Blade And Soul NEO Review – The Ultimate Grindhouse

Despite being a classic genre in film, wuxia is arguably underrepresented in video games. It certainly doesn’t help that most western developers wouldn’t ideally be a good fit for the genre, and developers from other countries would rather focus on their own heritage in this regard. NCSoft, however, has happened to have a wuxia-themed MMORPG for quite a bit of time with Blade & Soul, and more recently, the studio released an Unreal Engine 4-based remaster of the title, while at the same time bringing it to more international audiences outside of the developer’s home nation of South Korea.

Being a massive fan of classic martial arts and wuxia movies, the chance to experience Blade & Soul NEO was too good to pass up. Unfortunately, however, playing the MMORPG felt a bit too much like playing an older east-Asian MMORPG from back in the 2000s in all the wrong ways. Blade & Soul NEO has quite a few issues that will likely hamper it from truly breaking into the international MMO market, where genre a behemoth like World of Warcraft has dominated for so long despite having barriers to entry in the form of an up-front buy-in as well as a monthly subscription cost.

"Blade & Soul NEO allows you to grind out just about everything you could possibly want just through pure gameplay."

The fact that Blade & Soul NEO is a free-to-play game becomes incredibly evident not just with the fact that you don’t have to pay any money to start playing, but also once you actually spend some time with the game and look at all the different ways it has been monetized. It feels like an MMORPG that was designed from the ground up to spend as much of your time as possible with incredibly repetitive action and menial tasks to try and get you to spend as much money as possible.

Now, don’t get me wrong, you don’t actually have to spend any money if you’re just looking for grinding in an online game. In fact, Blade & Soul NEO allows you to grind out just about everything you could possibly want just through pure gameplay. And while this might sound like a great idea in theory, in practice, you’re bound to get lost in the myriad of different currencies, crafting materials, marketplaces, ways to partake in the player economy, and even cosmetic items.

Things start out innocently enough with Blade & Soul NEO. There’s an extended tutorial section that slowly introduces you to the core gameplay mechanics of your class, and gives you some simple gear to start out with before you get thrust into bigger fights. Very quickly after the tutorial, however, the pacing takes a massive jump off a cliff. After seeing the rather epic scene of your martial arts school getting invaded by demons, you’re going to then spend the next several hours dealing with local skirmishes between various factions of bandits.

The core gameplay is simple enough and rather than using the tab-targeting style of gameplay that was made popular by World of Warcraft and has since been adopted by just about every 3D MMO out there, Blade & Soul NEO instead has you ducking, weaving, dodging and striking, much like you would in a traditional third-person action game. You get a few skills depending on your class of choice, and from that point on, things don’t really change much.

"Blade & Soul NEO instead has you ducking, weaving, dodging and striking, much like you would in a traditional third-person action game."

Sure, you get access to more abilities as you level up, but the core gameplay of your class that gets introduced to you at level 1 never really felt any different when you reach, say, level 10. As a Blademaster, I was still occasionally blocking attacks to gather up energy points that I could then use up with a powerful thrust attack. Sure, the fact that enemy attacks were telegraphed well enough to make timely blocking simple and rewarding might be fun, but there is never really any variation introduced. The only real change that happens as you continue to gain levels and new equipment is that you might see a few damage numbers get larger.

Speaking of your class, you get a few options in Blade & Soul NEO during character creation. After you pick out your race, you then get to pick your class. There are a total of 14 different classes, each featuring their own style of gameplay and a couple of unique mechanics; some might be better off as frontline melee fighters, while others might be better off sneaking behind enemy lines to land some sneak attacks. Some players might even decide to stay in the back, buffing their allies with helpful spells.

Ultimately, just about every class feels fundamentally the same. The only real difference tends to be one core mechanic. The Blade Master, for instance, has to make heavy use of their ability to block. The Assassin, on the other hand, is constantly looking for ways to use stealth so that they can land powerful critical hits.

The experience is further brought down by the simple fact that enemies aren’t really designed with the idea of pushing your class to its absolute limits. Just about every enemy in the game tends to have one massively telegraphed attack that you can easily dodge or block and start pushing out those combos. In fact, the primary source of difficulty throughout the game’s solo questing comes from multiple enemies being thrown at you simultaneously. And even this is only really difficult sometimes, since you can also just as easily block or dodge the attacks of multiple enemies.

"Things start out innocently enough with Blade & Soul NEO."

In terms of progression, you primarily unlock new abilities for your class by levelling up and using the skill points you earn. While quite simple for your base abilities, a bit of complexity is present in how you travel deeper down the skill tree. To do this, you have to find a specific book for a skill you might want. This book can then be used up to slot the skill into one of your accessories. Equipping this accessory will then give you the ability to use the skill. These skills can then be made stronger by finding the same skill book once again to use on the same accessory.

You can also unlock more effects for your skills by making use of Valor Stones, which allows you to buff up your skills of choice. However, the effects tend to be quite mundane, like just a flat damage increase or reduced resource usage, but they do tend to still make a big difference in combat. The skill points you use up can also be refunded to be spent on other skills, allowing for quite a bit of experimentation as you try and figure out what skills work best for your style of play.

When it comes to actually getting to the late game, however, Blade & Soul NEO has some severe pacing problems. Most of the quests in the game are the bog-standard cookie cutter quest you would expect from an MMORPG that isn’t really trying to push its boundaries. You’re going to be running around in large open fields, waiting for specific monsters to spawn, and killing them multiple times. There isn’t really much in the way of variety here, and even the most story centric quests still ultimately end up with you having to do the same type of quest repeatedly.

Things do get somewhat better with a few quests that put you in dungeons. This is where Blade & Soul NEO starts feeling at least slightly challenging. The enemies in these dungeons seem like they’re placed with actual encounter design in mind, and encourage the player to think strategically about how they’re going to kill them. Rushing into a fight in one of these dungeons is definitely a death sentence, and you’re going to often end up using some of your crowd-controlling abilities to stun the strongest enemy in a group while you quickly take out the others.

"Things do get somewhat better with a few quests that put you in dungeons."

Generally speaking, PvE content in Blade & Soul NEO has the tendency to feel incredibly repetitive most of the time. There are a few highlights, like when you hit up a dungeon with a group, and all of you band together to complete it. The vast majority of the time, however, the game is filled with incredibly boring and uninspired quests. The game thankfully features great matchmaking that lets you jump into dungeons with other players quite easily. The only thing you have to be careful about is making sure that your level and gear are up to snuff.

The UI in Blade & Soul NEO feels quite cluttered. However, when it comes to functionality, however, it works just fine. It’s easy to figure out which piece of equipment goes where, and some aspects, like the Quest Journal, can be quite helpful in letting you figure out where you’re supposed to be going next.

Blade & Soul NEO being a remaster in Unreal Engine 4 also doesn’t really help that much since the visual upgrade isn’t particularly notable. The environments look somewhat decent at times, but the NPC models all still look like they’re from a game from a couple of console generations ago. This doesn’t feel like a deliberate artistic choice either, since the player character models all look relatively much more modern and of higher fidelity. NPCs feel like they’re taken right out of a PlayStation 2 game that also happens to have annoying aliasing. The best I can say about the new engine for Blade & Soul NEO is that at least it runs well enough. I was able to get stable frame rates despite maxing out every graphical setting on my mid-end PC.

All in all, Blade & Soul NEO isn’t a particularly good MMORPG. Even when it comes to playing a free one, there are still better choices out there. The level of monetization is egregious; it not only includes microtransactions, but a battle pass as well. The story is incredibly dull and the only way to ignore it is to have something interesting happening on a second monitor nearby. If you’re looking for a compelling story, deep gameplay, or epic boss fights, you would be better off looking elsewhere.

This game was reviewed on PC.