What do you get if you cross the swordplay from Dishonored, the movement system from Titanfall 2, a dose of crafting and the open-world and skill-leveling system of Skyrim? The answer: The Bloodline.
The moment I fired it up, this cartoon-y, blockish-looking game started to surprise and delight me. Something that it cheerfully kept doing during the course of my play. At the very opening of the game, I discovered that it was possible to use the grappling hook to swing around like a demented, first-person Spider-man. And at that point, I was sold.
So what is The Bloodline? It’s an open-world sandbox adventure. Meaning you can pretty much go anywhere, and do anything the game offers, in any order. Sure you can follow the main quest line about the return of an ancient threat, or you can ignore it and instead go about restoring your village. You could be a warrior, mage, a bare-knuckle fighter, or just focus on mining and crafting. Or fishing. It’s up to you. The Bloodline doesn’t push you along, it doesn’t constrict you with an endless story – it simply lets you know what it has to offer and then leaves the rest up to you. Honestly, I felt that I was back playing Bethesda’s masterpiece Morrowind, but with way smoother gameplay.
And ‘smooth’, brings me to the next thing that caught my eye about this game. It feels terrific. There’s simply something about navigating the world and engaging in combat that feels incredibly satisfying. It’s silky smooth, and wall running, zip-lining (yes, you can do these here), and grappling (I mentioned that already, didn’t I?) are delights. Even dismounting when at a gallop is terrific fun: with the player launching off the Donkey into the air as if shot from an ejector seat.
It’s fast, frenetic, and spectacle laden. Enemies get flung across the battlefield by exploding fireballs (or gigantic, magical tombstones which slam into the ground and explode in a shower of rock), or launched through the air by your grappling hook. Or knocked off their feet by a deft 360 of your sword.
True, it starts off a little tame (block, dodge, stab, repeat) but once you gain a few levels and special abilities and spells, it takes on a whole new, completely bonkers, dimension. There’s also plenty of options, with spears, swords, shields, daggers, pistols, crossbows, staves and more all making an appearance.
Even without the combat, the game-feel for the other areas is spot on. In large part, it’s because there doesn’t seem to be anything the game does which encourages you to sit back and watch. Transliterating runes to level up your magic skills is a fun challenge. Harvesting trees, fishing, and mining involve timing games (get it right, and you get a boost to XP and maybe even additional resources). Oh, and like Morrowind, nearly everything you do in the game increases a skill. Jump a lot, and your jumping skill goes up. Get this high enough, and you soon find yourself bounding across the landscape like some wanna-be John Carter of Mars. Even falling over and rag-dolling can be leveled-up.
As the game is still in development, there are some rough edges. For example, it seems bizarre that you can pick up and throw dropped weapons at your enemies, but can’t add them to your inventory. Likewise, the ‘overworld’ travel system (basically an interactive map) needs a bit of fine tuning. While I appreciate the fact that you can get to it at the press of a button (no need to backtrack through the world to find an exit point), it did not make actually knowing where things were easy. (In fact, the world only started to make sense when someone on the internet pointed out that it was possible to hold the right mouse button and rotate the view so you could see out over the landscape, rather than looking down at it).
Also, there are definitely some progress-blocking bugs (such as controls suddenly not working upon completing a certain quest, or an essential item not spawning, or even the HUD disappearing). And while these would usually be enough for me to simply come back to the game later when it’s more developed, in this instance, I simply reloaded, and wandered off and had fun doing something else.
Even with these, however, The Bloodline just feels right. It plays well, it’s engaging, and simply a fun world to spend time in. It shows a lot of promise, what is there is highly enjoyable, and I can certainly recommend it to players. ■