Review: Blades of Time

Blades of time launched somewhat under the radar without a huge ad campaign or hyped spectacle to announce its presence so you would be forgiven for not having noticed it until now. Let’s take a much deserved closer look at this action-adventure game and find out what it is all about.

The well endowed and scantily clad heroine featured on the game’s cover is Ayumi. A protagonist not entirely unlike Lara Croft of Tomb Raider fame. She’s no Lara Croft wannabe, however. Her character is distinguished by over the top acrobatics and extreme martial arts, and some interesting magical abilities that definitely add some variety of the game-play.

Ayumi, through a series of unfortunate events (and cinematic cut-scenes) ends up jumping into a mystical portal. She finds herself transplanted to the aptly named Dragon Island. Once there she gets wound up in a whole misadventure involving her fighting her way through a series of demonic foes.

With the aforementioned fighting, the game mechanics are fairly well done with smooth combat and accessible controls. If you’ve played the God of War and Darksiders series, you’ll be right at home here with Blades of time. Leave the details of the fanciful acrobatic to Ayumi and just focus on slicing and dicing those who get in your way.

The principal game mechanic by which Blades of Time distinguishes itself from those other games is Ayumi’s ability to manipulate time and create virtual clones of herself to help with surpassing challenges and add an interesting element of tactics augmenting the hack and slash aspects of the adventure.

The story is a little ham-fisted and not going to win any awards for amazing writing, but it’s about what you’d expect given the box art for the game. You can think of it like a cross between Tomb Raider and Darksiders but there’s more to it than that. While it’s unlikely to win many awards, it’s not a bad game at all, and does bring some personality to the table. If you can get into it, its overall an enjoyable experience than can help you bide your gaming time until all the triple A titles start releasing for 2012.