The other combat system is a rhythm based game where directional buttons zoom across the screen and you must time your presses. It’s an extremely empty system devoid of any personality. Simply put, the Follower combat is contest of quantity where the side who has the larger number of Followers wins. Still, you must level up your Followers by attaching them to Masters in standard combat in order for them to be effective in this type of fight mode.
Unfortunately, the combat of the game is extremely erratic. The beginning of the game is somewhat of a challenge since you have no healers and the enemies deal a good chunk of your maximum health. To add to the predicament, your income from battles is low and its difficult to spend money on medicine to heal your characters up. While this is only a problem in the beginning, as you tread through the various dungeons, the monsters deal an absurd amount of damage forcing you to grind in previous areas. The problem is that the experience yield is often times low forcing you to either spend large sums of money to buy healing items.
Luckily, unlike its combat system the customization for the characters is quite deep. Each Master has various wheels filled with a stat buff. In some way, these wheels are connected creating a web of sorts. By accessing certain nodes you are able to unlock new wheels which are filled with skills, buffs, and other abilities. It’s interesting and since you are limited in the amount of skill points you can use – which you gain by leveling up – there are various builds you can try. Sadly, the game’s difficulty doesn’t allow for testing that much.
The visuals of the game fit the typical anime style featuring boys that look androgynous and girls that seem to have overdeveloped bodies. The characters themselves look perfectly fine and it isn’t too much a stray from what the audience that this game is catered to is used to but the same cannot be said for the monsters. They are ugly and uninspiring with little to no detail put into them. It looks like a few grade schoolers drew it up in their freetime. The art design of the world is quite nice with varied environments and towns filled with color. All of this combines in the short anime cutscenes and it looks fantastic.
Exuding brilliance, the soundtrack of the game is quite vibrant and ambient due to the work from Nobou Uematsu. The celebratory fanfare is welcome and adds to the adventurous tone the game sets. The voicework on the other hand is quite hit or miss. While it features voice actors that are prominent like Troy Baker, the actual execution is odd. It’s overly dramatic and flamboyant making any situation somewhat comedic in nature. In short, you can’t take anyone seriously.
Perhaps the best way to describe Unchained Blades is a poor execution of trying to attempt a fond look at the past. Using poor gameplay mechanics in combination with a narrative that rarely intrigues, Unchained Blades somehow creates a premise that makes you want to actually return to the past rather than look back at it. If you’re hoping to find an excellent JRPG experience in the PSP’s dying days then this game isn’t it. Just leave this one chained up and walk away.
Unchained Blades is the latest JRPG localization from XSEED, however, for a system that is slowly dying does this game deserve your chance? Its anime aesthetic and notable work from certain people may entice but sadly that’s all it is. On paper the game’s ideas are cool and neat but the execution just isn’t there.
The narrative premise in Unchained Blades is fairly simple. The dragon emperor Fang travels to a shrine of the goddess Clunea in order to find out who is the strongest being in the world. Sadly, his rude attitude causes her displeasure and in an attempt to teach Fang a lesson, she turns him into a young boy. His goal is now to have his vengeance on Clunea and along the way, people join him and follow around.
If the narrative sounded a bit bland and derivative to you, it’s because the story is just that. The plot has no insane plot twists and the developments aren’t even that interesting. Fang, while not a typical character archetype, is a brash, hotheaded, arrogant character that doesn’t even remotely connect to the player at all. It’s hard to relate to him and his growth moves him into predictable territory. The other characters are just as problematic except they are more stereotypical than Fang is. A large golem who acts like a scaredy cat and a voluptuous Gorgon that fits the moe archetype are only a few. There is hardly anything worthwhile in this adventure and anything of value that might come out of it might be your perseverance with the game.
While the narrative premise might be horrible, the actual execution of the gameplay of Unchained Blades isn’t too shabby. At its core the game acts like a dungeon crawler where you must explore the various temples and caves and find your objective. Take for example, the second dungeon you encounter is a large temple where you must find a key that will aid you finding the goddess. The actual exploration is unfortunately filled with problems. The design of the dungeons aren’t that creative and the recycled walls and features of actual dungeons get tiring over time. While this is actually a problem with the genre itself, it’s hard to believe that the journey from point A to point B could be any more boring than Unchained Blades.
Each dungeon is filled with treasures that are waiting to be discovered and resourced to be found. Using harvesting equipment and your trusty map radar – which will blink red or yellow if a harvesting point is nearby, you can find resources and use them for crafting items. It could become an addictive thing if you’re into collecting everything in a dungeon, sadly you have to pick and choose certain harvest points since it’s quite costly to maintain your equipment.
If you’re not looking for treasures or any other misadventures then the primary thing you will be doing is combat. Separated into two types of category, Unchained Blades features a standard combat and Followers combat. In the former, the main cast of characters called Masters will fight against monsters that you run into in dungeons. Each Master can be equipped with Followers, which are like minions, that round out your attacks and skills making you stronger. It sounds like a deep system at its core but in reality it’s nothing but a poor attempt at complicating the bland turn-based combat system. To round out the Followers you also have skills that you can use at your disposal and Bursts which are your ultimate skills which require you to build up a gauge in order to use.
