It was going to be difficult for a Free TES for mobile was able to offer an experience similar to what many have burned through hours in Skyrim. For many reasons, since the graphical, mechanical and combat system capacity that this popular game has can be transferred to a mobile device.
Maybe that’s why he came to The Elder Scrolls: Blades with very contained expectations. To everything that could go wrong -from the combat to the adaptation of the saga- it was necessary to add things such as control, the setting, the immediacy associated with the mobile game and, above all, delving into that with the idea that the game comes under an early access stamp.
The Elder Scrolls: Blade, less open world but still the city
After a loading screen that understands little about the times that are handled on a mobile, at least in the case of my phone, The Elder Scrolls: Blades throws you into a story in which you bring to life a Blade, a legendary warrior who returns home to find his city reduced to ashes. A kind of deja vu with Skyrim.
Our objective is rebuild it, bring him back to life by recovering those villagers who have left the area or have been kidnapped, and find out what the hell has happened so that the Queen has destroyed everything. Do missions to save people and get more missions, complete them to get resources, use the resources to rebuild buildings, upgrade your character in them and start the loop again. Among all this, battle against enemies and with the waiting time that surrounds everything.
The Elder Scrolls: Blades it is very far from the recent experience of a TES. There is no open world, its lore is limited and its possibilities as an RPG are relegated to classic mechanics such as gaining experience, getting new skills, improving the ones you already have and looting equipment and weapons.
A TES with the most repeated gameplay in its history
A list of missions in the form of a drop-down menu is what separates you from the walk through the citadel at the beginning of a dungeon, and even in them the exploration limits they are very tight. Some secret here and there and the possibility of moving in landscape or vertical mode in the way that is most comfortable for you, but otherwise not much more than a path in which you always go forward.
Special mention deserves the combat system. When the time comes, tap on the side of the screen to charge up an attack, release it at the right moment to land a critical hit, and keep an eye out for the enemy’s hits to raise your shield and stun them for a few seconds. It is not the combat you wish you had, even with different at hand skills and magic that you can take advantage of in your favor with a system of strengths and weaknesses that forces you to play with your head, but it’s not bad for what it is.
The game follows a worrying line towards conformity. Not even the graphics, visually stunning, but clearly repetitive when you start to see the same sections and details one dungeon after another, are spared. Yes there are ideas that choke more than others, of course. The one on the menus is probably the toughest, with a Interface miles away from being comfortable to move through it with agility.
A free to play that does not honor the saga
Unfortunately, we are just in for what is an interesting free to play with a motivating experience. That is, before a F2P rooted in the past that does everything possible to make it difficult for the player to advance to try to achieve in a crude and clumsy way that the largest amount of real money is left.
And worst of all, if we said that what he offers us in exchange for our money is interesting, he would have a pass (it is a F2P after all) and it would be very understandable. But given the low ambition and the extremely boring general approach that this work puts into play, it is even annoying that you are urged to spend money over and over again because of such mediocrity.
