John Fu Kennedy in a recent late-night, "well, let's play games" marathon, deeply criticized Lil B. Johnson for playing Bladestorm, but made his statements entirely on watching it, and they were very mean. He feels it is too open-ended, and he may be right in some ways.
Bladestorm has very little plot. It's by the makers of Dynasty and Samurai Warriors, Koei, who have never been very good about stories, but then again when you're always dealing with large-scale battles, what story can you tell but "General A did this to Land with these Troops" or "Person was fighting because he was angry about this, so he fought." Actually, I take that back. The Lord of the Rings is a series of large-scale battles, but it has a great story. God of War is about an angry person, but his past and present actions tell a great story. An emphasis on your character should have been here, but wasn't.
Bladestorm is designed to be open-ended, a little bit too open-ended. For example, your character's mouth doesn't even move throughout the game. I don't think it ever will. He/she never talks, never interacts with his/her environment except to fight either the Brittish or the French, and since battles have very little impact on the actual war itself, it really doesn't matter which side you fight for or what actions you take. Similar to Armored Core, failing a mission does not result in a game over, but maybe consistent failure does. Similarly, dying causes "retreat," so you can't really lose anything material by being careless, just the opportunity to make more gains.
Maybe the story changes based on who you fight for more, but I haven't seen it. Randomly people approach you, which is probably a trigger caused by certain events, but it seems consistent. The bartender tells you can get a prize for getting 1st place on the battlefield, but doesn't deliver the prize until two missions later. Since my strategy on the battlefield (a strategy I learned from the other Koei games) is to take as many bases and kill as many officers as possible, I probably have missed triggers for events. I don't pay attention to instructions. Why should I? The incentives for paying attention aren't that great. In recent Dynasty Warriors games, failing to pay attention to the battle's strategy usually makes things harder. In this one, go wherever you like. I don't care.
Koei games so far haven't been about the story. It's about the gameplay, but even that itself, even though very rewarding, gets old after a while. A lot of strategy is involved. It's a very complicated system that is very rewarding to learn, little ways to improve your soldiers are myriad, but after a while it all seems the same. Without a story element, playing Bladestorm is fun for a little while, but never grips you like say God of War II or Portal.
You're a mercenary. You go around seizing control over units, and then leading them to attack whomever you want. You'll get the most points, which translates to fame which I guess means story progression, by taking over enemy bases and killing enemy officers, which in turn gives you experience for your type of unit. Unit level ups give points which can be spent to improve various stats like Attack, Defense, Unit Size, etc. Only level ups give the points to improve these stats; however, which is problematic. Often you can be a smidgen away from improving the stat you want, but you'll have to wait for the next level up to improve it.
Stat improving points are also spent to improve a particular unit's skills. Each type of unit (and there are many even among the classes) has a set of three skills they can use to help KO the enemy. Two are usually special attacks, the third is usually a temporary improvement or "defend" command. Using skills at the right time is very important, and timing the use is also very important, but if you can stay alive, you'll have another chance...probably, or you can just find another set of units.
The other recent release by Koei for PS3, Dynasty Warriors: Gundam was fun for it's sheer amount of death and destruction, and the "playing with your parts" for good stat upgrades. Playing with different mobile suits gave a different feel, and different types of attacks, but I think, personally, Heero's mobile suit was the best, and all others really cowered before it. The disparity in sheer power was great in my opinion. The storylines required deep understanding of the respective gundam universes, except for the original mode, which had some very interesting conflicts between characters. It spurred my interest in these older series, which may have been the original idea. Unfortunately, and even Japanese people feel this way, these days Japanese people don't know how to end anything. The endings were overly sappy and conclusive sometimes, or just didn't explain what was going on.
My point here is that Dynasty Warriors: Gundam and Bladestorm are fun to own, and pick up every once and a while, but extensive playing of either one may make your life feel empty, fighting for upgrades that don't mean anything, and don't get you closer to understanding the human condition or the Hundred Years War (which is when Bladestorm takes place, sorry I didn't mention that earlier, but it invites nasty nicknames for the game like "French-English Warriors" or "Eurocentric Warriors" or "The French Used to Fight Good, Honest!" See how mean that was...despicable). Empty like these other games made me feel: Dark Cloud, Final Fantasy Tactics (I spent a lot of time leveling up instead of progressing the story...my bad. I'll have to try again sometime), Crimson Blade (I think that's what it was called, it was bad), Dynasty Warriors 2 (oh, launch titles...), Front Mission 4 (NO REAL STORY! Can't compare with Front Mission 3, which was a wonderful game), Final Fantasy XII (I kept waiting for an interesting story with real character development), Puzzle Quest (I really enjoy it, but I feel like I've spent too much time on it. Even though the writing is pretty good, that one type of puzzle does everything in the game, and after a while, with the rights spells, the game is really easy. The incentives for getting new spells are not that great. However, I really like capturing monsters, that takes some more varying strategy), Suikoden 3 (had a pretty fun battle system, and I leveled up for too long, maxed out a lot of shit, and then the story wasn't worth it), Diablo (although I stopped myself before I got really into that) and the Playstation 2 Arc The Lad game (not enough to do in battle!). I can't remember all the other times I played a unsatisfying videogame instead of having sex or helping out the community.
I'll be honest, Brian K. Vaughan can do no wrong in my eyes. One of my most prized possessions is an autographed book of Ex Machina. I adore anything that man touches (I might have to even start watching Lost). I just wanted to take this time and post the concluding paragraph to IGN's review of the final (yes FINAL) issue of Y: The Last Man.
