Bladestorm: Nightmare is a re-release of Bladestorm: The Hundred Years War, which itself was a console game released in 2007 for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.
You play as a mercenary, a soldier for hire who is going to France to fight in the War between England and France for, like, I dunno, territorial claim or something to do with family trees, their nobles you don’t need to know why we’re killing one another, just how much you’re being paid.
Bladestorm takes place in this odd fantastical version of middle-ages Europe where Mercenaries can basically just do whatever and contracts don’t really mean much. You can fight for France one day and then come back the next day and fight for England. I know there’s SOME truth to that, but I don’t know why one side would just keep rehiring me after I take a castle from them just so I can get it back for them.
No one holds grudges in this timeline its kind of funny.
Bladestorm came out when Koei was still kind of experimental with their games. Its kind of like a spiritual Sequel to Kessen, which was a game series that only I and maybe 3 other people played. How it works is you play as your singular mercenary, but you command a company of soldiers. You start each mission with your own boys that you can pick from your roster menu, but if they get shwacked or you need to switch out, you can either summon other mercenary recruits like some kind of medieval time wizard or run up to a friendly company and just say “You boys are with me now.”
The game relies on a rock paper scissors like combat system where you need to counter enemy units with a specific type of unit. Swordsmen beat maces for some reason, maces and spearmen are strong against horsemen, the usual stuff.
The thing is, at higher levels, like level 18+, you don’t even need to do this and have strong enough abilities to just brute force your way through fights.
How combat works is that your dudes follow you around, pressing RT makes them go into formation in front of you, and RB gives them to go ahead to just attack anything nearby. YHOur face buttons give you unit specific abilities, like shield bash, tackle, javelin, stuff like that. Its basically an open world RPG disguised as a war game.
You’ll learn to bulldoze basically everything in your way, which kind of takes a lot of the fun out of the game. So when you actually DO run into an enemy captain or regiment that puts up a fight, you get that sense of fun back for a little bit before it goes away again.
Missions usually involve you going to a region of France and taking a specific territory, or taking a specific territory while defending a specific territory. There are also side missions like escorting or defense, but a lot of the time these are annoying and I just don’t do them. You make so much money just playing the game normally that it really isn’t an issue unless you need the fame boost.
I do like how the game is presented, giving you a big open world map of castles and towns to occupy. The minimap and game map as a whole is presented to you like an actual war map, with army and troop movement visible for you to see on both sides. That meta roleplay is probably what keeps the game going for most people, at least for me, just this idea that you’re fighting a war rather than just completing missions in a “war-like” scenario.
Going to be honest, Bladestorm is one of my favorite bad games. Its boring, repetitive, and the voice acting and character writing is some of the funniest ♥♥♥♥ I’ve seen and heard in a long time. Everyone is written like a Dynasty Warriors character, which makes sense since this is an Omega Force game. Phillipe Le Bon and Prince Edward may as well be the same guy, and I find it really funny that the Kings of France and England are just called “King of England” and “The King of France.”
its just this goofy game with a decent gameplay loop if you’re looking to just kill time, it came out when Koei and Omega Force were still bleeding that experimental phase that started on the PS2 when they released Gladiator sims and WW2 naval combat simulators. Like they wanted to try something knowing it wouldn’t be successful and went with it anyway.
Its probably one of my favorite bad games, honestly. Something I've been replaying on and off since 2007.
This is the NIGHTMARES release of the game, where it comes with an extra fantasy scenario where Joan of Arc becomes a demon and fights everyone. Which is really ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ funny in context.
I say “Fantasy scenario” like the main game doesn’t have recruitable ninja’s and Chinese spearmen.
Its an alright time, it just never goes on sale, or at least never on sale for a reasonable price. Don’t pay full price for this game, its a 2015 re-release of a 2007 game that runs like doo doo paper on modern hardware, but its still something I would at least fiddle around with.
Its kind of like a last hurrah when Koei was coming off their phase of releasing games like Kessen III and Dynasty Tactics, or Colosseum: Road to Freedom.
You ever play Crimson Sea?
Bladestorm gets a very affectionate 5 out of 10.
I wanted to make a fun fact about the Battle of Crecy, but there are too many so just pick one and pretend I wrote it here.
[url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/7124597/] Join the Dirk Company, we need someone to sneak into battlefields and steal weapons for us. [/url]
