Blood Of Steel – Review
Blood Of Steel is a free-to-play action/strategy based MOBA. Upon further inspection, it has strong similarities to previous F2P titles such as Conqueror’s Blade and Vindictus. The game has a few hiccups here and there, but the enjoyable combat and variety of game modes make the title very entertaining for the F2P mantle.
Story
As with many other F2P titles, the stories that are usually included in games such as these are mainly used as an extended tutorial for the game’s mechanics, while still trying to make the game enjoyable. In Blood of Steel, it’s no exception as the main story so far is separated into three parts with more campaign modes being added in a future update.
Each part of the campaign, including the beginning, has level requirements, starting at level 10 and for the last two parts, at levels 31 and 32. This was actually pretty confusing all things considered. Usually, in F2P titles that have some sort of campaign or story content, the story campaigns are usually made available to new players from the start, in order to practice the mechanics of the game, before going into multiplayer matches. Here, however, it’s the complete opposite with the multiplayer PVP being the first option being made available to players.
Even more confusing is how huge the gaps are for level requirements in the campaign. Starting at level 10, players will have to grind in multiplayer for a solid 20 levels before proceeding to the later campaign stages, which isn’t really worth the grind at all considering the campaign doesn’t really have a story. It’s just different game modes, like tower defense and survival, circled around a particular playable character. Needless to say, in the beginning it is fun but begins to lose its charm very quickly and it’s not worth the grind to achieve, considering the campaign doesn’t add anything new to keep the replayability high.
Graphics
From a technical standpoint, the game runs pretty well. It also has decent customization when it comes to graphic settings. Standard customization, with the options to adjust bloom, lighting, screen-space ambient occlusion, anti-aliasing, and depth of field, are all available. VSync is also included to deal with screen-tearing, which is a must-have addition, as well as the options to adjust frame-rates, and rendering between Direct X9 and X11, which is helpful for running the game on lower-end PCs. Overall a good job on adding the requirements needed to adjust and run the game smoothly on any PC.
The character modeling surprisingly is the main highlight here. In Blood Of Steel, the playable characters are based on central figures in history, such as Julius Caesar, Hua Mulan, and King Arthur. Some designs are heavily changed, especially when referring to well-regarded figures in history, who are known to be of older age. Even so, this doesn’t change the fact that the game captures the authenticity of the armor and clothing from the historical icons. The silver and gold plated armor, swords, shields, bows, and even silk infused body armor used by the Chinese warriors look beautiful in representation.
The stages, sadly, leave plenty to be desired. Weirdly enough, the amount of detail and authenticity of the characters and armor cannot make up for the lackluster and barren stages players will battle on. Sure, on certain stages there are plenty of factors that change the look, such as different weather effects with day and night cycles. Nonetheless, it’s easily overshadowed by how well the characters are detailed.
Sound
It’s surprising, for a game that references a good number of historical figures from around the world, the voice acting for the different languages is jarring. From the start of the game, players have the option to go into the heroes gallery and listen to each of the different characters made available. A good majority of them, even the ones speaking in their native language, sound unnatural. A good example would be if every character had their voice recorded through different languages from text-to-speech. Stiff and unnatural, the voices are not the best, but can be easily overlooked.
The music, however, is somewhat enjoyable. The majestic sounds of horns are easily heard at the start of every match, which greatly helps the feeling of players fighting in grand medieval battles. The soundtrack can easily be considered as grand as the characters they represent. There aren’t as many songs audible, but the few the games does have do a good job when it comes to the representation of the golden age of battle.
Gameplay
Blood Of Steel is a real-time action-based MOBA, mixed with strategy elements. The players use the combination of the keyboard and mouse to control characters. WASD to move around, with the mouse being used to control the camera. The left click of the mouse is used to attack, and the right click is used for a special action, mostly used for shielding and parrying. The number keys are used to switch weapons and access special abilities, and the F-keys are used to control troops which will be discussed later.
Similar to other MOBAS, characters are separated based on classes. So far there are only three classes to pick from, but the abilities among characters for the most part differentiate from each other. Warriors are characters with large health pools who mostly benefit from fighting up close. Rangers prefer to be on the sidelines dealing heavy damage from a distance, but suffer from low mobility and health. And lastly are the Riders, which have the highest mobility in the game but suffer from being easy targets and helpless against weapons with a long reach.
As mentioned earlier, each hero has their own set of troops they can command in battle. Depending on the class and type of character, the stats and abilities can also change greatly. Players can order the troops to follow, stay in place, attack a specific troop or character, and also defend certain areas. As easy it may be to just have the troops attack everything in sight, in larger-scaled battles, the options to defend and stay in place have much more importance.
For example, players using a ranged-class character with similar troops could use higher terrain to defend areas from afar, while still helping teammates who need assistance capturing a certain area. Blood Of Steel’s combat formula is heavily based on rock paper scissors, but can easily be negated if the player takes time to plan accordingly.
As for game modes, it’s good to say Blood Of Steel has a hefty amount of enjoyable modes for players to delve into, such as Versus, Siege Battles, and Ranked Matches. Versus modes are the standard modes that don’t involve ranking systems. With the latter being basic skirmishes, hero vs hero, domination, and an arcade mode with modifiers. Siege Battles are large-scale domination maps, with an emphasis on team synergy and capturing specific points to achieve victory. Lastly there are the Ranked Matches, which are the standard versus modes, with an emphasis on competitive gameplay, ranking systems, and leaderboards.
Conclusion
Blood Of Steel is an enjoyable F2P title. The depth of combat, the variety of game modes, and characters offer a good amount of replayability, in spite of the weird language choices. However, the story mode is an unnecessary grind, especially when players will most likely find the PVP modes more enjoyable. Gameplay rules supreme in this one, which is what matters most.
Blood Of Steel - Review,
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