Bless Unleashed

 Xbox One
User Score
5.8

Mixed or average reviews- based on 42 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 19 out of 42
  2. Mixed: 9 out of 42
  3. Negative: 14 out of 42

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  1. IronBreaker
    Mar 13, 2020
    7
    The game is a lot better than I had anticipated. There is no P2W (although there is certainly lots of Pay For Convenience). The world is vast, the combat is weighty, the armor system is engaging, the story is pretty good, and most of all this MMO has brought something back that I felt has been truly lacking in the genre lately... challenge.

    Combat is the hardest part about the game. It is    The game is a lot better than I had anticipated. There is no P2W (although there is certainly lots of Pay For Convenience). The world is vast, the combat is weighty, the armor system is engaging, the story is pretty good, and most of all this MMO has brought something back that I felt has been truly lacking in the genre lately... challenge.

    Combat is the hardest part about the game. It is slow, it is heavy, and you WILL get punished hard for making mistakes. Some of the biggest problems newer players have is that NEED to finish every combo. The game is not designed to be that way and doing too many finishers will cause you to take a few hits... and enemies hit hard. Dodging also barely has iframes but travels far so you're meant to use it more for quick positioning and animation canceling, especially mid combo. All in all, combat feels similar to Dark Souls 1 speed but with combos and MMO-type abilities. It's challenging and rewarding. Especially when you get to the very epic world bosses and 5-man dungeons which are insanely good. The game also has no passive regen outside of combat. Instead there are basically bonfires throughout the world that allow you to regen health, salvage equipment for materials used to upgrade other equipment, and to cook food that allows you to quickly restore health out in the field. You can also craft, buy, and obtain potions that quickly restore health during combat. This is one of my favorite aspects about the game.

    As far as classes and roles go, developers are really pushing to make the table run without any holy trinity. That being said, classes do excel in certain areas. Priests have buffs and heals, Crusaders have naturally higher defense and are the only class with block, etc. However, devs want EVERY comp to be viable, and the skill required for action combat plays a big part in that. Not only that, but you can join a Union that gives you perks such as highly increased threat generation and defensive bonuses for yourself if you want to take on that "tank" role. Also you can basically unlock Skill Loadouts that give you different skills and different passives like increased PvP damage, increased max Health, etc which will further define your intended role.

    The stamina system is very tight. At base level, you can really only get 1 dodge in as it takes up more than half of the bar. This is made to ensure dodge spamming can't happen as you dodge really far and really fast. You can build gear that gives you more max stamina and has been confirmed that you can build for 150% max stamina. That being said, I think base level stamina is too low. It's also used for sprinting which drains too fast. I think this is to dissuade people from sprinting so much in combat as spamming dodge and sprinting all over the place would hurt the challenge of combat, and also make PvP real annoying.

    Onto PvP, it's important to note that after reaching a certain region of the game, you walk into what is called a disputed zone. This is open PvP similar to Wilderness in Runescape. People can come and attack you and kill you. However, to counter the onslaught of PKing, there is an honor system. The moment you pk and get Notoriety LvL 1, you will be attacked by guards in towns on sight, making story or quest progression as well as trade difficult to impossible. I think the honor system could use some work however.

    The bank and bag storage system is pretty tight. Very similar to ESO tight. Bank storage is even worse. It hasn't become a huge issue to me yet but you'll definitely find yourself moving or destroying items for the sake of getting more stuff. I've personally learned to just focus on current tasks at hand and the items that go with it. That being said, the game has bag pieces scattered throughout the world that help increase your max bag storage. Bag storage is probably one of the worst things about the game. That, and the abysmal enhancement system.

    One of the most important things is gear score. Gear Score is WAY more important than Level overall. Leveling up only give you a slight boost in attack and a boost in total Health. Gear will be your main source of true stat progression. This is why I cannot stress this enough... CRAFT. Most importantly, there is a grind wall from lvl 16-19. You run out of side quests to do and the only way you can progress story is to get to lvl 19 as theres a required dungeon to progress. I found the grind to not be so bad, especially if you take on all the daily world bosses and work on regional reputation quests, and work on crafting skills. This wall is a GREAT time to work on your crafting skills to help mitigate the feeling of grind. Getting past that wall unlocks a whole new game. It's worth it, like getting through FF14 ARR to get to Heavensward.

    Overall, its a good game that can be truly great with the right fixes. Developers and GMs are all over reddit and even have their own discord for feedback to truly make the game shine.    … Expand
  2. DTM12NY
    Oct 22, 2020
    5
    Slow paste, co op is **** you can be 2 levels under and get killed easily. The bosses can one shot you if youre below a few levels, dont pick the berserker.
  3. KumaCam91
    Mar 14, 2020
    7
    It’s a decent game! Not horrible but definitely has room for improvement as a new IP will definitely keep playing
  4. SchroederRock
    Apr 26, 2020
    6
    Bless Unleashed has its charms but it constantly gets in its own way. Much of the early going is fumbled extremely bad and fails to prepare players on how to manage their characters and communicate story progression effectively. There is an unfathomable amount of fetch questing and which sometimes filler is necessary it's a bit of a drag when relied upon so regularly. Bless has a lot ofBless Unleashed has its charms but it constantly gets in its own way. Much of the early going is fumbled extremely bad and fails to prepare players on how to manage their characters and communicate story progression effectively. There is an unfathomable amount of fetch questing and which sometimes filler is necessary it's a bit of a drag when relied upon so regularly. Bless has a lot of nice things going for it: plenty of open world boss fights that require multiple players who will usually gather willingly to take on more challenging fights in order to gain a good chunk of XP and a shot at more rare items. This type of approach to open world play definitely borrows from the great ideas Guild Wars 2 put in place, but where GW2 was smooth and concise in its execution, Bless is typically more rigid/unrefined. These boss fights do have their own dynamics and they're not just mindless DPS races but they're also a bit of a chore as they're the primary way to level up your character since questing frequently varies in its rewards and availability. As of level 20 I've found myself in constant stand-stills for leveling that require excessive grinding only to eventually hit a massive influx of XP. What might take 3-4 hours of play to gain a level one day might only take 30 mins the next. It's all because the XP gains are unevenly distributed and the quest availability sometimes doesn't favor the player. For instance, at level 20 I'm having to fight things that are 2-4 levels higher than me and requiring better gear score to more "casually coast" through the content. This is a problem that two other friends of mine have run into as well. Everyone is doing the quests and trying to hit big XP opportunities with world bosses when the groups form for them and the bosses are available but there's an unmistakable failure in how Bandai Namco paced the XP rewards with questing. It seems that despite heavy questing and mob killing you're inevitably going to be behind to a point where you'll just have to cycle through boss fights and dynamic world events to move your XP gains along to get you to a point where you'll be more appropriately suited to take on the challenges that you're facing. That's a bit of a head-scratching error for an MMORPG that, if it was tested appropriately, could easily be fixed by simply increasing quest XP awards. My gut-instinct is the quest XP needs about a 20% buff in order to help players maintain appropriate leveling for the storyline content.

    Then there's the combat which isn't overly simplistic but also kinda feels clunky at times. As a priest, I find my role kinda muddled. You get these unique trees of abilities which is nice and varies your gameplay depending on which ability tree you follow but they're all somewhat limited and don't always help players carve out a role, at least with the priest class. That's another odd fumble. There are 7 ability trees (I assume for all classes) and only one of them puts a priest in a healing-centric role while the rest have healing as an afterthought and rely on damage dealing. I think Bless should have considered making more established roles and branching those roles out a bit more. To this day I still feel that World of Warcraft is one of the few MMORPGs that nailed class play and varied it all enough to make it interesting to play the game as a different class. Bless almost feels more like Destiny in that your class is more of an afterthought than an important choice in how you experience the game and that's not what this genre should be doing (that's my opinion though, perhaps you'd enjoy that approach).

    The game definitely is opening up a bit at level 20 though. There's an online marketplace and there's a crafting system to develop your skills, though it's a bit tough to progress them and keep them anywhere close to the point where you'd be crafting yourself usable gear for your level. The open world boss fights are mostly great. The open world big events are mostly great. The only problem with the open world highlighted events is... they're not highlighted. You'll know where they are but you won't know when those bosses respawn and you won't be notified of any important events. You'll have to rely on the cumbersome general chat feed to be made aware of new events and that's a huge letdown for me.

    If Bless Unleashed can smooth itself out in the very near future, it has a healthy future for itself. Much of what ails it is completely fixable. But the question is obvious: when will that be? We have new consoles coming out in 2020 and there's bound to be a plethora of new RPG content coming within the next 18 months that could overshadow what Bless Unleashed has to offer. Side note: the game is rather not-pretty given the hardware it's running on. It has vague moments of nice visuals but even on the Xbox One X it's nothing to be proud of visually. It's not ugly but it's not attractive either.    … Expand
  5. Swampy
    Mar 27, 2020
    7
    Decent MMO that has lots of detailed progression and character customisation all in a very pretty open world that appears seamless.

    Combat system and mechanics are interesting but flawed. A system that doesnt allow you to regenerate out of combat without using potions or other time-consuming feature should make sure the systems to mitigate damage taken work properly. Unfortunately the    Decent MMO that has lots of detailed progression and character customisation all in a very pretty open world that appears seamless.

    Combat system and mechanics are interesting but flawed. A system that doesnt allow you to regenerate out of combat without using potions or other time-consuming feature should make sure the systems to mitigate damage taken work properly. Unfortunately the combat frequently lags behind input, meaning dodges etc are just wasted.

    While there is plenty to do in game none of it is groundbreaking or new.. In fact it overly relies on the old ‘kill 10 rats’ go back and kill 15 more style of quest.

    The dialogue is more akin to first generation MMOs and its mostly textual with minor comments like ‘Hello hero I’ve got a task for you ‘ dubbed over the top. Coming from the likes of ESO which came out for PC originally in 2014 the lack of voice dialogue here is quite jarring, and I feel quite poor for a modern title.    … Expand
  6. hellzhobo
    Mar 23, 2020
    5
    Not gonna lie. Played it for about 30 minutes. Just felt kinda like a mobile game to me.

Critic Reviews

All reviews »
Metascore
57

Mixed or average reviews - based on 6 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 2 out of 6
  2. Mixed: 3 out of 6
  3. Negative: 1 out of 6
  1. MMORPG.com
    May 19, 2020
    50
    The world building, cities and some of the characters are instantly memorable and made me want to learn more. But when coupled with an unpolished backdrop, laggy and uninspired combat and a boring, frustrating grind, it makes it hard to recommend to anyone who is looking for a good free-to-play MMO to check out, especially when alternatives like Warframe and Phantasy Star Online 2 exist on the same platform. Hopefully time brings Bless Unleashed to the level we were all hoping for – but right now it’s just not there. It honestly feels like it needed more time to bake before being released – feeling rushed out to hit a deadline, and it definitely shows in the final result.
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  2. XboxAddict
    Apr 13, 2020
    78
    As an MMO, Bless Unleashed it perfectly serviceable, but those that want to make rapid progression are going to be sorely disappointed and frustrated with many of its draconic design choices. MMO’s are hard to review, as they are constantly evolving, being updated and changing with what the community and developers want. As of this point in time, I can certainly recommend giving Bless Unleashed a shot since I still find myself logging on every day, and given that it’s completely free to play, there’s no real reason not to. Be warned, as you’re in for a long and arduous grind if you stick with it, and it’s incredibly challenging when it comes to combat in the later dungeons, but I only expect Bless to improve in many facets in the future.
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  3. GamingTrend
    Mar 30, 2020
    10
    Bless Unleashed, when it’s not completely broken, is a boring, unfun disaster. Everything about the game has too many issues to even recommend at the very low price of free.
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