Blade & Soul CBT 3 Opinions

Combat is great, but the combat is also really carrying this game.

Stuff that bothers me:

I get the impression that translation has been improved since earlier beta weekends, but there's a LOT of work left. Tooltips are a huge offender, but there's also quite a lot of side quest text / player responses (which keeps switching between first and third person) that feels like it was either machine translated or translated by someone who just isn't very good at English. That's not including the stuff that's just flat out incorrect spelling / grammar wise.

Voice acting is largely poor to mediocre. If I understood it correctly they've re-recorded a bunch of stuff (Soha f.e.) but some VAs are just bad. Having heard a bunch of dialogue from other languages I feel like they put too much emphasis on finding VAs with similar voices for each character over finding someone who can actually pull off the character well.

Story (as in, the main quest) isn't particularly interesting, and many major characters are frustratingly one-dimensional (and / or parodical). Maybe it gets better, I didn't finish all currently available story (highest char at 42). I feel like the story gets sidetracked and dragged out far too much. ~Halfway through Act (chapter?) 3 I still mostly have no idea why I'm doing what I'm doing, who many of the major characters (antagonists in particular) are or why pretty much anything is important.

Side quests are pretty standard MMO fare but I think they went overboard with (western) cultural references / memes and other silliness. Doesn't really bother me but a bunch of stuff feels out of place because it's so much / over the top.

Both the main storyline and a lot of side quests makes the player character look like the most gullible idiot to ever learn martial arts. We pretty much do whatever people tells us to one minute ("hey, go smash these pots!") and then suddenly go ahead and start schizophrenically switching between trying to be Lawful Good (and lecturing people about it while in that mode) and having barely any self-control and just slaughtering your way through any problems.

Good stuff:

Combat. Already said it, but worth saying multiple times. I was playing on the EU server and it feels mostly really responsive and "crisp" for me. Shouldn't be satisfied with anything less, but really, too many MMOs have messed this up.

Visuals. I'm sure people have opinions on the art style and the "sexy" costumes and whatnot, but regardless the quality is really good. Combat animations are stellar. Game world is beautiful.

Gearing. Personal opinion here, but really like it. Yes there's some rng involved in getting the right evolution items which could be adjusted but overall I really like the system they have in BnS (aesthetic only costumes and the whole upgrading / evolving your actual gear).

Classes all have a really solid class fantasy that is well expressed in theme / abilities / visuals etc.

TL;DR: I enjoyed playing a lot, but the game also still needs a lot of polish. The core systems of the game are solid.

For the record I liked both dungeons and PvP (the latter mostly duelling with friends), but I feel like I neither did enough or know about about either to really have a verdict on them.

Equipping your reserve set of Soul Shields is easy and can be performed at any time outside of combat.