Scarlet Blade Review

By Harry Ka-yan Cheung

Scarlet Blade is the translated version of Queen’s Blade Online. Although the game is seen by some players as “another generic point-and-click,” there are some special features that will stand out in Scarlet Blade compared to others. Scarlet Blade revolves around the idea of playing as a female character, whom is always nearly nude, in a world where the players have to engage in battle against creatures and other players. Eye candy aside; let’s take a look at some unique features within its point-and-click experience that make the game more engaging then what meets the eye…pun intended.

Character Creation & Customization
Character customization variety is pretty slim. A player can choose their character’s face, hair, underwear, and colors. That’s about it. In the cash shop, players can purchase some cash shop clothing to try and make their character look more like an individual. The biggest variety comes from the color selections provided for eyes, lips, and hair (hair having the largest color palette). Skin color, height, etc. cannot be adjusted. I personally found the color palette as a very nice feature seeing as many games do not provide a large variety of colors for hair.

Look at all the colors... no seriously look...

Gameplay & Skills
For the most part, the skill trees aren’t really special or particularly interesting. Some skills will induce crowd control on enemies, but most skills are for damage and do not require any level of thinking other than hitting a number key. Generally, the gameplay will be just like any other point-and-click. The skills only become somewhat interesting as a player levels up. They will gain more crowd control skills over time, and at level 17, players receive a mech form in which they gain new skills. Most of the skills given to the classes are highly representative of their class. For example, the defenders receive skills that increase defense and medics obviously get healing skills.

Skills in Scarlet Blade.

Graphics
Scarlet Blade’s graphical focus is on the space setting. Most enemies look inhuman, some looking as if they require serious medical attention. For the most part, there’s nothing wrong with the graphics and I have yet to encounter any major graphical issues. Extremely skimpy, eye candy “clothes” aside, Scarlet Blade delivers the space setting nicely and applies this to most of their environment.

Waterfall, giant mushroom, flying jellyfish thing, and a hut... Alrighty then.

Mount & Pet
When players reach level 10, they receive a pet and a mount. These come for free and are very useful. The mount is a single wheel bike-type vehicle named “Stormchaser” and greatly helps a player travel throughout the maps of Scarlet Blade. The pet isn’t nearly as useful unless given an item that allows it to retrieve items for the player. The pet, however, will say some very strange and very irrelevant things, which can be very entertaining.

The pet window (left) and two players with their stormchasers and pets.

Class Mech
Every player receives their own mech at level 17. These mechs are pretty cool and deal a large amount of damage. The mechs for every class looks significantly different from each other. There are a few conditions mechs have to follow. They have a specific bar of energy that depletes while the player is in their mech and regenerates over time while the player is not in it.. The mechs also receive their own specific skills which can only be accessed while a player is in mech form. These mechs are very useful for fighting on the battlefield and/or taking enemies down quickly.

The pet window (left) and two players with their stormchasers and pets.

Battlefield
Before character customization, players are required to choose their faction as the first step to character creation. They either choose “Free Knights” or “Royal Guards” and this selection will apply to the PVP battlefields. The battlefield is basically the “faction wars” of Scarlet Blade. Both sides need players to queue into battle, once the timer runs down with 35 players (which may be less if not enough players queued up) signed up, they are transported to a location to engage in battle against the other faction. These PVP battlefields allow a player to gain PVP points which can be used to obtain items or ranking.

Charge! Into battle!

Puzzle Feature
In Scarlet Blade, players are given a puzzle feature to play with. The main point of this puzzle system is to provide players with more eye candy. As players level up, they can unlock pieces of a puzzle. Players unlock a new puzzle every 5 levels, and can only fully unlock the puzzle after another 5 levels if they choose to buy the blocks to unlock them. Each block a player chooses to unlock costs a low amount of in-game currency. Some of these puzzles unlock to very inappropriate images. As I’ve said, these are mainly for the eye candy, for players to feast their eyes on the art that is Scarlet Blade’s main selling point. We all know what they say… “sex sells.”

The first puzzle a player can unlock

Item Mall
The item mall contains items mostly for aesthetic features. There are some items to boost exp and/or give some minimal starting items to characters. The item mall has cash shop set items and even an item to unseal a character’s underwear for all those eye candy needy people out there. For the hell of it, Scarlet Blade also provides a “69 AP Shop” on their website, which is kind of like a spin-off of 99 cents stores.

Lingerie Unsealer! For all your underwear removal needs!

Overall

Graphics – 4/5 The graphics are well delivered. They aren’t top notch but they are well-polished and match well with Scarlet Blade’s setting.

Gameplay – 2/5 The gameplay is pretty generic. What differentiates Scarlet Blade’s gameplay from other games are its features.

Customization – 3.5/5 The customization is pretty decent. It’s missing body customizations and some other small things but offers a large color palette with a decent amount of hair and face selections.

Community – 3/5 The in-game community is friendly and interactive. For example, players that are medics will occasionally buff other players.

Features – 2.5/5 Some interesting features are introduced in Scarlet Blade but none of which are new. The puzzle does not offer very much to players in terms of gameplay, but in turn, offers players more eye candy.

Overall – 3/5 Scarlet Blade is worth a try and some people may stick to it if they are fans of point-and-click and space genre games. The graphics are flashy and every corner of your eye runs into eye candy which may be pleasing to some players. However, if you are not one of those people, stay away from Scarlet Blade. Overall, the game isn’t terrible but it could hold some potential for certain individuals.