I remember standing in the Marietta, Ohio Gamestop looking for a game to preorder. One title kind of caught my eye. Some game named Blades of Time. I asked my friend Dustin, who is the manager, what all he’s heard about it. After getting on the computer he had a confused look on his face. According to him there, was nothing on the game.
With that great sales pitch, I preordered it, and it just came out (it was slated for February). So I was hoping I found another good under the radar title. I was slightly worried when I saw the case and I thought that it was just another fantasy-based hack and slash where Konami just put the bare minimum into it.
That was until they showed me the time reverse ability. The amount of fun you can have with this is astronomical. What happens is you hold in a certain button and time rewinds around you, and you see a copy of yourself doing exactly what you were doing. How can this be fun you ask? I ran into a heavily armored enemy, so I drew my machine gun and emptied my entire magazine. I reloaded and took one step to my right and rewound time. Now there were two of me ravaging the thing with a machine gun. So you not only rewind time, but also kind of make a copy of yourself.
Using this ability is also a necessity against most bosses. One boss frustrated me to the point I had to walk away for a bit. When I came back, there was a ray of light and an epiphany hit me.
After you deal enough damage to a boss, you can do a special move where your character (Ayumi) will jump on his neck and stomp his head until he throws you off. The problem I ran into before was that because of a regeneration pack on his back, he quickly regained life. So once he threw me off I rewound time so that my copy was curb stomping him while I ran over to his back and did a special move to cut off his special pack.
It’s not all a masterpiece. Story-wise this game is about average. You follow Ayumi, who is a treasure hunter, trying to find some invaluable treasure. There aren’t a whole lot of unique characters either. But who cares, we’re playing this game to kill stuff right? Well, if you are, you will probably get more out of it.
One of the epic draw backs to Blades of Time is the voice work. There are frequent occasions where Ayumi just starts talking to herself in random intervals. Also there were times where she said things so obvious I thought about giving her the rank of captain obvious. I almost turned the sound off a few times, but where the voice acting was annoying, the musical score and the sound effects were stellar, so I got used to my main character’s quirks.
While looking at the value score of 5 GiN Gems, I’m sure you’re wondering if I’ve gone off the edge. I assure you I’m fine. Blades of Time is currently $45 brand new. Now, I’ve seen games, I actually reviewed one, that have been given 2 Gin Gems and sold for over $60. I think everyone should take a look at this one. Not being big on fantasy games forced Blades of Time to prove itself to me. And it did. I’ll proudly say it passed, and I give it a strong 4 GiN Gem rating.