Blaze & Blade: Eternal Quest – Review

Blaze and Blade is an inventive concept - an RPG which can be playedboth multiplayer and single player. It's a brave attempt that tries tobridge the gap between regular sat-around-the-tabletop RPGs and consoleRPGs, but does it work?

Let's start on a positive footnote; character generation in B&B is adream. Rather than accepting whatever character the computer shuffleson to you, you get design the character you want to play, just like in a"real" RPG. Sure you can play a mighty warrior, but you can also playa rogue, a sorceror, or any one of eight characters. You choose andassign your attributes as you see fit between Luck, Intelligence, Power,Strength and several others. You also get to choose the element you arealigned with, your sex and your manner of speaking. No other PlaystationRPG that I know of offers you this much opportunity. It pays off too!Having created a character you have far more sense of belonging to themthan you would otherwise. Spyro the Dragon was a great game but the gamewas so cutesy you wished the central character had been drowned at birth.

Even though chaacter generation vastly improves the replayability of thisgame, the luxury of choice comes with a downside. Character developmentis not a case of discovering who you are and your relationship with therest of the world, but rather amassing experience points and increasingyour characteristics. B&B is heavy on the action and light on theinteraction, NPCs (Non-Player Characters) exist to tell you about thenext dungeon or replenish your herb supply and very little else. Thestoryline, what there is of it, is wander to various dungeons, fight yourway down to the boss, kill it and nick its magic stone. Don't expect Warand Peace - this isn't a true console RPG, such as Final Fantasy VII orWild Arms, where speaking to others uncovers the secrets of the game orfleshes out the world to make the game seem more realistic - the NPCs inB&B serve only to further the game. Think of Diablo and you'll bethinking on the right lines - its an arcade-players RPG rather than atrue console RPG.

The controls for B&B are a mixed bag. The base keys are definable (otherPlaystation games take note) and if you've played Zelda or Alundra you'llbe cutting your way through swathes of bad guys in no time. One buttoncontrols striking, one is used for jumping and a third is used for yourspecial power, whether that be spellcasting, using your shield orapplying herbs. Dodging is a matter of keeping out of the way using thedirectional keys or analogue joystick.

Its just as well that the basic keys are simple to use as thecomplementary keys are awful. Start brings up your menu but to cyclethrough it you need to use left, right, up, down and the shoulderbuttons. Trying to find out what items your character is currentlycarrying or locate the map is a time-consuming affair, although onethat you do eventually get used to. More annoying is trying to use items- you can't do it from the menu, you have to do it through icons whilstfighting in real-time and as many of the icons look similar its quiteeasy to use the wrong potion or cast the wrong spell.

You can also zoom in, zoom out (essential in multi-player), get a birdseye view, rotate the screen and turn on camera-tracking, whichautomatically rotates the screen for you. These keys are a really nicetouch but they should have been playtested. The first thing you'llnotice is that the rotate keys are counter-intuitive, there's no wayto redefine them and they rotate in real-time. Also the camera-trackingis ill-advised, you will spend a lot of time being falling off of cliffsif you try to use it. Also the Birds eye view is toggle-on, toggle-offbut it only lasts about five seconds then you have to reuse it. Thesecontrols aren't always necessary and you can live with them but a littlebit more work should have been spent upon them.

Some of the other controls in the game are counter-intuitive too. If youpick up an item and want to give it to another character you have toleave the game and go to the auction screen and then sell the item to theother player. An inventive option but one which disrupts the flow of thegame, especially as all items must be sold for a minimum price - youcan't just swap items or trade favours. Evidently the heroes in Blaze andBlade are capitalists who know nothing of charity. Furthermore some itemscan't be auctioned off and, as the only use for money is in auctions, itsall feels very arbitrary. It would have been better to have had a shop atthe inn and for characters to be give each other items whenever theyneeded to.

The music in this game is standard RPG fare. It's all tinkle-tonkle-lift-musak, definitely an acquired taste. Leave the sound on if you like thatkind of stuff but personally I turned it off and put on the stereoinstead. Later on you can change it by speaking to the bard at the innbut by that time I was past caring. The sound is much of a muchness. Itsuffices but it won't set the world alight. Likewise this game will notwin the Turner Prize for its graphics, but quite frankly it doesn't needto. With the exception of some of the icons, you can make out everythingyou need to and the graphics are acceptable for the gameplay.

Speaking of gameplay, you need to divide the gameplay into two subsetswhen considering this game. As a single-player game this game isn't bad.The game plays like Alundra, Diablo or Gauntlet. There is a good mix ofpuzzles (which don't exactly tax the brain but might stump you for fiveminutes or so) and action. More entertaining is the clever design of manylevels to prevent the game becoming to samey. Some levels are straight-out slugfests, but others take place on narrow precipices, or with themonsters hiding behind walls shooting arrows at you, or in tunnels offalling boulders, or jumping from log to log on a fast flowing river,or on a spiral staircase, or any number of a hundred and one differentlocations, all with their own traps, trials and tribulations.

The gameplay really comes alive when you play in a group. Remember whenGauntlet first came out - so it was OK when you played it on your ownbut the best fun was in a four-player game when you could steal otherpeoples treasure or stitch them up whilst Death drained their life-force,or even, Heavens-to-Betsy, cooperate and see how far you can get down thedungoen. The same goes Blaze and Blade, although I would advise taking amore cooperative approach to begin with.

Much has been said of the difficulties of getting four people together toplay a Playstation game, but this is no more difficult than gettingpeople together to play poker, or go down the pub, or play a standardtabletop RPG. In fact we often played a standard RPG 'til ten then playedB&B until Midnight. The game does not require four people to play it andif a player misses out on a couple of hours of gameplay it's not the endof the world. Indeed the computer can even control other playercharacters, allowing two or three players to play, whilst setting up themissing player under computer control. Bear in mind that the AI tends tobe "Follow-the-leader" they won't attempt to grab treasure, they'll onlyattack monsters when they come into range and they'll follow you lemming-like off the edges of cliffs and into pools of acid.

Should you buy this game or should you rent it? This is a game you needto rent first, preferably with several mates to experience the fullflavour of the game. If you have the patience to stick with the controlsthen go out and you (and your friends) enjoyed the game then buy it, asthere is no way you'll finish this game in one night. One more word ofwarning - if you want to save and load games make sure you have a lot ofslots on your memeory card - this game takes three slots per character,so a four player game will take twelve slots, or most of your card.

Talking on saving brings me on to the final niggle I have with thisgame. The saving mechanism is practically amnesiac. For reasons knownonly to itself the game resets some of the dungeons after you havereturned to the inn to save the game. It can be frustrating to haveconquered three levels of dungeon, return to the inn and save the gamejust to find next time you load it you have to redo the dungeon fromscratch. This is a serious problem and should have been rectified priorto the game coming out.

If my review comes over as very negative it isn't meant to be. This gamehas many fine points and will keep you occupied for a long time. I canrecommend it as a fun, addictive game, especially in multi-player mode.It is an inventive idea that is due recognition but has many unergonomicfeatures which should have been smoothed out during playtesting.Nonetheless, if you can forgive the shortcomings Blaze and Blade showsexcellent potential and is a worthwhile diversion for any RPG-player wholikes a lot of arcade action.