X-Blades HD

The only thing "HD" about this version is the cutscenes are indeed at a higher resolution, be this a true re render, AI upscale, or just them shipping the original renders uncompressed, the matter of fact is they are of a higher quality. The rest of the page is just outright false however, first of all, the game has always supported 16:9, It's a Directx9 title, of course it would have been able to do 16:9, the non "HD" Steam version can do it. Second, cutsenes aside, ZERO graphics have been changed, I compared the file sizes to the Steam release, everything is 1:1 the exact same size, no texutres have been modifed. I have nothing in this review to speak on about the game itself, just note all that's changed in this version over Steam is some slightly nicer pre rendered video, that is all, the other claims here are 100% false.

I played this game on my PS3 back in the day and i bought it also on gog few days ago for the nostalgia factor. I played the game on an Asus Strix G15(2022) Ryzen 9 6900HX, RTX 3070ti and 16 GB ram. The game run without any problem on modern hardaware, and i didn't have any crash. I played the game with a controller so the controls where smoth as butter. The visuals are ok, the look of the game is cartoonish so the graphics hold pretty well for a game from 2009, remastered in 2022. The game is a classic hack and slash, story is almost inexistent (fight betwen dark and light). The game has two endings. After you finish the game you can chose to play the game for the second time to se the second ending. Not worth it in my opinion. The only downside is that the game dosen't have achievements because the PS3 version had trophies. It's a shame and for that reason i didn't play the game for the second time because there was an trophy on PS3 where you need to see both endings and finish the game on pro difficulty. I finished the game in 8,5 hours on Hard difficulty not dying once. If you read you bestiary to see the wekness of each monster the game is a breeze even on the hardest difficulty PRO,which uncloks after you finish the game on hard. The moves are inspired from God if War, Evil May Cry and other hack and slash from that period. The power-ups are fun to use. The assest are reused:Same monsters but with different atacks, and the only thing that the player must do is to change the power-ups to which the monsters are weak, same lcoations etc. I reccomend this game to any player who likes hack and slash type of games. It's a short fun game and maybe you should buy it at discount. I paid for the game 8,5 euro and finish the game in 8.5 hours.1 euro per hour it's not a bad deal. 10/10 for me beacuse the length of the game is perfect. You don't have time to get bored by fighting the same monsters over and over again for 20+ hours like in other games.

A simple but fun button masher game. Learn new abilities for special movers and kill all the bad monster you can.

Imagine if someone took the basic concept of an action game such as Devil May Cry and then fused it with the gameplay pacing of Painkiller. Then, after that, they made the protagonist a visually appealing, triple twin-tailed kuro gyaru anime chick with a tattoo on her stomach, who also just so happens to be wearing little more than a white thong that sublimely contrasts against her smooth, bronzed butt cheeks, conveniently placed within view at all times. Meet X-Blades: a bizarre and mindless hack and slash title made by a Russian company called Gaijin Entertainment. The concept of X-Blades is so mind-bogglingly absurd that it's incredulous that it even exists, yet I can't help but respect the developers for making the exact kind of game that they wanted to make, for better or for worse. Personally speaking, I'm a fan of action games as well as the femme fatale character archetype; so, needless to say, X-Blades piqued my curiosity pretty much instantly, going nearly all the way back to when it was originally announced. Despite my interest I had never gotten around to playing it until very recently. It's hard to argue with the very generous price this game goes for during sales, so it was high time that I finally entertained my curiosity all of these years later. The most noticeable thing that I appreciated about X-Blades right away is that it's not ashamed to feature its protagonist heavily as the centrepiece of the product. Ayumi is clearly a large part of the appeal here, and I'd be lying if I didn't admit that she ticks a lot of boxes for me. She's cute, sexy, and has a lot of spunk with a seemingly permanent chip on her shoulder. That being said, the characters and plot here are rather shallow overall, but if you appreciate the afformentioned character traits in your heroines, over a helpless damsel in distress, then Ayumi's got you covered. Video games have always been about fun, fantasy, and escapism, so it's refreshing to go back to an earlier decade when games weren't afraid to feature attractive female protagonists and nobody seemed to care. Despite having an alluring protagonist, X-Blades is an incredibly janky product; the combo system barely functions and is simultaneously unsatisfying and unintuitive. The inputs for specific moves hardly ever seemed to work and only appear to actually come out randomly after mashing the inputs wildly. The odd time I was able to actually get certain moves to come out, it wasn't always immediately clear what the actual benefit was that they provided. Enemy feedback on impact is more or less non-existent, so using these moves against enemies isn't particularly satisfying, nor is it really even satisfying to hit them with any attack that Ayumi has in general. Given the difficulty in actually getting any of these moves to come out on command, and the fact that they are not required in any way whatsoever to progress or engage with the game's basic combat system (other than one specific moment near the end of the game), I determined that it was simply easier to just rely on Ayumi's primary attacks and magic and simply forget about engaging with any of her advanced combat techniques. I want to believe that the game has some kind of logic towards how it accepts inputs for certain moves, but much like the original Street Fighter released in 1989, which primarily only accepts negative edge inputs, it simply isn't worth trying to master or figure it out. Ayumi has an abundance of magical moves that can be assigned to buttons for quick access, and some of them are genuinely fun and satisfying to use, but there are also way too many of them with seemingly overlapping uses with very little discernible difference between them. There's the odd boss fight where you have to use certain elemental magic attacks to progress, and a few enemies that have specific weaknesses. The game often doesn't make it clear what enemies are vulnerable to so you will have to consult the in-game bestiary when you encounter certain enemies that seem to be invincible in order to discover what their actual weakness is. There are quite a few enemies in the game like this that are randomly immune to everything except one specific attack, which makes them kind of annoying to engage with. There's also an abundance of unavoidable attacks and projectiles that basically do not stop or disappear until you get hit by them or simply continue to avoid them endlessly. Exploration in X-Blades is non-existent; every level is just a Painkiller style flood of enemies that doesn't stop until everyone is dead. You are then free to explore the lifeless stage for the odd collectible before moving on. These collectibles are worth searching for as they increase your combat power but searching the levels for them isn't particularly engaging and usually just involves the player destroying an arbitrary object in the environment. There is pretty much only one type of environment in the entire game, so what you see from the very first level is what you will be seeing for the rest of the game. The environments themselves are completely serviceable and still look decent even years later, but a bit more variety would have been nice. As mentioned earlier, X-Blades's protagonist, Ayumi, is a huge part of its appeal; if you like her design and don't mind janky and shallow action games, check it out on a steep sale. Otherwise, you can safely forget this exists. I'd be lying if I said that I didn't enjoy my time with X-Blades. It has a certain level of mindless joy to it that is rare and it was a great palette cleanser play it and forget about it kind of game. It also helps that I found the protagonist visually appealing so it made playing the game more fun despite the fact that it isn't particularly engaging. If you're looking for a game with deep combat you will not be satisfied by this product, but if you want something kind of mindless there is some level of enjoyment to be had here. My rating is based on overall fun factor rather than a deep critical analysis, and I feel that 3 stars is appropriate for the level of enjoyment I had. I wouldn't go out of my way to recommend this to anyone, but you're likely to know whether you'll derive any enjoyment from this title based on what I've written here and looking at some screenshots and video. All that being said, I have to warn potential buyers that this game is a janky mess and I don't think it's particularly good. In fact, I'd argue that it's actually kind of bad, but somehow manages to offer a unique level of mindless fun that I personally enjoyed to some extent, but just barely.