Blades of Time

This game looks and feels and plays beautifully. It has a Final Fantasy vibe in a Tomb Raider setting, and it delivers exactly what it promises from the screenshots. You're a fantasy version of Lara Croft, battling endless monsters in superb landscapes. Why the 2 stars? The gameplay is horrible. Nothing ever fits, the bosses are horrendous, all you seem to do is turn on buttons and levers and there are no real puzzles or any sense of danger other than danger of boredom or extreme frustration. This is not a good game, you will not have fun. It's a pity because the artstyle is perfectly beautiful and I wanted to like and finish this, but 6 hours in I just couldn't take the boredom anymore. Such a pity. Great potential here.

I really wanted to like this game - it could have been great if some effort was put in. For a cheap price (bought on sale) it has been mostly fun hence two stars instead of one. Give it a go if you like, just don't expect much. It took about 8-10 hours to get to the end boss so I got my money's worth. Sloppy, rushed development makes the game look and feel tacky. The voice acting is shockingly bad. The story is barely existent. The things the main character says is laughable and barely fits with the situation. I found it a tedious slog at times - hack, slash and shoot you way through a room - camera pans on exactly where you need to go (which was obvious anyway) and repeat. The main fun was the not so hidden treasure chests to equip new gear. As for the end boss, even after Googling how to defeat him I gave up and didn't care that I couldn't be bother to spend half an hour chipping away at his health.

While fun, Blades of Time is heavily flawed with design choices that can make you crawl during the gameplay. Without them, this game could be a Devil May Cry clone well worth its full price. What really amazes me in this game is its scenery and maps. They've managed to create a world that is beautiful to look at and some vistas are worth the awe. You will wonder in montains, forests, deserts, snow montains, sky alien ships islands and you will like it. They're gorgeous. Unfortunately the praises stop there. Gameplay is frustrating in many ways. Some examples: You do not have free flow of movement Ayumi can 'dodge' and double jump pretty high, but after each animation she will have a delay animation of almost 2 seconds, which breaks the flow of movement in a way that you feel the developers decided to punish players that would try to be creative and experiment with her moveset. That means that you cannot jump, dodge, attack, use a magic attack without the almost 2 seconds animation delay that will stop her after each action. (This is so frustrating I cannot express enough) Some areas have repetitive combinations of enemies that are REALLY annoying to deal with By annoying I don't mean hard as if Im crying because I couldn't handle with it (I play DMC, MGRR and other HacknSlash without problems). By annoying I mean annoying combinations that force you to play the way the developers intended, again, breaking free flow and creative gameplay, which is the strongest point in games like this Time rewind mechanics are FUN to combo with, but you cannot move while you rewind time There's a mechanic that is a huge part of gameplay and puzzles and it is really fun to experiment with (specially when you can create more than 5 copies of yourself and combo enemies to death haha) BUT - and it is a huge BUT - You cannot move when you rewind time, only after you use it. Again, breaking free flow of creative movement and gameplay. Overall a fun but heavily flawed experience.

Partial Controller Support at best. You can run, jump, and attack, but i have to access the keyboard to open a treasure or use the compass....... so that's a no on controller support.

The game is riddled with bugs and glitches, causing frequent crashes. In the final boss of hard mode, the power strike button doesn’t work, so I ended up pressing random buttons. I accidentally hit “New Game,” which erased all my saved progress, forcing me to start over. Sometimes, the reload button for the gun doesn’t work properly, and pressing the usual attack button (left mouse button) triggers a fire magic attack instead. The game is full of bugs and glitches.