all of your problems from there onwards) or the dubious visual benefit of a mostly-naked anime nymph with overly polygonal butt cheeks and a dedicated follow-cam. Our heroine Ayumi hasn’t much in the way of personality (what she does have comes across as annoying) and her goals, decisions, and relationships with the other characters in the game (such as they are) would be cliche if they were ever to be spelled out (the game merely provides a sketch.)

But let’s face it, this IS a game that has truth in advertising. The packaging pretty much shows you what you can expect to get... nigh endless waves of silly monsters on which to utilize Ayumi’s many means of hacking and slashing. Ability upgrades to collect which allow new even flashier moves to be unlocked. Acceptable controls, acceptable backgrounds, and a plot to laugh at. This game may be guilty pleasure, but it has a kind of mindless draw that shouldn’t be ignored. It is well worth a rent if you’re in the mood for fast action and mass destruction.

So, what to do with the rest of this review? A little research on the internet seems to imply that almost no one has actually played this game. There were no walkthoughs at Gamefaqs or any of the other usual sites. Almost no information exists on how to achieve the “good ending” in the game, or what is offered in the additional Sky Island content on the Xbox 360. So just in case you are interested in playing, let me offer a few pointers that I gleaned from my own brief, hyperkinetic playthrough on easy mode.

As you play your way forward through the game, Ayumi gathers souls by smashing objects and killing beasties. The amount of souls you earn increases exponentially as the game progresses, so that by the final levels I found it to be no problem to purchase all of Ayumi’s abilities and to rack up a bunch of easy achievements. One exception to this appeared to be the Dark Powers, which I lost on my playthrough after the first swing around the map (you’ll travel around it twice, once during the day and once at night.) So if you want all of those, try to buy them before you arrive back in the initial room where you fight the lion dude... you’ll know what I mean.

To make it easier to afford the spells, you can find a “scroll” two or three times throughout the game. The scroll allows the next purchase you make to be at half-price. You cannot choose not to use a scroll once you have one, so make sure you use it on one of the high ticket items. Each ability tree has about three or four things to buy, with the fourth being the most expensive... the more expensive ones are only revealed after you’ve purchased the lower ones, so choose one path... dark, for instance, and buy up to the next to last in order to use a scroll on the truly costly spell.

Buy electricity, ice and light bolts early, as some critters can only be damaged by a specific type of energy. Light magic, which you get later, seems to affect almost anything, though, and the final light magic spell is a radial explosion that you can use over and over again to defeat just about anything you come across. Monster generators are an exception... these can only be hurt by your swords, and should be dealt with first when they appear, as they will continue to spawn bad guys indefinitely if not.

Let’s see... there is also the Great Gorge, the only truly annoying level in the game. Thankfully, it is an optional level, sort of off on the southeast corner of the map. It features a number of pedestals with gaps between them, each of which means instant death if you mess up your jump. I found the leaping controls far too fickle and unpredictable to make this area fun, but there is still a reason you might want to investigate it... an additional costume at the top of the top pedestal. While still somewhat thongy, the new costume is a little more reasonable as attire... so if you like the white swimsuit, don’t grab this, as once you pick up the new costume you can’t switch back.

You get two more costume options after you’ve beaten the game once... these both look pretty much like the one in the Great Gorge, but they confer onto you either a mild health regeneration or a small bit of armor for your knees, which actually makes a sort of sense when thinking about the number of ankle-biting monsters Ayumi has to dispatch. Once again, you can’t change between outfits once you’ve selected one to wear... the only way Ayumi can have clothes that tight is to glue them on, I guess.

My playthrough ended on what was supposedly a sad note, as Ayumi dolefully laments killing some dude that she met like once earlier in the game. As Ayumi’s general strategy in life up until this point has been to repeatedly do stupid things... like touching cursed artifacts right after powerful lion people tell her they are cursed... I saw no problem with this. My suspicion is that most people who rent or buy this game will feel the same way... there just isn’t any compelling reason to increase the number of trips you’ve made around the map to four.

Will I play it more: I don’t feel that Ayumi’s actions warrant her a better ending