Add Blade Dancer: Linage of Light as part of the wave of quality titles coming to the PSP soon. In Blade Dancer you start out as Lance a young wanderer who is seeking to improve his sword skills. He’s your typical idealistic hero that stumbles upon a battle between good and evil. The gameplay of Blade Dancer is like a typical RPG. There are quests that you can get by talking to townsfolk. Early on most are item fetching quests like getting an iron blade for a blacksmith to forge or sword or delivering lunches around town. The first set of mini quests are designed to introduce players to Foo’s stores and the crafting system. When you leave town you enter a vibrant forest area with floating skulls. The skulls represent enemy encounters and it’s up to the player to decide to fight by running into a skull or avoid battles by dodging the flying skulls.
When you step into combat you’ll immediately notice that there are no magic points, skill points or anything like that. Instead all of combat is controlled by lunar forces. The bottom menu has a circular luna clock, when the ball spins in a full circle you will be able to take a turn with one of your party members. Since each of your team and every enemy has their own luna clock battles are similar to an active time battle. When fights begin you can only attack or get hit by that wolf you’re fighting. Each attack builds up lunar power in the lunability meter. Once you have enough lunar power you can pull of special moves like Lance’s heat blade attack where he does a slashing back flip or save up more lunar power to use primal heat and hit all enemies with a burst of fire. Gozen, Lance’s monk friend, is the first character with a healing spell, which also takes up lunar power to use. However, stocking up lunar power isn’t always the best strategy. The meter is shared between party members and all of your on screen foes. So the hundred points you were saving up for a heavy hitting team attack could be used by a water elemental to cast an aqua spell or worse a deadly attack from a boss that turns the tide of the battle.
Blade Dancer also has a multiplayer mode. If you bring together a couple of friends, PSPs and copies of the game you can journey together. In multiplayer mode each character moves around on their own and can do battle freely. It’s up to each person to join and cooperate in combat. Items picked up in multiplayer fighting arena can be brought back to the single player game. So if you want to craft some new shiny armor, questing with a group of people is a good way to gain raw materials. Blade Dancer: Linage of Light comes out in North America in July and we’ll have more details on the game in the near future. In the meantime check our screenshot gallery of Blade Dancer below.
