Bethesda finally launched their new mobile Elder Scrolls game yesterday in ‘early access' to an expanding list of players and it's decent fun but nothing mind-blowing.
Bethesda released their first mobile game, Fallout Shelter, back at their E3 2015 conference to widespread acclaim for its fun and simple gameplay and fair micro-transaction scheme. The company hoped to replicate this success for their classic Elder Scrolls franchise when they showed off impressive footage of a mobile action-RPG called ‘Elder Scrolls: Blades' at their E3 conference last year.
Well, nine months later now and the game has finally launched in a user-limited ‘early access' and luckily I received early access very quickly and it's pretty good and deeper than I and many were expecting.
When you first boot it up, if you have access, there's nearly 900MB of the actual game to download before you can do anything, after which you'll be thrust into a small introductory map with a few enemies on your way back to the stone-walled town of your youth which has been decimated by some mercenaries.
The first thing I noticed was that the game is rather pretty; nothing mind-blowing, games like Asphalt 9 and some others may still win out in fidelity though also don't quite strive for the same large-feeling quality, but pretty nonetheless with some rather lovely lighting in some areas.
Immediately following the graphics I discovered the combat is a back-and-forth of tapping and holding to attack (I was expecting swiping, like Epic's Infinity Blade series), and holding the block button which if properly timed staggers your opponent, and later involves the use of special abilities and spells also.
I proceeded to tap-walk my way through the level in portrait mode, where the game can easily be played with only one hand, and finally reached the burning town at which point a loading screen popped up as I entered the game's hub area.
Almost immediately I was greeted with the game's character customisation menu which features all Tamriel's races and a fair few visual options but no class selection; somewhat like Skyrim, Blades uses a free-flow class system where you can earn any of the same abilities and spells and use the same equipment as anyone else. I chose a female Breton named Lornja, intended as a battle-mage of sorts.
Anyway it turns out that while you travel on countless linear quests through wilderness, caves, dungeons, and presumably many more environments later on, the town serves as a hub area for you to rebuild with resources picked up, find quests organically (rather than the job board which is also present), chat with NPCs and make new equipment and potions.
This hub, whilst not massive, is more expansive than I expected and has lots of room to construct new buildings and upgrades. It also contains many NPCs, some of which are interesting and most of which are as boring as you'd expect.
I quickly found myself a new mission however and set off through a dungeon in search of the town's blacksmith, fighting goblins and bandits on the way.
It was at this point that I levelled up for the first time and discovered the game does in fact feature a rather deep RPG experience with tonnes of unique abilities, spells, and race-specific perks. I started off with a fireball which has the interesting side-effect of damaging one's self if interrupted while casting, adding just that little bit more depth to the game's systems. Blades also features town rebuilding and progression; there's a lot to do.
I also found many loot-containing chests in this expedition, which are one of the game's primary monetization sources as they take time to open, as does the construction of new buildings, which can predictably be bypassed with the use of ‘gems' which can be purchased with real money and sometimes earned in-game.
As annoying as systems like this can be, free games require micro-transactions to exist and these don't seem too bad, at least at this point, though almost everything takes a long time, which just makes the game less interesting during when you're actually playing it unfortunately.
Anyway, the game's linear levels also feature fairly-obvious ‘secret' areas which contain extra chests if you find them, which adds a little bit more to the exploration other than all the items you find and urns you thwack inbetween fighting enemies.
The game also does some interesting things with the combat which stop it from being completely monotonous, such as having animals which step back after their attacks thus requiring good timing for your own attacks.
It was at this point where I also tried rotating my phone and using it in landscape mode, where I discovered you can play with a faux-stick setup like a basic controller, which makes the game feel a lot less mobile I must say, and also allows menus and the overall world to look just a little bit nicer.
Software joysticks have never felt quite right to me though and that was still the case here, and though I appreciated you can still just drag your finger around the screen to look as well as use the faux-joystick, I returned to portrait because it was just a bit easier to use.
Once I returned from that quest I switched out some of my armour and weapons for those I had just found, and helped the smith rebuild his smithy where I am now able to buy, make, or improve weapons and armor. In future I'll also be able to rebuild alchemy labs and enchanting buildings for all the classic Elder Scrolls character progression stuff.
The game also runs decently well on my Snapdragon 710 equipped Nokia 8.1, though I wouldn't expect it to perform particularly smoothly on anything lesser than Snapdragon 710's or 820's, Kirin 970's, or Exynos 8895's.
After playing it for a couple hours and running through nearly a dozen quests, I got the feeling that whilst Blades is far from bad for a mobile game, and contains more RPG elements than I was expecting, it's still *just* a mobile game and does not quite suit my tastes as far as the medium goes. I tend to prefer more casual and turn-based games on my phone personally, as when I want to sit down and really focus on a game I'll just play a full RPG, for instance, on my PC. I also am not a fan of grind in games, which is absolutely what this game intends to be.
For many though, I think Elder Scrolls Blades could offer great fun and I hope it does.
You can download Elder Scrolls Blades on the Google Play Store, though you'll need to apply for early access and receive it before you can actually play the game, and it's also available on iPhone of course.
