If you think that the pretty girl on the cover here looks like an older version of that other pretty girl from the cover of X-Blades well you are right,to a certain degree. Gaijin Entertainment was behind X-Blades and now they came up with the spiritual successor of the game called Blades of Time.If X-Blades ripped of God of War then Blades of Time ripped of God of War and Prince of Persia right? Well no, let’s not jump the gun with this one and see what all the fuss is about.
The plot is nicely presented to say the least, it’s pretty much like Jak 3 because right when you boot up the game you are presented with a cinematic featuring a battle between Ayumi and her guild mates against some other unimportant people for a legendary sphere that is said to lead to a world of treasures . Ayumi’s partner Zero buys her enough time in order to reach the sphere and she just disappears upon touching it where she is thrown into a world between dimensions called Dragon land and just now you are in the main menu. The game does look a lot better than X-Blades if you really want to know but that isn’t really a major feat for a game because we expect things like this when it comes to sequels or “spiritual successors” just like Grand Chase and Elsword. Besides improved graphics we are expecting some refined gameplay and, if possible, a new mechanic squeezed in there like the “Time” part of the game. Finally starting the game you wake up on a certain island and you have a nice tutorial explaining that you don’t need a map since you have a magic compass that will always pinpoint to where and what you need to do plus a treasure locater represented on the same compass as a big red arrow as 
opposed to the small yellow quest tracking arrow so you won’t exactly get lost no matter how confusing the terrain will be after you fight. Ayumi is very fragile so taking more than 2-3 direct hits will get you killed, most of the time, but this is where your god given talent to dash, counter and heal comes into effect and there is no recast time, charge or anything, that will hinder your performance. This game is made so you are always on the move, fighting and countering to rank up hits so you can use your tier 1 and 2 spells that you will get later on, automatically mind you, at no cost what so ever so I guess this is the first difference between this game and God of War and some other game:
– Unlike God of War, where the souls you collect have to be used by you to upgrade your weapons and such, the souls in Blades of Time have no use what so ever, sure the game altar tells you that you need souls to get magic but there is no way to keep track on how much souls you have gathered and when you reach the altar he just picks you clean of any soul you have, so you get spells that don’t have much importance until the final boss fight.
– Blades of Time’s combat is much flashier than God of War to say the least, there is rarely a moment where you don’t counter and every you do that or a finisher the camera does a nice little close up to show some cleavage I suppose or her ass,
– Like God of War you have a ranged weapon and a melee weapon but there are quite a variety of weapons, both ranged and melee, that you will find in hidden treasure chests but will never ever use apart from your favorite spell boosting one. Every weapon and accessory boosts your spells, health or damage output from frozen/burning enemies but I never noticed any difference since Ayumi hits and counters insanely fast plus with her dash that always gets her out of trouble there is little to no danger in a fight, sure you will hit a few difficulties with certain enemies but that’s for later.
All that God of War bravado aside we turn our sight to the main mechanic of the game and that is “Time Rewind”. You would be surprised that it doesn’t borrow from the Prince of Persia game but rather the movie, the same “out of body” effect that was in the movie, but with a few twists like adding clones to the equation. Every time you rewind time you see your clone moving about doing everything you did so when you stop rewinding time it has to catch up but you are free to move and damage your enemies while it’s catching up so instead of one Ayumi beating up a mob there will be two and this can be abused for more clones, I managed to get up to 3 Ayumi’s fighting. This mechanic is used in puzzles, but not enough in my opinion, that are always the same “make 2 clones to sit there” puzzle apart of course from a few other straight forward ones. Apart from puzzles the Time Rewind ability is used a lot on super mobs, mini-bosses and bosses alike as in one clone keeps the boss busy while you deliver the finishing blow and it’s a pretty scene to say the least.
In conclusion there is one thing I was severely disappointed with the game and that is the voice acting, that terrible voice acting in the dubbed version of the game makes me wish was I got the Japanese version with subtitles, not sure if such thing exists, because Ayumi’s voice actor in particular is always this calm British girl no matter what situation is. Running for your life? Calm tone, Angry against some god? Calm tone, friend might die? Calm tone, basically the voice does not fit with the scene at all and it’s irritating.There is more that i could say but i`l end things here,do I still recommend Blades of Time to people? Unless you finished/played God of War,Darksiders,Prince of Persia etc. not really, because it is an overall “decent” experience.
