Naraka: Bladepoint, the tried and true of the forerunner beta for PC
Naraka
We have recently told you various information on Naraka: Bladepoint, extrapolated from previous tests carried out in North America and Asia and from what is shown in the videos released by 24 Entertainment. Finally, in these days, even in Europe, it was possible to try the game thanks to the Forerunner Beta released on PC and we have thrown ourselves between katanas and muskets to give you our opinion. We are therefore ready to offer you our preliminary judgment in the tried of the Forerunner Beta of Naraka: Bladepoint.Swords and Katana
Naraka: Bladepoint: one of the heroes The first element that catches the eye of this peculiar 60-player battle royale is the management of the play infrastructure. Each player can choose from a pool of heroes (6 selectable in the beta, but more will be available in the launch version) each with his own powers, two to be exact. The first power, called Talent: Skill is a basic ability, with a cooldown of a few seconds and together with the weapons it is the main source of in-game combat. The second one, called Talent: Ultimate, is precisely a final ability that can only be activated after a long cooldown period and which is often able to change the fate of a fight if used at the right time.These Talents can also be modified, each hero in fact has 3 variants for the Skills and 3 variants for the Ultimate, one of which is immediately equipped. To evolve the skills, shards must be used that can be obtained by increasing the level of the hero, or playing more time with that character and completing specific actions (killing a certain number of enemies, reaching a certain position in the ranking, etc.). Together with these abilities there are also the Glyphs, or a sort of "character development tree" in which to embed certain Glyphs that provide bonuses to some statistics: reduction of the cooldown time of the Ultimate, luck in the drop rate of equipment rare or higher , damage resistance, and so on. Each slot of the Glyphs will be unlocked by increasing player level (not hero level mind you) and therefore also in this case: the more you play, the more you upgrade. As seen, obviously limited by the narrowness of the version played, the title guarantees a more than good variety of build creation, allowing the player to experiment with different approaches and strategies to the games.
Naraka: Bladepoint: the Ultimate of the monk This infrastructure is then inserted in two different contexts to be analyzed: the gameplay and the combat system on the one hand and the ecosystem of modes and character customization. As for the first aspect, the management of skills sharpens the feeling of speed and frenzy of the gameplay that is subject to the strict rules of white weapon combat and therefore often offers a sudden fight and as much as possible hit and run. The possibility of using weapons from a distance is something necessary to vary the gameplay, but often, having become familiar with the basic mechanics, the high mobility of the characters makes bullet shots or arrows avoidable. In this sense, the use of skills guarantees an escape route in the event of a very oppressive close encounter or vice versa a way to try to prevent a severely damaged opponent from escaping.
The gameplay layering then passes from two well-defined points of view: the attack system and equipment. The first point provides a paper-stone-scissor element linked to special attacks, charged ones and counterattacks, where charged attacks beat normal attacks, counterattacks beat charged attacks and normal attacks beat counterattacks. The management of this mechanics must be definitely refined and improved since the idea is very good, but the implementation is a bit cumbersome in the most excited and frenetic moments. Also because, there are combos (warning for the future: they are listed in the settings sub-menu called Narakapedia) and they are also very well done on a visual level.
Naraka: Bladepoint: the great mobility of the characters The second point is instead linked to the importance of the equipment. Within the game you will have two weapon slots (usually you choose to use a ranged and a blunt weapon), an armor slot that guarantees you an over shield, the backpack for consumables (grappling hook, shield restorer, restores life and repairs weapons) and finally the slots for the Souljades. These latter consumables are the real heart of the action. It is known that finding legendary equipment (weapons and armor) guarantees a considerable advantage, but in Naraka: Bladepoint it is even more essential to have mythical or legendary Souljades. These consumables in the basic versions grant bonuses to attack, health or resistance, but in the epic or legendary versions also drastically change the use of weapons. In fact, there are Souljades that can ignite your blade, create air slashes or even modify weapons so that they fire poison darts or two shots instead of one. The Souljades are the real heart of the gear, and several times we felt really tempted to explore the map in search of this loot.
Game Modes and Customization
Naraka: Bladepoint: the loot and ambush The other key point is the management of modalities and personalization. Naraka: Bladepoint features a classic 60-player battle royale mode in teams of three or solo or a mode called Bloodbath in solo in which all players face off with unlimited respawns for 20 minutes. Each kill, killstreak, kill with a bounty on the head or kill a target by bounty grants 1 to 5 points. At the end of the twenty minutes whoever has scored the most points wins. The classic battle royale mode then has a ranking system from Bronze to Platinum in order to guarantee players of the same level as much as possible.As for the outline, Naraka proposes a fairly deep customization of the heroes and weapons . Common, rare, mythical and legendary skins, which can be purchased with in-game coins but also in the chests that are obtained in the seasonal battle pass or by leveling up the player. The battle pass can also be purchased with in-game currency and therefore we do not know if the game will have microtransactions. No shop was active within the beta, but it is likely that the coin called Gold (the second type of in-game coin) can then be purchased with real money. The game will not be free-to-play and therefore every option, even the one that leaves the player the possibility of how to spend their coins in-game between skins or battle passes, must be considered. But to find out, we'll have to wait for the final version of the game.
Naraka: Bladepoint: the setting of the game As for the technical aspect of the game, the title of 24 Entertainment turned out to be extremely beautiful artistically and also on an imaginary level. Within the island where the action takes place you will find various types of biomes: swamps, sandy mines, beaches with shipwrecked galleons, mountains with abandoned temples and green expanses. Even on a technical level, especially with High or Ultra settings, the title is very nice. Unfortunately, it still remains a bit unstable.
Our test found the right balance between fps and performance by freezing frames at 60 and not pushing the graphics settings to Ultra. We noticed that in this way the game was stable with slight dips only in a few moments. Pushing everything to the maximum instead, the game is more unstable due to an incomplete optimization (the game is scheduled for the summer) given the preliminary build.
Naraka: Bladepoint convinced us in several ways, leaving us with some doubts. 24 Entertainment's title is fun and fast-paced. The gameplay turned out to be as fun and frenetic as we expected, but also deeper than we imagined, even if it remains a far cry from some technicalities of titles based on white weapon combat like For Honor for example. Doubts remain about the stability and the way of distribution. Despite its originality, the title will have to deal with a market full of free-to-play rivals and this could unfortunately constitute a strong initial barrier for fans of the genre.
