Bladestorm is not really as much of a beat-em-up as it is a racing game. At first, the game makes you think that you'll have to carefully pick your units and spend your research points (which you use to level up) strategically to maintain a well-balanced army. The tutorial shows you that the different unit types have hard strengths and weaknesses, like that horses are weak to spearmen. There is a huge unit roster to choose from, and you can even switch between units on the fly in battle.

This is, however, ultimately a pointless feature. The game is so unbalanced that you can really play as any single unit, and as long as you put all of your experience points into that type, you will never, ever lose a fight. In my 31 hours of playtime of which was spent in the "Hundred Years War" campaign, I only retreated once, which is the 'fail state' in Bladestorm. The true difficulty of the game has nothing to do with what is initially presented. Rather, Bladestorm is a game which is honest to its own name: you play as a storm. Literally.

The real joy of Bladestorm has nothing to do with the combat. It's flying across the map at Mach 10, capturing over 20 towns and castles in less than 5 minutes, all while listening to the outstanding choir soundtrack by Jamie Christopherson. While it does mean that nearly 90% of the game's mechanics don't really have any meaning, the absolute dopamine rush this game provides each round makes up for its disappointments as far as actual depth goes. It's fun if you let it be fun.

I do have some real gripes with Bladestorm, though. This mostly pertains to the first campaign, "Hundred Years War," which you will be spending the bulk of your time playing. The game introduces characters from the war who you fight alongside with, and they are all fully voice acted. And the voice acting is bad- so bad it's good, and then bad again. Every mission, you'll hear your companions compliment or berate you depending on their personalities, and while it's funny as hell the first couple cutscenes, it completely wears out its welcome by the 50th level, with over 100 more to go. My second problem with the game is that it's ridiculously padded, and the ending is not worth the effort to see. You might as well grind up to level 60 or 70 and just skip the rest of the campaign.

Bladestorm's padding is the worst kind of padding in games. It forces you to play hundreds of levels, during which nothing about the battlefields ever actually changes. No characters die, factions can't get pushed out of zones, your gameplay will have absolutely zero effect on gameplay except for a two-prompt question at around the 70% completion point which asks what side you want to help win. It's simply not worth it.

Luckily, Bladestorm has the subtitle "Nightmare." The nightmare campaign is much smaller, but condensed in a way which gives the player a more concentrated and all-around better experience. It also has some new battle music which is a joy to listen to. Don't get your hopes up when you hear that there are fantasy monsters in the campaign, though. The gameplay of running around on horseback like a hypersonic missile still stands here.

All in all, I have to recommend Bladestorm: Nightmare for the fun it gave me. Also, I bought the game for $15, which was a fair price for what the game truly is in both quantity and quality. This game is definitely not worth any more than $30, and it stuns me to think that Koei Tecmo is charging a full $60 for a 7 year old console port. Get this game on sale only.

Anyhow, here's the TLDR:

Gameplay: Play as an experimental fighter jet in an anime RPG depiction of the hundred year's war. Pick sword horseman as 'current squad,' maximize speed skill and buy mobility pennons and you will undoubtedly have a good time.

Story: Terrible, but funny, but also padded beyond belief and not really worth anyone's time.

Music: The music in this game makes it worth recommending on its own, albeit within the experience it provides.

Final Verdict: A soft recommendation. As a fast paced medieval-themed racing game, it's fantastic. As the beat-em-up RPG it is advertised to be, its shallow mechanics, poor balancing, and complete joke of a story leave something to be desired.

I hope this review helped you decide whether or not to buy Bladestorm: Nightmare, and encourage you to leave a comment or rating if it did.