An ambitious Dark Souls-looking ARPG game | Beta Test Preview - Blade of God II: Orisols

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✨Overview

Blade of God II: Orisols is a hardcore ARPG set in a Nordic-inspired dark fantasy world. A sequel to the original Blade of God, players assume the roles of various heroes known as inheritors of the Library, battling hardcore bosses, one by one.

Despite "apparently" launching last year on Google Play and last month for PC (Steam China only)., the game will start a new closed beta testing phases for the SEA region, and according to TapTap, it will start on Nov 7.

📖Story

The story is centered around the Colossus Library, which is located deep within the Fog Realm, the root of Yggrasil. For those unfamiliar, Yggrasil basically comes from Norse Mythology. You know, Thor, Odin and his people. Yggdrasil is the cosmic tree that connects all the realms together. Now back to the Colossus Library, it has been invaded by a being called Amorphous and the Library has been damaged and its heroes corrupted. Now it’s up to our player characters, the so-called Inheritors of the Library, to redeem or sacrifice these corrupted heroes and restore the Library back to its form. The story is a bit confusing, and the lack of voice-overs over the pretty long winded character dialogues and cutscenes doesn’t help. However there is substance in the narrative. You can opt to skip these cutscenes, and the game will nicely provide players with a brief summary of skipped events. 🎨Graphics and Art Style

Blade of God II boasts a gothic dark fantasy art style with Norse-inspired overtones. This art direction successfully conveys a sense of foreboding and a mysterious atmosphere that fits the narrative. The game's visual style draws comparisons to the Dark Souls series, thanks to its dark and gritty aesthetics. In terms of graphics quality, the game falls somewhere between PS3 and PS4 levels of fidelity, and perhaps closer to PS4 when the graphics is at maximum. The game is brim filled with visual effects during combat, as well as over the top animations and abilities. 🎮Gameplay

The game offers players to choose between any of the three available characters: Chaos, Hela, and Esther, each with their unique skill sets and has their own separate progression. This variety brings a degree of replayability, as you can opt to unlock everything on one character while still starting from scratch with the others. The two unchosen characters also make appearances as side characters in the story and as trial characters in specific missions, allowing players to explore their abilities. ⚔️Combat

The combat is often described as "Dark Souls" inspired or a Souls-like experience, but this couldn't be further from the truth. The only commonalities it shares are a third-person perspective and the ability to dodge attacks. In reality, the overall combat experience feels more like a mobile ARPG, featuring high mobility and visually striking, flashy movesets. It also doesn't feel like its predecessor, which was more of a God of War-esque game. Hela and Chaos, which are both melee characters, play similarly, closing in with their enemies for a sword or an axe attack. Esther on the other hand wields guns, and can attack from a ranged position . The game doesn’t allow you to aim manually with these weapons, instead, it still functions like a hack and slash game, similar to Devil May Cry. where you just attack in the direction your looking or targetting. All characters have two variants of their attacks, light and heavy weaponry, and you can switch between these two variants at almost any time during combat as part of combos. Honestly, as of its current state, it feels too clunky and looks like its still in its very early stages. The animations look underwhelming and the visual feedback to the player isn’t the best when it comes to helping them dodge attacks or get information if their attack has connected or effective. Despite the targeting lock system, the camera work is in dire need of improvements too, with one of the camera modes being too weirdly angled towards the sky that it was a pain to play with. ⏫Progression

Blade of God II primarily revolves around these boss battles, with corrupted heroes now guarding Library Disks, which serve as essential tools for repairing the library. Your objective is to confront these bosses and restore the library. Each realm has multiple chapters to complete and every chapter is headlined by a unique boss at the end. This is where the majority of your playtime will be spent, as the game strongly emphasizes boss battles over defeating regular mobs, which only play a minor and forgettable role in the chapters/levels. Some of these bosses can be incredibly challenging, but pretty much the deciding factor, as always, will be the hero’s power level. Which can be upgraded by playing more of the game, or by leveraging the gacha system. Upon defeating these bosses, you have two choices: Sacrifice or Redemption. Depending on your choice, you will gain different rewards such as getting either Sacrificial or Redemption stones. Honestly, the menu, navigation and its presentation is s perhaps the weakest part of the game. I got lost in the sea of these features and its not a pleasant experience to dive in it and learn the different aspects of the game mechanics. The main features are the backpack (your items), transmorg (cosmetics), skills, soul cores – characters that and gear. There’s also a plethora of other minor features such as in-game stores, events, battle passes, a training mode, and daily and chapter quest rewards to attain. Pretty much most of the live service mobile game stapes are implemented. The strongest part of the game on the other hand is that players can and will need to make their own skill combos. Featuring a fully customizable skill customization and upgrade system, complete with Soul Cores to augment these skills. This is where the gacha summoning system comes in which can give you different soul cores. This system offers players considerable freedom to mix and match skills as they see fit, allowing for the creation of potentially overpowered or weak combinations. 📊Technical Performance

The game does need slight optimizations for the average mobile phones to run the game with comfortably good visuals and frame rates. I was running it on a 888 snapdragon device and i’ve experience slight performance issues. Again it’s important to note that this is a test version so things can still change. ⚖️Conclusion

Blade of God II: Orisols is a game with ambition but currently falls short in execution in several key areas. The game's combination of a dark fantasy narrative, Dark Souls-inspired combat, and a focus on boss fights is an interesting concept. However, the overall experience is marred by technical issues, underwhelming combat, and general polish and optimization.

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