It’s probably no surprise to anyone that Blade & Soul managed to rope in a lot of excited fans and curious casuals this past week. I mean, in the east it’s been a popular and successful hit, and in the west its release has been hoped for and anticipated for literally years at this point.
MMO bloggers are always on the front line of any charge into a new game release, especially with one boasting this high a profile. So I’ve been keeping track of some notable first impressions of Blade & Soul from around the blogosphere, with the end goal of sharing them with you.
So if you’re still on the fence even after reading our first impressions piece, then here are some additional perspectives, opinions, and recommendations from your fellow gamers!
“The game is shockingly charming… and I say shockingly… because I really did not expect much.  The localization team has done an amazing job of shaping the story into something that I cared about […] The game’s bread-and-butter seems to be gratuitous T&A action in a way not dissimilar from the Dead or Alive franchise.  All of this is sad, because the game and the localization are actually rather good… and don’t really need the oversexed window dressing.  Now I have yet to run into super insidious, but right now it just seems a little much like somewhere the original artists were blushing and going ‘tee hee hee boobies.'”
“One thing you won’t be able to comprehend from photos is the boob jiggle engine in Blade & Soul, which is one of the most hysterical I’ve seen yet. (And man, I’ve seen some jiggle engines.) They’ve gone around the corner from ‘sexy’ and into ‘eerie,’ sloshing around less like even game boobs and more like a physics puzzle you might find in something like World of Goo.”
“The game reminds me of TERA in the visual and gameplay sense. It looks quite good and, from what I gather from tweets, the combat’s pretty fun; the high points of TERA if I were to draw a similarity. But also, from a few videos I have seen, the game also seems to have that feeling of ‘I look good but there’s not much underneath.'”
“Blade & Soul is finally here and it’s about damn time. Is it too little too late to make a mark on the MMO landscape? From my short play time so far, I’d have to say yes, absolutely. I could go through a laundry list of what the genre has gone through in the last six years, but that would take a week to read so I’ll refrain. I will say this game had a window of opportunity a few years ago when it officially launched in Korea, but at this point, i just don’t see it having any lasting power.”
“There are two things that Blade &Â Soul does very well: graphics and action combat. The world is absolutely beautiful and rivals Final Fantasy XIV in terms of sheer gorgeousness. The action combat is quite satisfying and surpasses TERA when it comes to engagement and fluidity […] There are two things about Blade &Â Soul that grind my gears: story and character aesthetics. The story is about as derivative and unimaginative as they come.”
“While the maps are beautiful, the experience is mostly quest-hub-to-quest-hub. Up until now, there hasn’t been a lot of exploration to do. You’ll visit every inch of the map anyway. That might change later on. It’s also one of these games that give out a trillion quests in a hub: You go out and do them dutifully, one stack of quests will lead you to roughly the same area, and turn them in when going back. What this does, of course, is taking the meaning out of individual quests, leading to strange stories and killing some of my desire to read quest text outside of the main storyline.”
“A fun and different MMO to stick your nose into. The character creator is awesome, the gameplay is different but not bad. If you’re into kung fu and like the Korean MMO style this is definitely something to consider playing, especially with it being F2P. The only major downside I see for now are the annoying queue times, I will probably do a follow up on this post after I’ve been able to play more and can say more about the content itself.”
“Outfit silliness aside, the game is probably one of the single prettiest damn MMO’s I’ve laid my eyes on in a long while.  It hits that anime Korean aesthetic that toes the space between baby doll-headed horror monsters and truly lovely and engaging pieces of eye candy […] So the game’s views and vistas motivate me to press on…but the combat?  That is what makes me keep coming back for more.  Blade & Soul has some of the most engaging, impressive and high-paced combat I have ever gotten my hands on in my years of playing MMOs.  It’s like TERA turned up about three more notches, with combos, procs, adaptive skills, and rapid pacing throughout.”
