Considering it launched in Korea back in June 2012, Blade & Soul has certainly taken its time to come West. Now with a closed beta planned for autumn and full launch finally locked in before the end of the year, the long wait is finally coming to an end. According to NCSoft, the reason behind such a delay is because the MMO’s story, which fully incorporates the Chinese genre of “Wuxia”, needed time to be localised. Having actually had a chance to play bits of the game myself, however, I’m not convinced the wait didn’t do more harm than good.
I’m getting ahead of myself. Blade & Soul is a free-to-play MMO originating in Korea, with a story and setting reminiscent of films like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Hero or House of Flying Daggers. It aims to differentiate itself from most other MMOs through both this setting, and zones designed with verticality in mind, which you traverse like a true kung fu master by running up walls, running along branches and gliding through the skies using the power of your chi. While the aesthetic makes a nice superficial change, it’s the foundational differences offered by the design mentality that make the biggest impact. While so many MMOs can feel like the same game with different skills, the freedom given to explore zones however you want feels fresh… at least at first. After a couple of hours however, it unfortunately just felt that instead of exploring zones horizontally I also had another axis to slog across when making my way back to quest-givers, rather than the fresh gameplay experience I was promised.
Exploring the zones is certainly something you’ll want to do. They’re gorgeously designed, popping with colour and populated by ferocious creatures ranging from carnivorous plants with waving tendrils to beasts of Eastern mythology. Unfortunately, it’s let down by poor draw distance and sketchy graphics, the latter of which is most notable in some of the fully-voiced cinematics. Don’t get me wrong, soaring over a blossom-filled valley before plunging down head-first to split open the head of a Kirin certainly offers a rush, but it’s somewhat diluted when the accompanying flora pops into existence when you’re just five feet from the ground. We’re told the game is “pre-alpha”, but quite how that can be true when it’s been out for so long in the East is mystifying. Blade & Soul’s aesthetic is set up to be one of its main selling points, so fixing this needs to be a focus for NCSoft in the months between now and launch.
The game’s set to launch in the West with four races and six classes, and over the course of my two hours I got the chance to try out three of the latter: the Summoner, a pet class who exists to support their doe-eyed cat minion; the Force Master, who wields the power of fire and ice, with switching between the two in clean rotation being the key to success; and the Kung Fu Master, whose fast-fistwork is coupled with responsive countering to create a more twitch-based class. Other classes include the roguish Assassin, the belligerent Blademaster and the hulking Destroyer.
Unlike other MMOs, there’s no ‘Holy Trinity’ of Tank, Healing and DPS classes here. The developer asserts this is borne from a desire to prevent lengthy queues for dungeons at max level, so all classes have a smattering of healing and crowd control abilities to share the responsibility around. If this works, it’ll mean much more teamwork is needed in combat to ensure victory, but I’ve always found games that emphasise that to be the most enjoyable. Additionally, anything that reduces the time spent at max level sitting around waiting for a dungeon to pop is alright in my book.
Blade & Soul’s combat stands out from the start. Like WildStar and TERA, action-combat takes up the majority of your playtime, with navigating out of the range of enemy attacks before manually targeting them for follow-up attacks being crucial to success. One of the best factors, however, are the utilitarian hotbars on which skills are slotted. So often in MMOs these become desperately overcrowded as you level up and unlock an increasing number of skills with minor situational use, but you keep around ‘just in case’. Blade & Soul does away with this thanks to a small hotbar filled with contextual skills triggered by combos. If you’re attacking with your left mouse button, for example, it’ll cycle through various different attacks as you go. Interrupt your cycle by pressing one of the number keys and the move may change, or a follow-up move that’s now available will flash up on your screen bound to the ‘F’ key. It’s a very fluid system and one that enabled me to change tactics swiftly, which certainly made combat feel tenser and more reactionary when coupled with the emphasis on counters. Compared with some of the more traditional tab-targeting MMOs out there like World of Warcraft or Final Fantasy XIV, where you’re watching your hotbars for cooldowns rather than the enemies’ incoming blows, it’s certainly more involving.
Two years ago, this would have been innovative for the genre. Now, not so much. In the intervening time other MMO titles have not only embraced action-combat, it’s become the norm for most. Though the combo system appears more complex than TERA’s one at a first glance, in which you’re able to build your own movesets, I couldn’t help feeling while playing that TERA’s version was more satisfying. With that in mind, it’s understandable why the longer I played, the less enthusiasm I was able to muster.
Three chapters of the story will be available at launch, though an additional three have been released in Korea. These are ready for Westernisation based on how quickly the playerbase consumes what’s already there, so look for more concrete information following the closed beta test. As you’d expect, Dungeons and Raids make up the rest of the PvE content on offer, with the former coming mainly in six-person varieties, though four- and two-person versions do feature. Raids, meanwhile, will be 24-man and a cross-server matchmaking system will be available for both straight out the gate. PvP too comes in two flavours. The first is Arena, which pits players 1-on-1 against each other, while the other is Open World combat, which brings us rather neatly to the costume system.
In Blade & Soul, your characters’ stats aren’t tied to their appearance. A robust costume system exists that enables you to dress pretty much however you please, whether that be in terrifying glowing armour made of flames, or more comical fare. It’s also how you flag yourself for PvP, by wearing an outfit associated with your chosen faction. As long as you have it on, those with a different allegiance can do everything in their power to take you down, but if you’d rather focus on questing you can simply wear something else and be left in peace. Endgame will revolve around the pursuit of rare costumes from bosses, along with the other options mentioned above. Stats, meanwhile, are boosted by drops that you slot in a circle on the character menu to boost your power, but not alter your look, with set bonuses also available.
NCSoft point-blank refused to go into specifics about the business model – something that will immediately raise concerns of pay-to-win items – but I was assured content wouldn’t be gated so players won’t be divided. The presence of items like Keys and Unsealing Charms needed to unlock daily quest reward chests and reveal stats on items certainly causes qualms, but we’ll have to see. If you’re a fan of wuxia, the aesthetic and narrative mean you’ll probably want to check this out, but as a general MMO fan I saw nothing likely to pull my attention away from the other entries in the genre already leeching my free time. It’s a shame it didn’t come out three years earlier.
Luke Karmali is IGN's UK News Editor. You too can revel in mediocrity by following him on Twitter.