NOT
Boring Look
One of the biggest highlights to Unchained Blades, is how interesting the characters look. Many of the clans (dragon, phoenix, golem, etc) have unique designs, which allow them to stand out, but sadly this attention to detail is missing in most other areas. For instance once you enter a dungeon, it is basically a cookie cutter design. Most of the walls look exactly the same or feature something minor that is a little less common. Also when you consider you will spend hours in the same dungeon, this can get annoying. Sadly the same can also be said about the combat system.
When you start a fight, you’re greeted with enemies with minor movement. Beyond this, there isn’t much more to the combat. Attacks have a general appearance and some specials might break the mold, but overall it’s pretty bland. The same goes for followers attacking, which is just a small box moving to a new location or the main characters that are just images on the bottom. Its minor things like this that makes the game feel really bland and a fairly forgettable experience.
Too Many Tutorials
If there is one thing that wears thin in Unchained Blades, it’s the many tutorials you need to deal with. Almost everything is given some kind of tutorial and if you’ve played an RPG, it should really be common sense. These range from how to accept quests, create items, how the store works, upgrading your characters, keeping your followers happy, how to recruit a follower, plus many more. You can ignore them, but you can’t just skip them. This makes them feel extremely tedious and it isn’t helped by the fact they all occur within quick succession. Thankfully they only occur at the start of the game, though the babying will wear thin on any veteran gamer.
VERDICT
While it’s great to see dungeon crawlers come back, it could have used more updates. Some elements are really cool like auto battle (if you’re lazy) or repeat your last move, but these don’t change the simplistic look. The same can be said about the story, as the characters are interesting, though they don’t really stand out over time. These two elements really make the game forgettable, which is sad as some small tweaks would really help it. Despite these short comings, Unchained Blades is a must for any dungeon crawler fan or a RPG fan looking for a change of pace.
[Editor’s Note: Unchained Blades was reviewed on the PSP platform. The game was provided to us by the publisher for review purposes.]