"Blade Mistress" is the result of someone playing Frankenstein/Herbert West and reanimating an old, dead, really bad Everquest ripoff from 2002 where everyone was a woman. It looks as bad now as it did then. Look, if you're going to play old games for nostalgia purposes, try playing [i]decent[/i] old games.
This partially resurrected version is a cludgy, broken mess and if you download this there's no guarantee you'll manage to make a character or get to play the game.
Graphicswise, this has some fairly mediocre/dated looking graphics that will understandably be a turn off for a lot of gamers, and it's a big contributor to the failure of the game to attract gamers despite having no up-front cost.
Not every "free" game really is. There's often MTX, or content locked behind DLC, or donations being requested, or any other number of things that could mislead gamers, but in this case I'm glad to say this really does appear to be a fully free game.
Even though this is "free", it failed to appeal to the 120 million+ gamers on Steam. SteamDB showed the game peaked at less than 100 concurrent players, they couldn't even break three figures, and now there's basically nobody playing it. Even though it's free. This is a dismal public reception, but it's easy to see why gamers rejected it.
Bearing in mind that free games don't add +1 to your game collector count, should you bother adding this to your library and downloading it?
Not this time. This isn't worth downloading. While this won't cost you any money, you get what you pay for, and sometimes, even when the game is free, it's still not enough.
[quote][url=https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/store/reviews]Developer Response![/url][/quote]The developer has weighed in to inform everyone they didn't read the [url=https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/store/reviews]Developer Usage Rules[/url] for Steam "partners", or they deliberately ignored the part where Valve says:
[quote]Though it may be tempting, not every review needs to be responded to. A developer response will frequently draw more attention than the original statement, potentially turning a small issue into a much larger community discussion. It's also not a good idea to use this feature to refute customer opinions. Your direct attention can be seen as validation or a defensive attempt to silence your customers.[/quote]
First of the bat the developer tells an OUTRIGHT LIE. They claim they "chose" not to remove my review. [b]Developers have ZERO capability to remove reviews, all they can do is report reviews that breach serious Valve guidelines like containing unacceptable speech, like any other community member can.[/b] The developer deliberately lied to make you, the gamer, think they have some kind of power they don't. What a ridiculous thing to lie about... but this provides a backdrop to their toxic, anti-gamer attitude.
And the developer DID report the review!!! [b]Valve denied the meritless complaint from the developer.[/b] My review stands, with their tacit approval, to warn gamers about toxic developers and bad products.
Attempting to discredit the facts and validity of my review the developer thinks that the game must be played for several hours before determining any objective facts about it. Apparently, before deciding a carton of rancid milk has gone sour, the developer thinks we must drink the whole carton before we're allowed to tell anyone the milk has gone off. What rubbish. [b]Playing a bad game for longer will not make the graphics better, cause the code to change, controls to become better, or fix any bugs or other defects in it.[/b]
Why insist the game needs to be played longer? This is mental denial on the part of the developer. By attacking the review, they can pretend their game doesn't suffer from the defects this review highlights. This is outright delusion, unfortunately. [b]It does not take very long for the defects in this game to become apparent. Playing the game for longer will not change them.[/b]
Disturbingly, the developer is now stalking me and feverishly reading through my reviews... either just obsession with me on their part, or desperation to try find something in one of my other reviews that would somehow change the objectively terrible quality of this failed "game". Whatever their motivation, creeping on reviewers like this is [b]not okay[/b].
The developer makes the false claim that my review is inaccurate/contains information which isn't factually evident. But this simply isn't true... the facts of my review can easily be verified with just a glance at this failed product.
We know that if there was any specific glaring inaccuracy in my review the developer would have jumped on it and pointed it out right away... but they can't even cite one single example. Because [i]they know my review is accurate[/i]. They just don't like being presented with the facts.
They make up these false accusations of inaccuracy to soothe their ego. But why is this intellectual dishonesty good for gamers? It isn't.
The developer falsely claims that Blade Mistress isn't an EverQuest clone, despite coming out hot on the heels of EverQuest (why, 3 years is [i]just[/i] enough development time to make a ripoff of EverQuest right after it launched and went viral), with the same UI elements, same mechanics, similar themes and same concepts... The "developer" is once more completely full of crap. Take a look for yourself, guys, you can see it's obvious. More lies from a dishonest developer.
The developer complains that while this review closely addresses serious problems with this product, it resembles other reviews I have written for other products that share the exact same problems and deficiencies. There's over 110,000 games on Steam. Hundreds, in some cases thousands of these games share the same defects which gamers should know about before wasting any time on those products.
However, the "developer" of this failed product arrogantly [b]DEMANDS[/b] that I find completely unique ways to describe [i]the exact same defects[/i]. What a completely ignorant, arrogant demand from a demonstrably failed developer. The developer demonstrates their appalling attitude here. It's a sheer insult to gamers everywhere.
The SteamDB figures do not lie; this is a failure. Attacking me will not make their failed game better.
Nothing in the developers pointless breach of Valve guidelines changes any of the objective facts of my review. My review stands unaltered. I cannot recommend this game to anyone.
[quote]Online Stalking and Harrassment[/quote]
The developer has started stalking me, delivering personal attacks and is attempting to publicly cyberbully and intimidate me by posting hitpiece videos and articles. Why? Because I wrote an honest and frank assessment about an objectively bad and failed product. It's an objective failure rejected by gamers, confirmed by SteamDB figures for the failed game, and for the other reasons I supplied in my accurate review.
Certainly, the hitpieces the stalker/developer here has linked up are false and misleading (for example, I've given positive reviews to 2D indie games in the past, but the "developer" here chooses to lie about that), but cyberbullies don't care about facts, they just want to intimidate and attack those for providing the truths the developer can't emotionally accept. This unhinged, unstable and harmful behavior from the developer is utterly unacceptable, and is a chilling attempt to silence the truth.
Now, you can look at the objective facts of my review, and then have a look at how this reviewer is attacking and intimidating reviewers, and suddenly the overwhelming rejection of this garbage makes perfect sense.
I will not be intimidated or silenced by stalkers and bullies.
