Overview
Swords, castles, armor, action...what more needs to be said? Infinity Blade is a touch control based role playing game. There is a story behind the game and it continues through the Infinity Blade trilogy. Now being the first in the trilogy and the oldest, it also makes Infinity Blade the shortest game. That being said, it is still a very fun game with crazy replay-ability. Replay-ability is a term for whether or not a game is still fun to play after you've already beaten it. You have to beat Infinity Blade multiple times to truly beat the game, but that'll be in another section with major story spoilers. There are many different weapons, shields, helms, armors, and rings that you can find, and purchase throughout the game. The main premise of the gameplay is to master your items, and level up your character and increase his stats. There are also...locked/hidden items, there is a particular gameplay mode that you must be in to buy certain items and you must complete it a certain amount of times to attain a particular set of equipment in regular gameplay, more on this in another section as well. Once you master items, they stop receiving experience points and therefore your character loses them as well, but once again in another section I'll explain how you can continue to level your character and weapons. So let's dive in shall we?
Game Mechanics
Looking Around/Info - This one is simple enough, scroll around the screen with your finger and you'll look around, and who knows...you may find something good. There is a little blue info button in the lower right corner when not in battle and when you are in front of an enemy. This will give you information on the enemy you are about to fight.
Movement - Movement is basic enough for a touch based game, there are action circles across the screen the screen, clicking on these will activate anything associated with it. As in, moving forward through the game, and starting fights with enemies who are blocking your path.
Blocking - The first thing you learn in the game is how to block, a shield icon appears at the bottom center of your game screen. Hold this button to block.
Attacking - Of course, another basic maneuver. Simply swipe left, right, up, down, or diagonal to attack.
Dodging - When you learn to dodge you get two more icons on your screen, bottom left and bottom right. These are arrow keys that you can change the size of in options. Click on either arrow to dodge in that direction.
Parrying - Parrying is fun, it's my main line of defense other than blocking, though it can be tricky sometimes. To parry you swipe across the screen in the direction the enemies attack is coming from, as they are attacking you. If the enemy is swinging down, you swipe up to parry.
Super Attack - As you give and take damage you start to power up your super attack. Calm down, it's not as cool as it sounds. There is a circle in the upper left portion of your screen, it fills up blue and will flash when full. Tap the circle, that's it. It will stun your enemies allowing you complete unguarded offense for a moment.
Combo Attack - Did you know you can swipe more than once while attacking? Of course you did! This is known as a combo attack, and you can even score some critical hits while doing combo attacks.
Magic - Precious.....yes, that's right, rings. Each ring has a set of magical capabilities, some more than others. In the upper right hand portion of your screen you have another icon that fills blue and flashes when full. Tap it, but wait there's more, now you get to draw the design for the magic you which to cast before you hit by the enemy. Don't worry, it's pretty easy until they enemies get higher leveled and attack faster.
Chests/Life Potions/Bags of Gold - This one is simple, you see an action circle above a chest, click it, there are goodies inside. Did you see that life potion or bag of gold along the way? Good, tap on it, you'll pick it up, grab all the free things! Remember you can only carry 5 life potions on you at any time. Some of these items can only be seen during walking cutscenes, which you can fast forward through, so be careful with that if you are trying to increase your money. And psst...there's an achievement for collecting all the treasure in a single run through.
Main Game
The main game starts with a cutscene of a knight come to challenge who seems to be a king upon a throne, also dressed in knights armor. This king asks who you are and you respond by saying you are the one who will defeat him and bring peace to land. The king then tells his Dark Knight to fight you. This is where the tutorials begin, you start by learning to block, you block the Dark Knight's attack and then are told how to attack. After you attack the Dark Knight, he knocks your sword and shield to the ground and the king comes down to you, commends you on your bravery and skill. He then proceeds to kill you. After this you are taken to title screen cutscene, it says a certain number of years has passed and your character says "Father, I will avenge you."
As you start your gameplay, the first few battles continue to give you a brief tutorial on controls, these are dodging, parrying, special attack, combo attacks, info, and magic. After these initial tutorials they never pop up again unless you reset your game back to bloodline 1, I'll explain why you may want to do that too. Each time you complete a play-through, a bloodline, your enemies become stronger and harder to defeat. Again, your goal is to master items and defeat the God King, you learn this by hitting the info button for the God King. The God King levels faster than all your others enemies, he levels by 50 levels a bloodline and he starts at level 50, so by bloodline 4 or so he's already level 200 and you may only be level 15-20, though his level will plateau if you are unable to beat him, but after you do he will level by 50 in the next bloodline. This is where fighting skill comes into play, and if you're still having trouble and really want to beat the God King, you can reset your game to bloodline 1 through the options, the game will save all your progress, equipment, money, etc. so you start bloodline 1 again exactly where you reset from. There are a few paths you can take to get to the God King, each with their own enemies and chests.
Every time you master an item, you get one point to use for increasing a stat, a level up grants you two points. There are four stats that you can increase, health, attack, defense, and magic. How you choose to level these up is your choice. There will be a chance to continue leveling even after you think you can't.
Negative Bloodlines
Remember when I said there may be a reason you would want to reset to bloodline 1, and that there are items you can only get through a certain gameplay? That's negative bloodlines. What you do to get to negative bloodlines is reset to bloodline 1, and during the initial cutscene that teaches you how to block, you have to tap block only, so that you don't block and the dark knight can kill you. This will take a few minutes because he only does 44 and 22 damage at a time and you have over 1,000 health. It's worth the wait though. After you die, it asks if you want to save and restart the castle or load the last checkpoint, restart the castle. It will take you to the same title screen cutscene but you will be at bloodline -1. This is where negative bloodlines becomes fun, it's almost impossible to lose. You are given special dark armor and weapons that cannot be changed out, you will be able to buy this dark armor in the regular gameplay mode by reaching bloodline -10 and earning the achievement "You've gone too deep." There are also a few other items that can only be bought in the store in negative bloodlines, these include the light versions of the dark equipment and a few other things, like some rings. You will find a lot of money, a lot of life, and a lot of items during negative bloodlines gameplay. This makes negative bloodlines a great place to farm for gold so you can buy the more expensive equipment you're surely wanting by now. Though other than that, negative bloodlines is essentially regular gameplay, and to get back to regular gameplay simply reset to bloodline 1 and fight the Dark Knight as normal.
New Game+
New Game+ is a gameplay mode that allows you to continue to level up your character. All items and non purchased gold you had before starting, you lose at the start of New Game+. All your mastered items are no longer mastered as well. Now the fun begins, you can remaster items, there is a number that appears next to the item name, 1 for once mastered and every time you remaster said item, the number increases. You also start out at the level you left the original gameplay mode at, but in New Game+ the enemies start at a higher level, in the 50's for bloodline 1 (shown as exponent 2) as opposed to single digits. How to get to New Game+ is explained in the major spoiler section.
Deathless Mode
Sorry, I lost all my save data and will get back to section later
Dungeons (**MAJOR SPOILERS**)
You've been warned more than once already, this section contains some major plot spoilers of the game and also tells you about a few other items that can only be gotten in the dungeons. If you haven't gone through the dungeons, or don't want to story to be spoiled, stop reading now. I'm serious, you've been warned multiple times now.
So by now you've probably ventured under the castle and have seen a peculiar stone with a cutout of the Infinity Blade. You need the Infinity Blade, after you've purchased it, venture back to this stone, your character will put the Infinity Blade in the cutout and three new rooms open up. Be sure your health is full, you have strong armor, and are pretty good with the fighting. You will be fighting the deathless now.
In the room on the left, there is the strongest of the deathless, he starts at level 150, questions how you made it into the room. You tell him you've defeated the God King and he refuses to believe you and your fight begins. After winning this battle you get money and experience as usual, but you also earn the the Dragoor Blade, a sword, and one of the strongest in the game. In the middle room you will find another of the deathless that you will fight, the weakest at level 50, after winning you get the Dragoor Scale, this is a ring and one of the best rings you can get in the game. In the third room, the one on the right, you will find another deathless, the middle leveled at 100, after winning this battle you will earn the Dragoor Bone, a shield, again one of the best in the game again. This is the only place you can get the Dragoor items, and every time you fight these deathless and win, you will earn those items again, and they sell for a nice price as well. Each of the deathless will seem very familiar, they regular enemies were modeled after them. The strongest deathless in the left room is a regular knight, the deathless in the middle room is a dual weapon knight, and the deathless in the room on the right is an ogre. The deathless attack hard and fast, so you need to be on top of your game.
You will have noticed a small cutscene after each deathless win, these are bars retracting that hold a fourth room in the dungeon closed. Before entering, again be sure your health is full, your equipment is strong, and that you are good at fighting. In this room you will pass liquid chambers each holding what appears to be the God King. You will be greeted with a voice saying you have reached the chamber of your God, so hand over the Infinity Blade and accept death as your reward. Then a mech knight drops from the ceiling, click on him to begin the fight. This will be another difficult fight, he is crazy fast and hard hitting. After defeating the mech knight, you begin to leave the chamber when the mech knight opens and a knight, who appears to be in the knight from the opening cutscene, comes out. He congratulates you on your skill, you ask what's going on, and who he is, he says he chose to help the God King and that you're too blind to see what's really going on. He also claims to be of your bloodline and you tell him he is a disgrace to the bloodline. Now I hope you still have some health left after the mech knight fight because you don't get a chance to use a life potion before you fight the man who was inside the mech knight.
He's not terribly difficult to defeat, unless your health was low at the beginning of the fight. After defeating him, you get no gold, experience or items from these last two battles. Instead, you get the achievement for finding the true ending of the game, you are then asked if you want to start New Game+ or just restart the bloodline. Congratulations, you are fully caught up on the story to begin Infinity Blade 2 with. And if you want to fight the deathless again to obtain multiple copies of the Dragoor items for selling, you will have to reset to bloodline 1 because you can only fight them once per bloodline sequence. So if you fight them in bloodline 1, you cannot fight them any other bloodline, but say you were to reset to bloodline 1 and then not fight them until bloodline 20, you can do that, but to fight them again after that, you will need to reset to bloodline 1.
Final Thoughts
While gameplay is limited, Infinity Blade is highly addictive and very fun to play. The different gameplay modes make it interesting as well. My tip to new players is to keep all items after mastering them, don't buy a new one until the one you are on is mastered, then buy the next one up, this way you can continue to save money while buying the cheapest equipment and owning and mastering all the items. But if that doesn't matter to you at all, then play though as you see fit, as you should anyway. I will be doing a very similar style review for both Infinity Blade 2 and Infinity Blade 3. I will give Infinity Blade a personal rating of 10/10.
Swords, castles, armor, action...what more needs to be said? Infinity Blade is a touch control based role playing game. There is a story behind the game and it continues through the Infinity Blade trilogy. Now being the first in the trilogy and the oldest, it also makes Infinity Blade the shortest game. That being said, it is still a very fun game with crazy replay-ability. Replay-ability is a term for whether or not a game is still fun to play after you've already beaten it. You have to beat Infinity Blade multiple times to truly beat the game, but that'll be in another section with major story spoilers. There are many different weapons, shields, helms, armors, and rings that you can find, and purchase throughout the game. The main premise of the gameplay is to master your items, and level up your character and increase his stats. There are also...locked/hidden items, there is a particular gameplay mode that you must be in to buy certain items and you must complete it a certain amount of times to attain a particular set of equipment in regular gameplay, more on this in another section as well. Once you master items, they stop receiving experience points and therefore your character loses them as well, but once again in another section I'll explain how you can continue to level your character and weapons. So let's dive in shall we?
Game Mechanics
Looking Around/Info - This one is simple enough, scroll around the screen with your finger and you'll look around, and who knows...you may find something good. There is a little blue info button in the lower right corner when not in battle and when you are in front of an enemy. This will give you information on the enemy you are about to fight.
Movement - Movement is basic enough for a touch based game, there are action circles across the screen the screen, clicking on these will activate anything associated with it. As in, moving forward through the game, and starting fights with enemies who are blocking your path.
Blocking - The first thing you learn in the game is how to block, a shield icon appears at the bottom center of your game screen. Hold this button to block.
Attacking - Of course, another basic maneuver. Simply swipe left, right, up, down, or diagonal to attack.
Dodging - When you learn to dodge you get two more icons on your screen, bottom left and bottom right. These are arrow keys that you can change the size of in options. Click on either arrow to dodge in that direction.
Parrying - Parrying is fun, it's my main line of defense other than blocking, though it can be tricky sometimes. To parry you swipe across the screen in the direction the enemies attack is coming from, as they are attacking you. If the enemy is swinging down, you swipe up to parry.
Super Attack - As you give and take damage you start to power up your super attack. Calm down, it's not as cool as it sounds. There is a circle in the upper left portion of your screen, it fills up blue and will flash when full. Tap the circle, that's it. It will stun your enemies allowing you complete unguarded offense for a moment.
Combo Attack - Did you know you can swipe more than once while attacking? Of course you did! This is known as a combo attack, and you can even score some critical hits while doing combo attacks.
Magic - Precious.....yes, that's right, rings. Each ring has a set of magical capabilities, some more than others. In the upper right hand portion of your screen you have another icon that fills blue and flashes when full. Tap it, but wait there's more, now you get to draw the design for the magic you which to cast before you hit by the enemy. Don't worry, it's pretty easy until they enemies get higher leveled and attack faster.
Chests/Life Potions/Bags of Gold - This one is simple, you see an action circle above a chest, click it, there are goodies inside. Did you see that life potion or bag of gold along the way? Good, tap on it, you'll pick it up, grab all the free things! Remember you can only carry 5 life potions on you at any time. Some of these items can only be seen during walking cutscenes, which you can fast forward through, so be careful with that if you are trying to increase your money. And psst...there's an achievement for collecting all the treasure in a single run through.
Main Game
The main game starts with a cutscene of a knight come to challenge who seems to be a king upon a throne, also dressed in knights armor. This king asks who you are and you respond by saying you are the one who will defeat him and bring peace to land. The king then tells his Dark Knight to fight you. This is where the tutorials begin, you start by learning to block, you block the Dark Knight's attack and then are told how to attack. After you attack the Dark Knight, he knocks your sword and shield to the ground and the king comes down to you, commends you on your bravery and skill. He then proceeds to kill you. After this you are taken to title screen cutscene, it says a certain number of years has passed and your character says "Father, I will avenge you."
As you start your gameplay, the first few battles continue to give you a brief tutorial on controls, these are dodging, parrying, special attack, combo attacks, info, and magic. After these initial tutorials they never pop up again unless you reset your game back to bloodline 1, I'll explain why you may want to do that too. Each time you complete a play-through, a bloodline, your enemies become stronger and harder to defeat. Again, your goal is to master items and defeat the God King, you learn this by hitting the info button for the God King. The God King levels faster than all your others enemies, he levels by 50 levels a bloodline and he starts at level 50, so by bloodline 4 or so he's already level 200 and you may only be level 15-20, though his level will plateau if you are unable to beat him, but after you do he will level by 50 in the next bloodline. This is where fighting skill comes into play, and if you're still having trouble and really want to beat the God King, you can reset your game to bloodline 1 through the options, the game will save all your progress, equipment, money, etc. so you start bloodline 1 again exactly where you reset from. There are a few paths you can take to get to the God King, each with their own enemies and chests.
Every time you master an item, you get one point to use for increasing a stat, a level up grants you two points. There are four stats that you can increase, health, attack, defense, and magic. How you choose to level these up is your choice. There will be a chance to continue leveling even after you think you can't.
Negative Bloodlines
Remember when I said there may be a reason you would want to reset to bloodline 1, and that there are items you can only get through a certain gameplay? That's negative bloodlines. What you do to get to negative bloodlines is reset to bloodline 1, and during the initial cutscene that teaches you how to block, you have to tap block only, so that you don't block and the dark knight can kill you. This will take a few minutes because he only does 44 and 22 damage at a time and you have over 1,000 health. It's worth the wait though. After you die, it asks if you want to save and restart the castle or load the last checkpoint, restart the castle. It will take you to the same title screen cutscene but you will be at bloodline -1. This is where negative bloodlines becomes fun, it's almost impossible to lose. You are given special dark armor and weapons that cannot be changed out, you will be able to buy this dark armor in the regular gameplay mode by reaching bloodline -10 and earning the achievement "You've gone too deep." There are also a few other items that can only be bought in the store in negative bloodlines, these include the light versions of the dark equipment and a few other things, like some rings. You will find a lot of money, a lot of life, and a lot of items during negative bloodlines gameplay. This makes negative bloodlines a great place to farm for gold so you can buy the more expensive equipment you're surely wanting by now. Though other than that, negative bloodlines is essentially regular gameplay, and to get back to regular gameplay simply reset to bloodline 1 and fight the Dark Knight as normal.
New Game+
New Game+ is a gameplay mode that allows you to continue to level up your character. All items and non purchased gold you had before starting, you lose at the start of New Game+. All your mastered items are no longer mastered as well. Now the fun begins, you can remaster items, there is a number that appears next to the item name, 1 for once mastered and every time you remaster said item, the number increases. You also start out at the level you left the original gameplay mode at, but in New Game+ the enemies start at a higher level, in the 50's for bloodline 1 (shown as exponent 2) as opposed to single digits. How to get to New Game+ is explained in the major spoiler section.
Deathless Mode
Sorry, I lost all my save data and will get back to section later
Dungeons (**MAJOR SPOILERS**)
You've been warned more than once already, this section contains some major plot spoilers of the game and also tells you about a few other items that can only be gotten in the dungeons. If you haven't gone through the dungeons, or don't want to story to be spoiled, stop reading now. I'm serious, you've been warned multiple times now.
So by now you've probably ventured under the castle and have seen a peculiar stone with a cutout of the Infinity Blade. You need the Infinity Blade, after you've purchased it, venture back to this stone, your character will put the Infinity Blade in the cutout and three new rooms open up. Be sure your health is full, you have strong armor, and are pretty good with the fighting. You will be fighting the deathless now.
In the room on the left, there is the strongest of the deathless, he starts at level 150, questions how you made it into the room. You tell him you've defeated the God King and he refuses to believe you and your fight begins. After winning this battle you get money and experience as usual, but you also earn the the Dragoor Blade, a sword, and one of the strongest in the game. In the middle room you will find another of the deathless that you will fight, the weakest at level 50, after winning you get the Dragoor Scale, this is a ring and one of the best rings you can get in the game. In the third room, the one on the right, you will find another deathless, the middle leveled at 100, after winning this battle you will earn the Dragoor Bone, a shield, again one of the best in the game again. This is the only place you can get the Dragoor items, and every time you fight these deathless and win, you will earn those items again, and they sell for a nice price as well. Each of the deathless will seem very familiar, they regular enemies were modeled after them. The strongest deathless in the left room is a regular knight, the deathless in the middle room is a dual weapon knight, and the deathless in the room on the right is an ogre. The deathless attack hard and fast, so you need to be on top of your game.
You will have noticed a small cutscene after each deathless win, these are bars retracting that hold a fourth room in the dungeon closed. Before entering, again be sure your health is full, your equipment is strong, and that you are good at fighting. In this room you will pass liquid chambers each holding what appears to be the God King. You will be greeted with a voice saying you have reached the chamber of your God, so hand over the Infinity Blade and accept death as your reward. Then a mech knight drops from the ceiling, click on him to begin the fight. This will be another difficult fight, he is crazy fast and hard hitting. After defeating the mech knight, you begin to leave the chamber when the mech knight opens and a knight, who appears to be in the knight from the opening cutscene, comes out. He congratulates you on your skill, you ask what's going on, and who he is, he says he chose to help the God King and that you're too blind to see what's really going on. He also claims to be of your bloodline and you tell him he is a disgrace to the bloodline. Now I hope you still have some health left after the mech knight fight because you don't get a chance to use a life potion before you fight the man who was inside the mech knight.
He's not terribly difficult to defeat, unless your health was low at the beginning of the fight. After defeating him, you get no gold, experience or items from these last two battles. Instead, you get the achievement for finding the true ending of the game, you are then asked if you want to start New Game+ or just restart the bloodline. Congratulations, you are fully caught up on the story to begin Infinity Blade 2 with. And if you want to fight the deathless again to obtain multiple copies of the Dragoor items for selling, you will have to reset to bloodline 1 because you can only fight them once per bloodline sequence. So if you fight them in bloodline 1, you cannot fight them any other bloodline, but say you were to reset to bloodline 1 and then not fight them until bloodline 20, you can do that, but to fight them again after that, you will need to reset to bloodline 1.
Final Thoughts
While gameplay is limited, Infinity Blade is highly addictive and very fun to play. The different gameplay modes make it interesting as well. My tip to new players is to keep all items after mastering them, don't buy a new one until the one you are on is mastered, then buy the next one up, this way you can continue to save money while buying the cheapest equipment and owning and mastering all the items. But if that doesn't matter to you at all, then play though as you see fit, as you should anyway. I will be doing a very similar style review for both Infinity Blade 2 and Infinity Blade 3. I will give Infinity Blade a personal rating of 10/10.
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