Blade & Soul - Big oily tits heading west? Server Poharan: Cerulean faction. F2P Jan 19
Surprised there isn't a thread for this, the game deserves one. A Korean martial-arts MMO, to be launched sometime in 2011.
Action Button Interface
Blade & Soul will be using a very minimalistic UI, keeping things clean and less cluttered. The action buttons will change depending on what abilities can be used at that point and time. For example, say you've just knocked your enemy into the air with a neat ability, while the target is in the air your action buttons will change, showing you new abilities that can be used on mid air targets.
Death System
Team Bloodlust revealed another video along side the auto targeting demonstration above, it covers Blade & Soul's death system! I'm sure this feature was lurking around everyone's mind for quite some time now. What would an MMO be without a death system? Anyway, let's get this explained! Your character will be placed under the "Worn Out" state upon it's health reaching zero. When in this "Worn Out" state you'll be able to crawl away from your defeat in shame. Once you have crawled to a safe location away from trouble you have two options to chose from. You can either use the "Chi Meditation" ability which slowly leads your character into recovery or simply teleport yourself to the nearest village. If your character reaches zero life again within a certain amount of time you will not be placed in the "Worn Out" state, this prevents you from using the "Chi Meditation" ability again. Instead, upon your second death, you will be teleported to the nearest village.
Classes
Blade Master 劍士
This class specializes in sword combat to deliver a variety of attacks. Using their sword they utilize skills like the "Batto Jutsu" technique to attack or defend against their enemies. Blade Masters are quite good at parrying their enemies blows, leaving them vulnerable to effective counter attacks. They don't always rely on close combat to bring their enemies down, they can use a flying sword technique that will harm their enemies from afar.
Kung-Fu Master 拳士
This class utilizes their own fists and feet to defeat their enemies. Most of the Kung-Fu Master's attacks are delivered in combos for fast and very effective melee ranged blows. With such quick reflexes Kung-Fu Master's can attack and defend with ease, able to react to even the most dire situation as quickly as possible. They have absolutely no problem taking the advantage over their enemies during battle with such speed.
Kung-Fu Master's have a defensive stance for more survivability. While using defensive stance they can still attack fairly quickly, they can also take advantage of their enemy's weaknesses to quickly sustain them or to deliver deadly combo attacks.
Force Master 氣功士
Force Master's use Chi to deliver devastating blows to their enemies. Using the Ki-Gong-Pe, a Chi bracelet they wear around their wrist, they can shoot off many different forms of abilites, ranging from ranged fire explosions to chi leeching techniques that deliver unavoidable attacks and grabs. Force Masters are the masters of control, they can apply movement impairing effects to multiple enemies, allowing them to take on more than one foe at a time.
Destroyer 力士
Destroyer's power comes from their immense physical strength. They wield large axes to deliver fatal blows to their enemy targets. They also enjoy taking advantage of their winning situations, grabbing enemy corpses and tossing them at other foes. Hell, they will grab anything in their sight to toss at their enemies. Destroyers have great defense making it easier to deal with melee attackers and multiple enemies at once. Destroyer bodies were trained to withstand even the harshest attack, they often become the strong root of their allies.
I've been following this game pretty closely for the last year, but its hard to get information aside from all the information just released at G-Star. A solid english fansite is www.bladeandsouldojo.com. While its currently unknown if it will leave korea, we can only hope so. Even if its "easy-mode", the gameplay is so fluid I think it would be pretty great.
There's nothing "easy mode" about the skill setup. Unless you're pants on head retarded it isn't gonna change how you play, it's just a matter of convenience and not having to have a clusterfuck of a skill setup.
I was refering to the comment about easy mode above. I think i would spend more time running and jumping around the environment, I don't know if i would ever get anything done.
doesn't sound any easier than having a shitton of hotkeys and just pressing the appropriate one... just less cluttered
There's a different kind of reaction in that case. Normally you'd have to first notice you have a debuff before you press the appropriate hotkey (or not notice it and sit through it) vs the game just flat out telling you to press a button by immediately switching your bar over. Some people might be clueless and sit through an entire stun or debuff, but with this kind of handholding, I'd be surprised if initial debuffs lasted for more than a second. I just don't think defensive mechanics should be as automated as offensive, but meh.
I was all over this game back at around the time NA-Aion launched. Haven't kept up with it cuz it seemed to have been headed in the KR only path. 1.5 years later, I can sadly say that neither the graphics, game play, UI or anything impresses me anymore. The girls are still fine as fuck though. Shame really, but it's only beta, so I'll keep an eye out for progression still.
thanks for the vids. Looks pretty cool, gonna keep my eye on this.
Also 90% of the gameplay videos and interviews I've seen are translated into english, and the official site has an english option, pretty safe bet it's coming overseas.
Seen the intro of the game a long while ago. At least the intro was very story driven and had plenty of cutscenes featuring a lot of action sequences. Hearing it with the Korean voices made it that much cooler. A lot of my friends think Korean language sounds ugly, I think it rocks. Reminds me I still have to finish watching IRIS.
The combo system has some potential. Martial arts is a plus.
The only downside will be the delay between KR and EU/NA. I hope in a few years Korean MMO publishers will be forced to do simultaneous worldwide releases, because otherwise their games will be too outdated by the time they release in the west.
I love the variety of character models within the same class. Even the Lyn have a pretty good range of body types/sizes (to the point it makes them look different ages), rather than being like XI or XIV tarus, which all look the same outside skin color/hair/misc details. Doesn't look like they're taking the easy way out and just scaling the models too...the various heights actually do have different proportions to match. Want this game even more now.