Ayumi, a treasure hunter ever looking for a bigger adventure and a greater payload, manages to get in over her head when she starts looking for the mystical treasure from the Dragon Temple, which is located in another world. When she does find a way into Dragonland, she finds herself stranded and alone. Now she has to escape alive (treasure in hand, of course). Almost all of this backstory is told in the beautiful pre-game animation, which is played every time you turn the game on.
There’s not much else to go by in terms of story, other than items and journal entries you can find as you explore Dragonland, but then again, story isn’t and will never be the strong point in Blades of Time. The entries provide a slight flavor of what could have been a promising backstory, but in the end, it’s nothing more than a slight distraction from the real meat of the game.
The first thing I noticed when I started Blades of Time was that it looks gorgeous. The island is brought to life with the vivid colors and the wide range of fauna and derelict structures standing starkly against the background. Environments of all types exist in the island of Dragonland, including a blustery wintery area and a desert with a sun so hot, it actually damages you unless you stand in the shade. The sky of the desert is plastered with stars and planets, and is actually quite a sight to behold.
Ultimately, though, graphics aren’t the meat of Blades of Time either. The game is a quirky mixture of fighting and puzzles. As Ayumi travels through the different areas and temples, Dragonland does its best to throw all sorts of obstacles in her way—magic walls that only dissolve once you’ve defeated all the enemies in an area, strangely elaborate button switches that you stand on that then open even more strangely elaborate doors, and manipulating the shadows in the desert so you’re not constantly losing health.
Puzzles exist inside battles as well in various forms, and enemies run amok aplenty. Monsters of all shape and sizes charge at you in every room, and they often require different tactics to take out. Sometimes enemies charge at you with a shield, so the only way for you to beat him is to somehow get around him so you can attack his flank. Other times, the enemies swarm at you in such numbers it’s almost impossible to take them on yourself.
While you can furiously hack and slash at the enemies brainlessly and hope you don’t get yourself hurt too badly in the process, the key to solving almost all these conundrums lies in the game’s primary unique feature—the ability to rewind time. Apparently, Dragonland unlocks hidden potential, and towards the beginning of the game, Ayumi gains the ability to rewind time and form “time clones” of herself.
What time rewinding really does isn’t just turning back the clock. It turns it back so that the Ayumi of the past still exists. The amount you can turn back is determined by a small clock onscreen, and if you hold the R1 button, you can continue to rewind for probably a minute (I never timed it to be sure). Ayumi (of present) stands immobile while you watch the past play before you in fast-forward in a slightly red-tinted screen. Then, when you decide you want to start playing the past at normal speed, you release the R1 button and the clock starts ticking. Now, Ayumi is free to do anything she wants in conjunction with her past self.
The possibilities of this ability of this are never really explained within the game and you’re expected to rely more on trial and error and experimentation to find out just how you can use them, but luckily, between the game’s auto-save feature and the fact that the game restarts at the last checkpoint every time you die, it’s really easy to take on an enemy (or a hoard of enemies) again and again until you finally figure out how to beat him. For example, why have one clone when you can have several? You can rewind time as many times as you need, as long as you don’t deplete the clock. When you do so, the various Ayumis run around and perform all of your past actions.
More examples: Time-rewinding can be used to stand on two switches at once, to turn switches elsewhere while you stand in front of the door several seconds away, to take on several enemies at once, to mob a single enemy… The power is versatile and very useful. However, it’s not omnipotent. Once the clock completely refills, time’s back to normal and everything’s back to the way it was. That means no clones, and no damage to the enemy if you failed to kill it within that specific period in time. This means that time-rewinding, while extremely handy in a pinch, requires strategy to use well, and you have to make the most of it while it’s in effect.
Additionally, Ayumi’s clones can’t be controlled. They repeat your past actions to a T, which means that your “present” Ayumi’s actions must take advantage of that if you wish to use time rewinding correctly. For example, enemies will respond to present-Ayumi as you attack them, and they’ll run in your direction. However, past-Ayumi’s still standing there, shooting at the place where the enemy was! This means that you’ll actually need to plan ahead, make sure the enemy’s standing in the correct place in both the past and the present, and act accordingly.
As you can imagine, time-rewinding isn’t intuitive, and it often requires luck to pull off correctly. The fact that the Blades of Time relies so much on this system is what makes the game unique and fun, but also fills it with endless frustration. It’s an interesting concept, but actual implementation can be rather annoying. Thankfully, abusing time rewinding does no lasting harm to Ayumi, so you can try and try again, until you get the results you’re aiming for.
Outside of time control, Ayumi is still a fighting force to be reckoned with. She wields dual blades that can slice enemies well outside the reach of her blades (Uooohh!! The slicing power of the wind?!) and she can also execute powerful kicks that break the enemy’s defense. She can also use various spells that are granted to her by one of the mysterious entities inhabiting Dragonland. These spells are incredibly powerful and fun to use. You can light enemies on fire or freeze them to deal extra damage, but their usage is limited because of their charging time. Ayumi will pull back and prepare a spell for a second before actually executing it, and that’s all the time a monster needs to leap forward and slash. The spells also require a very superficial version of MP, which is accumulated every time you physically attack an enemy, so you can’t just spam magic.
Every time the Alter (the magical entity) gifts you with a spell in a rather strange out-of-body sequence, you’re also given skills that are actually very useful. This includes the ability to not use up all your MP in a single spell, the ability to dash towards enemies, and the ability to endow your regular attacks with elements. They’re also almost always plot-related. For example, right after you’re given the ability to dash to enemies, the game requires you to use the technique on a boss a screen later. The game isn’t very subtle when it comes to hints about how to defeat enemies, which either requires you to use some newly gained skill or to follow a hint that is displayed at the top of the screen during the start of battle.
This just emphasizes that the puzzles in Blades of Time aren’t just about figuring out what to do. They’re also about the actual execution, and this is the core of what is frustrating about the game until you master the controls.
Perhaps the most harmful aspect of the controls is the fact that sometimes they’re rather unresponsive. True, the camera could use work and I really wish they’d put some sort of customization in that lets me invert the camera’s X-axis, but what harmed me more is the fact that sometimes, when I wanted Ayumi to perform some action, she didn’t. These instances mostly involved the lock-on feature in the heat of battle. When I’d try to lock on to something so Ayumi could dash to it (and there’s no other way to defeat the enemy), the lock-on wouldn’t always hold. It would cancel or disappear or Ayumi would just dash too late while I was mashing at the trigger buttons.
And then, there’s the gun. Yes, Ayumi can use a rifle. No, she can’t run while she uses the rifle. Does this make you a sitting duck while you struggle with the zoom and the awkward camera? Yes. The less said about the rifle, the better, but unfortunately it’s also a rather integral part to many of the puzzles in the game. Learning how to use the weapon correctly requires strategy in and of itself. Its saving grace is that Ayumi actually strafes quickly enough to dodge many attacks, which saves her from many game-overs.
Ultimately, once I overcame the steep learning curve of almost every aspect of Blades of Time, helped along by the game’s oddly inconsistent tutorials and hints, I enjoyed touring its world (and the monsters, but that’s such an odd thing to say as they’re always after your blood) and figuring out how to solve the puzzles spread throughout Dragonland. I really liked the enemy designs too, especially for the bosses, due to the amount of detail in their models. Unfortunately, there isn’t a very large variety of enemies.
Food for Thought:
1. Ayumi can use her compass to point out hidden treasure chests, and sometimes you can find hidden paths to take, but they’re forgettable features unless you’re looking for 100% completion. In Hard difficulty, the chests will be invisible, actually bringing some stock to the treasure hunting aspect of the game.
2. I don’t really like the human models. They were frankly quite distracting and that, coupled with the fact that story is more or less a garnish, made me skip most of the cutscenes, which the game lets you do with a single button press.
3. There are many weapons and rifles to collect through the game, as well as some rings and amulets that you can equip Ayumi with. These are spread between Normal and Hard difficulty, though, so actually finding all of them will require multiple playthroughs. Items found on Normal difficulty carry through to Hard. Since there are no stats or levels in the game, the items instead add elements to your attacks, boost a certain element, increase your health or speed, etc.
4. Ayumi also gains access to different costumes as you go through the game. For example, you can get a winter coat in the Brutal Lands.
5. Ayumi can heal, although the mechanics behind the accumulation of healing packs are rather odd. The best way to heal, though, is just to find a spot to rest and wait about ten seconds. She’ll be in tip-top shape before you know it. This can be done in-battle too, so long as you avoid damage.
6. There’s a multiplayer mode that can be played in single-player, called Outbreak. It doesn’t get you anything but trophies, and the details are far too intricate for a side game, but it can be fun if played sparingly.
Published: Apr 1, 2012 04:30 pm