Blade & Bones

Blade & Bones is an action/adventure souls-like yet colourful rpg/metroidvania combat driven game (wow what a mouthful but it delivers enough to validate all these tags) and it caught me by surprise, as it will catch everyone who comes across it. This game is, according to me, the quintessential indie game. It is casually self aware while being incredibly fun at the same time. For me it was the best surprise from the indie side this year, although it is a little on the short side (around 4-7 hrs depending on playstyle it does also have a NG+ mode which significantly alters the experience) Gameplay- The gameplay consists of exploration and combat basically, both can be fun and not very tedious. Combat can turn from easy to unforgiving in just a short while as you run out of health or stamina. It is basically swordplay and some relics found through the world. You have 'lives' called purity (total of 6 purities) and if you lose all, there is permadeath and the save game is erased... But you can find the lost purities, BUT they are scattered at random places after you lose them. Exploration is mostly fun and the world design is expansive, vibrant yet compact, I know it sounds contradictory but just play it and you'll know what I mean. You can access some areas only at some specific nights and you can control when to summon those nights through a contraption of stone. Character design is nice and hits a lovely spot between scary and aesthetically pleasing. Graphics and performance have been good for me and I run a gtx 970 with 8gb ram and i5 4690k. No crashes, no memory leak, no bugs.. Lore/Story- The lore is deliberately vague, obscure and fragmented and is explained through hieroglyphs and some character dialogues here and there. It is interested and fun all the same, replete with references and hints of cosmic horror. You have to collect seven swords to break an ancient curse, in those terms, the objective in game story is pretty clear but the world lore and origin is somewhat lovecraftian, as in not unknown but unknowable. Sound- Sound in terms of voice acting is fairly above average but some sounds in-game of the world, such as that of the impact of your sword on stone can be a little off putting because it lacks the resonance of striking steel upon stone. Overall the experience of the game is satisfying and really fun for the casual gamer, and for hardcore ones there are always achievements and NG+ and understanding the complete lore, etc... For the price it is worth it and at a sale it just just a steal, if its on a sale then definitely get it. Pros- +good lore +simple and clean +vibrant graphics +many swords +enjoyable exploration +trading cards +achievements +good character design Cons- +some sounds +a little short +combat a little repetitive +might come across as a little 'easy' to some

[h1] You already know to avoid this game. [/h1]

To start off, I beat the game. I played it all the way through and did most of the side missions as well as complete almost all the achievements. That being said, would I want to play the game knowing what I do now? Maybe. I decided to rate this on a scale from one to ten, with five being "acceptable" and not adding anything or taking anything away. STORY: 7/10 The story of the Orins is interesting. It has a lot of themes with seven, and the characters for the most part are good. After the initial meeting with them though, they did not offer basically anymore with the exception of two characters. GRAPHICS: 4/10 The graphics are pretty middle of the road. It is an indie game so I didn't expect it to have especially great graphics and it had about as many graphical glitches as I expected. AUDIO: 7/10 I enjoyed the music in the game as a whole. The music for the boss battles were fitted to the story of the boss and complimented it. The silence that happens in the game can be nice as it makes you focus more on what your doing and the emptiness in the world that seems purposeful. After a while of running around however, the sound of footsteps get bland and annoying. The other main issue in sound was the noises in some boss battles were overly loud when compared to other sounds. TECHNICAL: 2/10 In a game where lives are "limited" and when you die seven times the game ends, you really need to iron out glitches that trap you. It is too easy to get randomly stuck resulting in one less life. On top of that, you can get randomly stuck on objects in boss battles which either result in you dying from a powerful blow or just straight up dying. GAMEPLAY: 2/10 RUN, DODGE, JUST FREAKING MOVE!!! So many times I took unnecessary damage because the controls are not responsive all of the time. Half the time you can strike and then dodge away and then the other half you strike and it takes 3 seconds to complete leaving you wide open. I am enjoy the concept of allowing you to equip two different styles allowing you to have four different attacks, except that there is basically no point in using any other one rather than the basic and the one you get from the first stone man. They vary slightly in damage and largely do not matter. Also the fact that the common swords do very little while the rare swords break fairly easily causing you to grind for shards to repair them if you don't find other rare swords is tedious. The different relics were interesting although only two is useful in fights and the others are only good in the world. Finally I didn't mind the little direction to the game as they give you tools to find things and figure stuff out. OVERALL: 22/50 TLDR: the game has potential to be good, but poor controls and some very bad glitches make it terrible

seriously, just drop 7 dollars on g.2.a and buy dark souls 3

An interesting idea, but implemented very poorly almost to the point that it feels like they arrived at point where the game was 'playable' and said "yeah, this is good and requires no further work let's release it". Truly feels like an Early Access game. Would have been sad if i bought this, since i got it from a humble bundle pack some time ago i don't really care. Spend you money somewhere else, this is not worth it even on sale.

Скучная, недружелюбная, неприятно-своебразная, халтурная инди-поделка.

The world is interesting enough to the point where you wish it was a good game. But it isn't in it's current state and probably never will be as I'm writing this in 2018. The gameplay is boring 1v1 combat against robotic AI with 0 flow. Hit detection ain't even switched on and half the time you could be INSIDE the model of the enemy and still somehow miss an attack. Sometimes pressing the light attack button twice allows you to do a combo, and sometimes it doesn't, leaving you vulnerable to attack while you sit there mashing the attack button wondering why when you had full stamina your hero doesn't swing his sword twice. Clunky, borderline trashware.

The world is beautiful, the lore is interesting, but the combat is clunky. Fix this and the game will be worth buying. Otherwise, it's too frustrating to play.

There's nothing that's good in this game except the art direction. Also my refund request got denied even though I have less than an hour on record.

战斗系统烂，就傻傻的劈呀戳呀，然后还不会锁定，闪避敌人攻击后近身还会往旁边砍 每个敌人都像小BOSS一样