Bladestorm: The Hundred Years' War for PlayStation 3 Reviews by Gamers

This game is about what I expected, which as a fan of Koei's games, suited me just fine. I was just happy it featured European history for a change.
For those unfamiliar, Koei excels at the two genres of military strategy and hack'n'slash games. They've endeavored to bring the two together over the years, and Bladestorm is their first foray into the new generation of games. If you are not a fan of these two genres, this game will be really fun for a few hours, and then the tedious story, repetitive gameplay, and so-so graphics will begin to get tiresome. It's worth playing regardless, if only for the rush of charging a troop of cavalry over an enemy army. Few games offer such satisfying carnage.
For those who are familiar, Koei has really outdone themselves this time. The variety of troops is staggering, and you can customize abilities on every one of them. I really liked that the game got deeper the more I played. The gameplay is very much like Dynasty Warriors, but instead of going it alone, you'll lead army troops to fight with you, much like Kessen. Unlike Dynasty Warriors, you're not just playing the same battles over and over again with different characters, but rather 100 years worth of scenarios on the battlefield. Unlike Kessen, you aren't so much the general as the commander, meaning that though you don't determine where the armies go, you get the greater satisfaction of fighting with them, as opposed to just watching them fight. For fans, I give the game an 8.

The 9/10 for this game is my comparative rating within the genre. It is a well-enough-designed war strategy game with a lot of perks and bonus materials to be discovered that keep the game interesting even after 30 hours of game play.

However, it has a very insufficient tutorial. Therefore, one needs to read guides online before delving into the actual game. There are EXTREMELY crucial points left out of the lengthy tutorial, namely the use of L1 and L2. You can learn about basic aspects of the game by visiting the Gossip section at the Tavern within the game, also.

Altogether though not a perfect game, it is good enough to keep a demanding player busy for hours of battle fun! Give it a try...

For the past few days I've found myself thoroughly addicted to this game. I have to disagree with all the people who say the game-play is slow. It may take some time to get from one base to the next, but once you get into the battles (which there are tons of) the action is intense and brutal. There is something immensely satisfying about running up with a gang of axemen and hacking the enemy to bits with one giant coordinated slash. Then you watch as the few survivors run to the hills.

The strategy is really not too complicated. Basically if the enemy squad glows blue or is neutral, you attack. If it glows red you stay away until you go into a frenzy (BLADESTORM!), or you find a different squad to attack with. (There are exceptions to this rule). There are three basic types of squads: melee, archers, and mounts, with many, many variations amongst them. You do have to start planning out which forts to strike first. Pay attention to the arrows on the map. You sometimes have to take out the perimeter before getting to your main target. It's also important to have a variation of hired mercenaries ready to summon. I recommend having a gang of Greatswords or Calvary in your back pocket at all times.

I'm sure this game is not for everyone, especially if you like to nit-pick at details. Yeah, the mini-map to the untrained eye is useless, and the voice acting is hilariously bad. But you eventually get the hang of the navigation, and the characters are so over the top and generally offensive to all nationalities involved that they are kinda charming.
I've actually grown to like the spanish bartender with the horrible lisp who endearingly seems to think of the mercenaries as his children.

To anyone who enjoyed Braveheart or any other film with grand-scale medieval-type battles, this game is definitely worth a try. If nothing else you should download the demo. By the end of it you'll have a pretty good idea of what you're getting into.

Great strategy game that will replay itself for years. As you advance the troops you command just keep getting better. I could not discover a glitch in the graphics or the gameplay. The tavern scenes were definately a throwback from the 90's graphically and in playstyle, but that was more than made up for once you chose your battle and went off to fight. There doesn't seem to be a large pool of these types of games available anymore so this is definately one you should shelve if you have a chance. I liked it and if you like to plan your battles out before taking the field, you will too. The battle for France has just begun!

The game was alright, plenty of battle time without all the extra running around and planning stuff, but it gets a little old. The merchant rarely updates his merchandise, and doesnt give you anything to save up for or look forward to. There isnt much strategy to it, just kind of run around beat people up.
All in all it was an 'ok' game, but I wouldnt waste your time.

My first impression was that this game had real potential. Then I got to the 5th mission which was exactly like that previous four and was starting to get a bit put off. 10 identical missions later I had maxed out my fame and had more money than god but there was nothing to do with it. Even after buying every upgrade available (none of which made any obvious difference in gameplay) I had mountains of money. The whole game struck me as having potential just around the corner but never quite getting there. Its not a bad game, it just isn’t a good game.

the cutscenes are almost unbearable and the game (to me) has zero content. but the battles are awesome! the way you fight and call in mercenary reinforcements of various types is groundbreaking. it reminds me of a super tactical version of dynasty warriors but set during the 100 years war in medieval europe. I played this game for like 6 hrs straight when I first received it. the tedium did begin to set in because you begin to feel like despite the endless combat "contracts" there's no definite progress to measure. The entire leveling up system ROCKS I must say. hint: use poleswords as a staple and the rest is just novel at best

As the title describes, you take control of a character during the 100 year struggle between England and France. If you are a fan of such games as Samurai Warriors or Kessen, Bladestorm would be a perfect game for you. Massive Battlefields with a near endless supply of enemies. Instead of striking out as a single character, you take command of many different troop types. Each one has its own unique affect on the battlefield and it challenges the player to use these to dominate enemies. The Story takes quite some time to develop and some battles can get somewhat tedious. Still, if you like hack and slash with a heavy dose of tactical battlefield control, then this is the game for you!

Most people who have owned a PlayStation have played or seen Dynasty Warriors. This game is similar but in so many ways different. This game revolves around leading troops into battle, where you must take strategic points across a vast map. The story revolves around the 100 year war that took place between France and England. Your character is a mercenary for hire capable of choosing either side to fight with or use both sides to draw out the conflict and earn vast sums of money. The money you earn can be put towards upgrades for yourself and the respective unit you may be controlling i.e swords, spears, bows, etc. The graphics are very good for an early PS3 release. the AI of the opponents are tactful and challenging. There a few draw backs, such as a few long drawn out battles and occasional lack of gripping story may leave you wondering why you are fighting. But with the vast weapon system and individual stat system that is effected on each individual unit type, it will leave you planning and plotting against whichever side you choose to fight against, whether it be French or English. If you are into action/strategy games, then this is defiantly a title you should try.

I would have given this game a Ten. The gameplay is very, very fun. The only reason I lowered to a Nine, is that for a PS3, the game has terrible graphic, and the game can take some time to load some of the fights. Really, I dont mind, the game is great, but I need to write a fair review ;)

History: Okay first I just want to start off by saying I love KOEI games, the whole dynasty series and a few others really hit home for me. I also really like RTS and strategy games so I was very excited to play this game.

Graphics: Okay for the most part the graphics were O.K. I was expecting something a little "pretier" being that it was on the PS3. I noticed alot of the scenery really took a hit in this game. The tree's and the layout looked all preset and not really that natural. Kind of like a Fake flower.

Story: The history lesson in between the loading times and in the middle of some battles was great. I loved learning the history of the battles that I was about to partake in. I did have an issue with how the dialog started to seem repetitive and dry after a while. There needed to be a more meaningful storyline.

Sound: It was O.K nothing special.

Gameplay: I was tossed on this, the battles can take a while and require alot of strategy to truly get most out of the game. Some of things that bothered me however was: If you had a level 20 swords group and you went up against lets say a level 1 Pole swords group, you would be wiped out. I understand that certain weapons are better against certain groups. However to have such a level difference between your group and the enemies, and almost get wiped out completely or some cases retreat (that really urked me).

Overall: The game was fun, it just takes a very long time in certain scenarios. I ultimately played it for 8-12 hours but was bored with the same old looking outposts and keeps. I was kind of hoping there was more siege involved or gates to be destroyed. I would recommend this game only for Die hard Strategy fans only.

Blade storm Is a great game I got this game Becuz
I wanted A game Like I played on the gamecube
Fire Emblem. Blade storm uses many thangs It looks like arcade strategy game with next genaration game play and HD graphics.
This game is a 10 on my score.
There is some thangs that are bad but they never match to the success of the game play and graphics.

Bladestorm is a good game for the first couple of hours but is slowly gets boring. The game seems to repeat itself over and over again. You run around and kill and take forts over, the next mission you do the same, to some this might be fun i did not.. Koei really needs to tray and make games that are different, they all seem to follow the dynasty warriors type of play and not try anything new. Also the voice-acting in this game is the worst that I have heard in a long time. The people don't sound French or British they sound like Americans trying to fake a accent. Another thing that i did not like was the map on the missions, it seems to me that every time Koei makes a new game the maps get smaller and smaller in till i can't even use them anymore and ran through the battlefield lost and confused. The game is really not worth waiting for it in the mail, but if a friend has it and you have no other games then it can eat up about a hour or two. I only had it for a day and i though that i was great the first couple of missions but i slow stopped caring and sent it back as soons as i could.

When I first started playing it seemed a little easy, but later on I found you could only beat it as one or two different classes. It still was fun but it got repetitious. One major thing I liked about it was the fact that it doesn't have a lot to do with magic, which makes it more realistic. I would recommend it to a person who is into the whole sword and bow style war games.

With Koei exploiting the possibility of having a few hundred more characters on the screen and having a longer draw distance for the buildings -but not the characters- that give you the impression of something of a Big War happening. It doesn't help to see that as you get closer to any "battle"... NOBODY's doing squat. If you stop immediately once a group Pops up, you'll see a whole bunch of people just standing around. Get closer and BOOM! they wake up and fight. I'd ignoring that little distraction because it was a fun engine and I enjoyed myself. In fact, I believe this was the longest time I ever kept a rental from Gamefly. Slowly though, I noticed that I was doing the same thing again and again. Outside of improving my stats, nothing changed.

So to end this review, I state that if you enjoy hours upon hours of "level grinding", this is the game to come to.

Blade Storm is one of the games for a tactical player. If you liked the Dynasty Warrior series i am sure you'll like this game to. The battles are fierce an difficult as well. You'll constantly be challenged in large scale battles to take a fortress or battle field key point.

The game was good up till lvl 40 using swords all the way through switching up to halberds, but it seemed to move the story along way to slow.

The gameplay for Bladestorm is excellent. It is what I would have expected from this genre.

I enjoy having a game based historically during a different time rather than the overdone WW2 era games. I had friedns that were turned away from this game purely because it mentioned Normandy within its description and they immideatly wrote it off as a WW2 game, but I made sure the soon learned their mistake as the game takes place during the Hundred Years War in France.

This game is historically accurate in the main characters of the game and the fact that if you kill a squad commander, the rest of the squad will turn tail and run.

This game losses all respect for historical accuracy with its inclusion of what they call "magic", allowing you to preform different spells that either boost moral (believable with say a chant) to resurrecting dead troops (oddly enough).

This game is worth renting if you are not currently finding yourself deep within a different game. The gameplay is to be expected as you are basically using single button commands and not button mashing. It is also slow moving and should provide hours of gameplay. The biggest drawback that I could find was that this game is too slow for the gaming market right now.

I am a huge fan of the Dynasty Warriors series, so when I heard about the Bladestorm game from the developers I was pretty excited. One of the biggest draw backs to DW from a western perspective is that the Unification of Han China is not all that exciting(not to me anyway). So the new atmosphere was something to look forward to.

The look of the two games are the same, but the style is totally different and that is where they are running into trouble.

First, unlike DW were you control your fighting akin to a hack and slasher one man army with backup, you simply hold down one button in Bladestorm where you auto attack. Then depending on what type of unit you are you can do up to three special attacks or abilities that have a considerable charge time.

With this, the format for fighting consists of holding the auto-attack while waiting for your specials to charge, you hit them when they are up and wait again still holding down that auto-attack button.

There is strategy involved since you can switch to a different unit type, if it is close by, that might work better against the current unit you are fighting, but you don't always get trailed by the units you want.

That brings me to another big problem for me, in DW you played an important character in the Unification of China, here instead of letting you be the princes and lords of yore you are simply a mercenary looking to make as much gold off the war that you can. So you don't actually lead battles, no unit will go were you want it unless you control it directly, which means if there is a base you want to take that is too strong, unless the PC is going there on their own, you can't take it.

Two large fundamental problems along side things like, maps and text way to small to read(seriously the mini map is horrible), bad voice acting, lack of field control make this game sub par of what it should have been.

Would have liked to have written more but I am out of space.

very good game i am very happy with it polesword are the best

i was looking for this game for awhile and then i found it on gamefly but the bad thing was i had to return it:( lol

I love strategy sim games. I love the depth and how what I do in the game affects so many diverse other elements of the game. Blade storm has many of these elements which make a great strategy game. The problem is very simple I can't tell where I am and I can't tell who the enemy is. I really could of used some clearer way to show where my character was and who I was supposed to attack. Often I would run by an opponent and only realize it was the enemy because they attacked and injured me. While these may seem trivial parts of the game they ruined what could of been an enjoyed experience for me. Play at your own risk because you won't know who your friend is or your enemy

This isn't a button mashing game like Dynasty Warrior. In fact, it's another beast, a boring one. You're mercenary who will lead an army to engage in a battle with either the French or the English (you can always switch side.) The problem is, you can't control your character's attack. To attack, hold down the R1 so your character and his unit will engage in a fight automatically. This would be decent if the AI engine is smart enough to know how to behave intelligently.

What I found is that:

In a large battle, you get separated from your army and the computer will gang up on you. This wouldn't be bad if you can control your character's attack. Since you can't, the character stands there and periodically strikes his weapon. It gets more ridiculous when the enemies are on the left but he keeps striking on the right until he's killed.
-If you switch from leading one army to another, the unit you leave will not fight intelligently. They'll run around or get themselves wiped out in seconds.
-Confusing concept of weapons and armors as well as the experience of each military unit (and its subunit)