Blade and Soul is an eastern wuxia styled game. You’ll glide through the air with beautifully blade and soul gold patterned sparkles floating around you, soaring over cloud-covered spiky mountaintops and asian temples, fighting baddies in the name of revenge for your dead master. Black Desert has a more traditional, medieval fantasy theme. Farmers raise chickens and milk cows, the streets are dirt and cobblestone, and rather than fly or glide, your first mount is a donkey. Which can be killed, I might add. My first mount death during the last beta was a drowning, when I tried to ride it across the ocean.

It covers Blade & Soul’s death system! I’m sure this feature was lurking around everyone’s mind for quite some time now. What would an MMO be without a death system? Anyway, let’s get this explained! Your character will be placed under the “Worn Out” state upon it’s health reaching zero. When in this “Worn Out” state you’ll be able to crawl away from your defeat in shame. Once you have crawled to a safe location away from trouble you have two options to chose from. You can either use the “Chi Meditation” ability which slowly leads your character into recovery or simply teleport yourself to the nearest village.

If your character reaches zero life again within a certain amount of time you will not be placed in the “Worn Out” state, this prevents you from using the “Chi Meditation” ability again. Instead, upon your second death, you will be teleported to the nearest village. And I mean a lot of PvP–not just a few rounds. Though if you’re not good at PvP (I’m not particularly shining myself), you may end up turning out your pockets anyway from the sheer amount of weapon repairs and health potions you’ll need to collect the requisite amount of points. Blade & Soul offers plenty of perks and amenities to serious PvPers, but that’s because it’s so deeply ingrained into the game.

Faction Fights are everywhere. Perhaps this is just turning the tables, since PvPers are forced to do PvE content in pretty much every MMO. Still, if you aren’t willing to try your hand at PvP, buy blade and soul gold Blade & Soul may not be the game for you. Blade & Soul delivers an engaging story and vibrant world for players to explore. In the game, players must fight to avenge the death of their fallen master in a classic Wuxia storyline. Wuxia, which literally means “martial hero”, is a broad genre of Chinese fiction concerning the adventures of martial artists in ancient China. As players explore the world in Blade & Soul, they will see a fusion of Asian cultures that delivers stunning landscapes and vistas.

Blade & Soul defies typical MMO conventions, delivering action-based combat with ability combos and a flexible party role system that does not require dedicated healers. It gives players unprecedented movement abilities around the world as their characters leap over mountains and fly through the air. Blade & Soul is live at last in North America as of January 19th. I had the opportunity to play this free MMORPG from NCSoft during two beta weekends back in December and report my initial impressions then. Given the fact that this title is an MMO and expectedly huge, I’ll be exploring the Earthen Realm in a series of review journals chronicling the leveling adventure and endgame content over the course of a month or so before dropping a final score.