Blade & Soul Review

Blade & Soul is an upcoming martial arts fantasy-based MMORPG game set to be released later this year. The game is currently being developed by Korean based game studio NCsoft. NCsoft has been renowned for producing other famous MMORPG games with the likes of Aion, Guild Wars and even City of Heroes all part of its resume. That’s an impressive number of game already under its belt which suggests to me that Blade & Soul will be just as good as the other games NCSoft has made in the past.

According to some reports in back in 2010, the game was due out in 2011 for the PC and even the PS3 and Xbox 360. Although it’s now 2012 and there is still no release date for the game. It’s expected to be released later this year although no official word has been announced. Let’s hope is released in 2012 as the game has been in development for many years now. It’s likely to be released in South Korea first before making its way into Western countries so there’s a chance the release date may even slip into 2013…

In terms of Blade & Soul’s approach, the game is set to revolutionize the MMORPG genre by being more storyline based than most of the other games. Most other MMORPG games lack any type of story and players just end up leveling up and becoming stronger by mindlessly killing a whole lot of enemies. NCSoft’s chief financial officer Jaeho Lee has stated that Blade & Soul is being made to attract players that love a heavy narrative in their games. If you like single player RPG games that feature history behind all the characters in the game, than Blade & Soul will be a game to your liking.

Graphically, Blade & Soul looks very impressive. This is because the game is using the Unreal Engine 3 to power its graphics engine. Many people will know this is the same engine that powers a lot of video games including the likes of the Gears of War series and Batman: Arkham City just to name a few. Even though Blade & Soul is yet to be released yet, it’s made quite a following with the character designs you can create. Many of the female characters wear very skimpy clothing and it appears as if all of them have had surgery done on their breasts. I suspect many male gamers would choose to be a female character as a result of this…

As popular as the character models and graphics are, the combat system is what many gamers eagerly await to play. Since this is a martial arts-based MMORPG game, you can expect the combat to be fast and swift. Looking at gameplay footage from the game, PvP combat may very well be the best feature in the entire game. This is mainly because it plays more like a fighting game than a MMORPG where you just point and click. Characters can block, dodge jump and even execute aerial combo attacks onto their opponents. It’s a far cry from the system of yesteryear where you just click on the enemy and your character automatically hacks like crazy.

Much like another upcoming MMORPG called “Core Blaze”, Blade & Soul is shaping up to be one game that will revolutionize the entire genre. Not only with the game’s graphics and enjoyable gameplay features but the fact that it’s more storyline based than most other MMORPG game. There’s a chance Blade & Soul could be released later this year although it’s very likely it may come out in 2013 since it’s not even out in it home country of South Korea yet…