Blaze & Blade (Eternal Quest, PC)

Blaze & Blade is a pointless PC conversion of a substandard console role-playing game. It squanders its scarce few good ideas by quickly degenerating into mindless, repetitive, and boring action sequences.

Blaze & Blade is a port of a PlayStation game, and it shows. Although the game can run in a high resolution, the graphics' simple polygonal geometry and the flat, plain texture maps make it look crude. The game's anime-inspired graphics may look cute but otherwise have little to recommend them. The four squat characters you'll control, as well as the various creatures and characters they'll encounter throughout the game, all look silly at best and unrecognizable at worst - that is, you might find it difficult to discern what exactly you're fighting. You'll wonder whether what you're up against is a bird or a fish and why the game's so-called demons look like teddy bears.

The game sounds at least as plain as it looks. You'll hear the same repetitive yet forgettable sounds over and over again, just as the game's soundtrack drones on and on to the point that you'll either shut it off or just learn to ignore it. As such, it's a mixed blessing that the laughably mistranslated dialogue text throughout the game isn't audible speech.

The mediocrity of Blaze & Blade's presentation is also at the core of the gameplay. Blaze & Blade starts out fairly promising: The character-creation process lets you choose from various traditional fantasy standards such as elves, dwarves, sorcerers, and rogues, and then you get to name the character, choose his manner of speech and his natural protective element, and finally assign bonus points to his attributes. Unfortunately, in practice, none of the character-creation process's details really matter much. That's because once you start playing, you'll realize that Blaze & Blade is essentially just a poorly executed action game. The gameplay is reminiscent of Square Soft's Super Nintendo action-RPG The Secret of Mana, in that you'll guide the designated lead character through all kinds of enemy-infested areas while the leader's companions follow closely behind and assist in battle. Unfortunately, unlike in The Secret of Mana, the continuous combat in Blaze & Blade just isn't any fun for a variety of reasons.