Having to deal with baddies in the here and now always has its way of physically immersing you, but the book menu isn’t really the most graceful way of tossing you into the action. Image courtesy Warp FrogĮach of the three arenas has a pedestal with a book-style menu where you can select your difficulty and wave number, the latter determining the number of baddies that can spawn at the edges of the maps. As it is now, the game is pretty bare bones there isn’t a progression system, unlockable areas, unlockable weapons, arena bosses-there’s just you and the waves of bad guys that your order up to slay at will. That said, Blade & Sorcery isn’t biting off more than it can chew, and that’s probably for the best. The environments are well constructed and could ideally play as a backdrop to a much larger game. 'Echo Combat' Review – Going Out Guns Ablazing in Zero-G ImmersionĪlthough Blade & Sorcery is clearly a sandbox game, I still can’t help but wish there was something behind the combat, some reason to finish off a wave and move forward outside of virtual bloodlust and the primal urge to gank dudes 300-style.
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You can practice all of this either in the arenas before you order up a wave of baddies, or in your home which has a full selection of weapons. A single magic ability is currently available, a lighting spell, although the in-game menu has open spots for three more spells. That’s right, you can telepathically move objects including large rocks, weapons, and traps like a low-hanging chandelier that can cut down anything in its path. Users are given a choice between various swords (both single and two-handed), a bow and requisite quiver of arrows, and various gear that you can either throw (or levitate) at you squishy enemies. That’s a good amount to remember when you’re in the thick of it, but as they say, practice makes perfect. You have to concentrate on making sure you remember your four holster points-two behind each shoulder and two on each hip-move through the fray, activate the temporary slow-mo at decidedly cinematic moments, and make sure to not flail around with your melee weapons. In the two or so hours of playing, I was able to replicate some of these dashing moves seen above, although they certainly don’t come completely natural at first.
When Blade & Sorcery works just right, and you can pull off an epic chain of god-like hits and full-body stabs on several enemies, it really makes you feel like you’ve accomplished something awesome.
For now, these are just virtual crash test dummies, so I let myself don the mantle of Beef Supreme and enter the arena unfazed by the horrible acts yet to come. They’re more on the ‘zombie’ end of things, so pushing a dagger into a skull in slow-mo, or driving a Roman gladius right through the heart didn’t really present any of the moral quandaries I’m sure I’ll be forced to revisit when VR games have a greater degree of photorealism. You’ve probably seen a variation of the gif below, but here’s a great one from VR YouTuber The Baron for your viewing pleasure.īaddies seem to be cartoonish enough to make the game’s hyperviolence less of a turn off than I initially thought would be the case. But before I get into that, there’s the sordid details of what it feels like to stab a dude in the face. There’s plenty of weaponry lying around to make whatever fighting style you’re keen to enact a reality. GameplayĪs a sandbox combat game, Blades & Sorcery doesn’t feature scores, leaderboards, and it contains no story it’s a single-player game that puts you in the midst of successive waves of baddies that span classes such as lighting mages, archers, and a number of melee grunts that try to take you down. This review is an assessment of the game only at its current Early Access state and will not receive a numerical score. Note: This game is in Early Access which means the developers have deemed it incomplete and likely to see changes over time.
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But if you’re easily urked by mediocre stabs at the hero’s journey monomyth and just want to cut to the bloody chase, then Blade & Sorcery might scratch that itch thanks to its combat-centric sandbox and stab-happy rag doll enemies.Īvailable On: Steam (Vive, Rift, Windows VR) A storyline can be useful for its ability to frame the action it gives you a reason to fight and fuels your hunger to reign victorious over the hordes of NPC baddies.