Don’t call Blades of Time a sequel to X-Blades. While both games feature Ayumi as the lead character, Blades of Time isn’t connected to X-Blades, a Konami representative explained. Yes, Konami. They picked up two titles from Russian developer Gaijin Entertainment, World War II flight simulator Birds of Steel and Blades of Time.
Both companies decided to drop Ayumi’s anime look and tweaked her weapons. Instead of pistol-blades, her sword and rifle are separate items in Blades of Time. Oh, and Ayumi is some kind of treasure hunter now. Maybe low(er) cut Lara Croft?
(Left: X-Blades, Right: Blades of Time)
Blades of Time has one mechanic that may set it apart from other hack-and-slash games. The game lets players create a time rewind clone, perhaps inspired by the creative puzzle game Cursor*10. Your Ayumi clone replicates the last actions you made, so it’s possible to tag team a boss or stand on two switches at the same time. When I played Blades of Time the time clone feature wasn’t fully functional. It worked when fighting small groups of enemies, but I couldn’t trigger it when Ayumi was caught under a magical chaos barrier that made Ayumi move as if she was submerged in water. I had to use magic instead (there are two kinds – order and chaos) to freeze enemies before hacking away with Ayumi’s blades.
A Konami representative explained the build I was playing was still early in development. Gaijin Entertainment plan to finish Blades of Time before its early 2012 launch on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. Like X-Blades, players will be able to dress Ayumi in different costumes, maybe even Konami inspired outfits too.
