Blades is Bethesda’s attempt to reimagine what an Elder Scrolls game on mobile should be. Unfortunately, it falls short of its goals. Blades is a free-to-play mobile game set in the Elder Scrolls universe. It focuses on rebuilding a town that was destroyed by an attack.
It’s a grind
Elder Scrolls games are all about exploration, dungeons, digging out loot and leveling up your character. Blades is a free-to-play spin-off from the Elder Scrolls series, set shortly after the fourth era Great War.
The game puts you in the shoes of a member of the ancient order of Blades, who was forced into exile and now comes home to find his village completely burnt down. It’s up to you to rebuild the town one structure at a time. By visiting the site, an individual can get some knowledge about Eso Gold faster.
However, to do this, you’ll need lots of gold and resources that you can earn by completing quests. These rewards are essential for building and improving your town, as well as acquiring the materials you need to craft new weapons and potions. As you earn more gold and resources, you can open up chests instantly without having to wait for the timers to expire. This helps a little, but it’s still not enough to make the grind less annoying or compelling.
It’s not open-world
If you’re a fan of The Elder Scrolls series, or you’ve played the mobile titles that Bethesda has released in the past, you might be surprised to find out that Blades isn’t an open world game at all. Rather, it’s a town building and dungeon hopping experience centered around rebuilding your home town that has suffered a massive misunderstanding.
Unlike other dungeon crawlers, Blades is a bit more localized, and the ruined towns and dungeons it takes you to are a lot closer to Oblivion than Skyrim. There are even a few Ayleid ruins that give the game some of its own charm. However, this charm doesn’t come without some limitations. For example, buildings and items you need to upgrade take real-world time, and they need to be crafted or upgraded with materials before they can be used.
Luckily, those materials and upgrades can be bought with gems that are also available as in-game currency. That helps to alleviate a lot of the frustration that new players can face in Blades, especially when it comes to waiting for chests to open.
It’s not a RPG
As a spin-off of the famous Elder Scrolls franchise, Blades is a familiar experience to gamers. It’s a first-person RPG where you can customise your character, unlock different spells and skills, and equip a plethora of weapons and armour.
But while it’s a stripped-back version of the series, that doesn’t mean this game is any less fun. It has a lot of the complexities and lore that make The Elder Scrolls a world-renowned series, but it also takes care to adapt the design to the mobile format.
The dungeon exploration and combat feel like they could have been lifted straight out of a main Elder Scrolls title. You can perform standard attacks by holding a circle meter on the phone screen, and you can also do things like dodge, block, and use magic to perform special moves. The game has a number of different modes, including quests, town-building, and crafting. You’ll gain chests, materials, gold, and more through completing quests and building up your town. This will allow you to build up your shops and purchase better items to complete quests.
It’s not a bad game
A mobile-centric spin-off can be a great opportunity to expand the franchise in a new direction. But it can also be a money-grab for publishers.
Blades is a free-to-play Elder Scrolls game set in a world tainted by a devastating war. The player is tasked with rebuilding their town, which was destroyed in the conflict. As you build your town, new quests become available from NPCs in the area, along with resources that can be collected and used to improve your town. However, these quests require real-world time, and building new structures requires gold or gems that can be bought with premium currency – a system that is predatory in its nature.
The result is that even though it’s a free-to-play title, players are constantly being spammed with adverts and push notifications encouraging them to spend their precious time collecting chests and premium currency. It can be frustrating and tedious, especially as there’s a lot of content here that’s simply not available without spending money.
