Blade Dancer: Lineage of Light review

When you buckle down for an hours-long RPG quest, you automatically prepare for a certain amount of repetition, inconvenience and drawn-out tasks. Your rewards are usually an exciting battle system and engaging storyline that balance out the other shortcomings, making the tedious moments fly by. Blade Dancer: Lineage of Light is the exact opposite in every possible way.

After a good seven hours of running from seaside town to fog-laced woods, you're still killing the same monsters, talking to the same people and looking at the same environments. So, fine, this adventure takes a while to get started, that's forgivable. But even 20 hours in, or 30 or whatever, fundamental aspects of gameplay continue to fight back, dead set on pissing you off.

Instead of random battles, you can actually see enemies roaming the overworld, represented by floating skulls. Get too close and they chase you. Steer clear or level up and they'll avoid you. But as you're going through your item list, or equipping new weapons, the monsters are still moving around the area. You can see a skull zipping up to you, but can you back out of the item menus fast enough? Then, the enemies reappear after a certain amount of time, ready to tag you once again, usually in a single-file line of skulls that force you to fight battle after battle until you die.

The strength of these creatures is horribly unbalanced. Some are woefully weak while othersdestroy you with a few moves. This is true from the first areas until the end.