I had forgotten about this game from the announcement from E3 last year and I can't be blamed. Most mobile games are underwhelming and are a mear shadow of the actual source content. Nintendo had a run of these half games including Mario Run and Animal Crossing Pocket Camp, which were a thread of what the main titles offer. These games all come down to whether a stripped version can hold its own and with The Elder Scrolls: Blades by Bethesda Softworks the answer is kinda.
It's Hard to Forget it's Origins
It's a mobile game and when you hear that you have to know the game is going to basically be full of micro-transactions and loot boxes, and time gatted. Blades has all of this in spades.
The story is simple. You are a member of the now outcast Blades and have returned home to find it in ruin. The queen has destroyed the town by sending mercenaries to collect taxes and shit got a little heated, a fountain was destroyed, then everything burnt to the ground. Now your job is to collect material to not only build up your weapons and armor but fix the town and uncover what actually happened.
The gameplay is simple. You will be crawling through small dungeons that have a few different aesthetics from cave to catacombs. With your phone in landscape mode, you can use the left side of the screen as a joystick and in verticle mode, you can click on your screen VR style to move around. When you encounter an enemy the screen will focus on them allowing you to fight without having to worry about movement. Holding the screen will allow you to attack and tapping the shield symbol allows you to block.There are some abilities that come later that you can tap on and if they work the ability goes off (sometimes it bugs out and won't let you tap them). You will gain skill points as you level and then you can use said skill points to climb skill trees. You can also decide to put points into magic or stamina, depending on how you want to play. I have yet to see a real benefit to either.
Its pretty basic gameplay backed with a 3d town builder that almost every mobile game has but now you get to walk around in it. Hurray! To say this is Elder Scrolls light is an understatement. It is super light. That's not to say the game doesn't look good because it does if not a little choppy at times because of it. The soundtrack isn't terrible either.
The combat while feeling mostly responsive could have benefited from the plethora of motion swiping that is possible on mobile phones. It's still kinda fun in sprints and dungeons don't take that long so good for a quick visit to the throne room. The game would be better if it wasn't held back by its worst feature.
Holly Fucking Time Gates
Everyone knew these were going to be a part of the game as soon as you knew it was mobile but man does it really force you to put down the game quickly. Of course, you can use the premium currency to move timers along but even though the price isn't terrible and you will loot some for free, the price to move things along at a bearable pace adds up pretty damn fast. Every chest you pick up, and you will pick up a lot, will take the minimum of 5 seconds to open. 5 seconds doesn't sound bad till you have 10 of them. Then that is a whole minute of waiting for the chest to open, then it going through its animation to show the items, then you click on the next chest. It starts to feel like forever real quick. On top of that, there are chests that take hours to open and you only have limited space unless you want to pay more premium currency.
That not all. Everything you build takes time from weapons and potions to houses and shop upgrades. Items have durability and if you do a few dungeons and need to repair them, you better hope you weren't upgrading anything with the blacksmith because god forbid he put down his fucking mallet to help you get back to adventuring. There is so much of this shit that I found myself opening the app to open a chest and then opening another game to wait it out. Did I mention that shop owners only have so much gold to buy your items? If you are short on gold and the shop owner are out, you are shit out of luck and must go grind for it in the dungeons.
I ended up spending 5 bucks to get one of the initial packs to just see how far it propels you in the game. The resources go a pretty a decent ways in the beginning but once those ran out, the paltry amount you get per quest creates another gate as the grind to build the most simple things starts to stack up. Everything takes resources and the resources are not that plentiful.
It Could Have Been/Might Become Decent
Blades is in "early access" and I will give them that for whatever that term means anymore. That is really all I could give them. I wasn't expecting much from the game the moment they said mobile and it met expectations. There isn't much here. It's okay for the platform it's on but a far cry from the worlds that I have seen Bethesda build. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I thought they were going to push the market a little forward and as far as gameplay, maybe they have a little but I feel like it's not much further then some have already done. Still, there is something here and the game does have the potential to grow, they just really need more content. They didn't even bother with voice actors, which kinda sucks. Blades is free so I guess it's worth a try but it's not something I am going to recommend and I have a feeling a game I am going to forget relatively quickly.
Last note: Why the hell isn't there a set in-game currency you can buy in the shop?
TL;DR:
Even though its Elder Scroll set your expectations low and you might get some bit of satisfaction out of this game as long as you have the patience of a god.
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