Published 27th of May 2005

Mythic Blades attempts to bring a solid 1-on-1 fighting game to the PC. What are the results?

Platform: PC Developer: Vermillion Entertainment Publisher: Cartel Games Released: May 2005 (not available in stores, purchase through Cartel Games)

SCREENSHOTS About our Review System

Minimum Requirements:

600 Mhz or greater Intel or AMD CPU
64MB RAM
32MB OpenGL 3D card
Windows 98/ME/2000/XP

Primary Test System:

Pentium 4 2.4 Ghz
512 MB RAM
GeForce 6600 GT 128MB
Windows XP

The PC has not been a popular platform for fighting games in recent times, and notably several developers out there have been trying to rectify this over the past couple of years. Most have failed to have any significant impact on the market however, and so the PC has remained the sole platform of First Person Shooters and Real Time Strategy Games. Vermillion Entertainment and Cartel Games though have created Mythic Blades, a new traditional-style 1-on-1 fighting game, specifically designed for the PC (something that hasn’t been seriously attempted since 1996’s PC port of Mortal Kombat Trilogy), in an attempt to prove that with a little thinking outside the box, that 1-on-1 fighting games can indeed work on the realm normally dominated by the keyboard and mouse.

Mythic Blades is based around Ancient Greek mythology, and features characters you’ll no doubt be familiar with if you have even the slightest interest in the subject area, such as Perseus, Odysseus, Medusa and others. The basic story premise is that Ares (the God of War) has challenged his father Zeus for the rule over the Olympus, and you take the role of either a hero or a monster and fight to determine the outcome. It’s not a particularly deep or engaging story…but then again, it’s not like it’s needed.

Mythic Blades plays very much like the old school 2D fighting games of the early 90’s such as Street Fighter II, Mortal Kombat, King of Fighters and Samurai Shodown. In fact, if you can think of a combination of those four games, throw in 3D graphics and replace the characters with those found in Greek Mythology, you’ll be pretty close to imagining how Mythic Blades plays. It’s a 2D fighting game with 3D graphics which uses a quick, weapon-based combat system. The game has the basic gameplay and control scheme of a combination of Street Fighter II and Mortal Kombat, the speed of King of Fighters and the weapons of Samurai Shodown. The controls have been made purposefully simple to accommodate the usage of the keyboard. Aside from your four main movement directions, you only have three attack buttons…hard weapon swing, quick weapon swing and kick, with direction back used as block. These buttons can of course be combined with some movement directions to execute different attacks. If you’re not a huge fan of the keyboard, you can easily map the controls to your favourite gamepad or joystick. There are 12 different characters in total to choose from, and each character has a couple of special moves at their disposal, as well as a super move. The characters fall distinctly into 2 different categories…“speed” and “power”.

On the surface, the game appears to play very well. The action is generally fast and frantic, and quick thinking in most cases will get you out of those tight situations. The controls are responsive and tight, and there are no hit detection problems at all. Each character has a couple of special moves at their disposal, and for the most part these special moves are unique to each character, despite the fact that many of them are executed in the same way. Each character also has their own super move, called a Divine Attack. These are limited by a small gauge at the bottom of the screen that fills up as you inflict damage or take damage (filling up slightly faster by taking damage). Once this meter is full you can unleash your character’s Divine Attack (which is executed the same regardless of which character you choose) that inflicts heavy damage or hampers your opponent in some way. The game also has its own camera control so you can swing the camera around to view the fights at different angles. Since there is no 3D movement to speak of though, changing the camera angle generally acts as more of a hindrance than a good alternative way to look at the game while playing.

Dig a little deeper and you’ll see that this is all the game really has to offer. We aren’t going to lie here…if you are looking for a fighting game with depth, Mythic Blades isn’t it. You’re not going to spend ages trying to master just one character. In fact, in half an hour, you’ll have seen all the game has got. Despite the characters all carrying different weapons, they really don’t play any different from each other when you take away the special moves. In most other weapon based fighting games, the weapons the characters wield determine the distinct fighting style of the character. In Mythic Blades, the only distinct difference isn’t governed by the weapons, but the speed and strength of each character, and even in this area, you’ve only got two categories: fast and weak, and slow and strong. When it boils down to it, (with the exception of the final boss, who is unlockable as playable) all of the speed characters play the same way, and all of the power characters play the same way. The speed characters also appear to have a slight advantage over the power characters. The strength of the attacks depending on their movement speeds from both classes hasn’t quite been tweaked enough to find that sweet spot. There aren’t nearly enough special moves for each character to at least give them some kind of gameplay depth either (most characters have only two specials), and although some special moves are useful and innovative, such as Medusa’s petrify move and Minotaur’s bull charge, some, such as Odysseus’s Axe Swing special move are nearly useless. The aforementioned Divine Attacks aren’t particularly well balanced either. Some will always hit the opponent to inflict the same amount of damage every time, but many are based on luck on where the opponent happens to be standing when you execute the move. You can get lucky and inflict heavy damage, or luck out and inflict minimal damage. Each character only has one Divine attack as well. It would have been nice to at least have an option so the player can make a tactical on-the-fly decision on whether to use one attack or the other to keep the opponent guessing.

As mentioned, there are only three attack buttons. This in itself isn’t a bad thing (after all Soul Calibur only uses three attack buttons) but the design of the fighting system ensures that there isn’t much variety here either. Although you can mix the attacks up a little with the directional controls, don’t expect to be able to hit any direction simultaneously with any attack button to execute different normal attacks. Don’t expect to be able to hit two or more attack buttons together to execute different attacks. Don’t expect to be able to execute throws, grapples, parries, cancels, or any other moves that have become staples in fighting games (particularly weapons based fighting games) over the years. Don’t expect to find any kind of predefined combo system either. The gameplay basically boils down to a high/low mixup guessing game to see which player can build up their Divine Attack gauge first to try to finish the round. And while the action is fast-paced, fluid, frantic, and requires fast reflexes…it’s the same thing over and over. Almost every fight follows the same pattern, and the action, as much as it demands the player to be on the ball, gets old disappointingly quickly. You almost know how each fight is going to pan out before you start.

The quality of the graphics you’ll be seeing in the game will be largely dependent on your video hardware, but pumped up to a good resolution, the game looks very nice. The animations are fast and clear, the majority of the Divine Attacks animate well, and each of the ten different battle arenas are modelled in good detail. The characters themselves also look good, and show body damage (however unrealistic it might be) as the fights progress. They certainly aren’t the prettiest graphics your PC is probably able to produce, but it’s obvious the development team have chosen performance, because the game runs very well on a variety of different hardware setups. Some of the animations still look very generic though, and the characters appear to have too much bloom applied when fighting in some battle arenas…so much so that you may need to squint as you look at them.

The sound is there or thereabouts, without being overwhelming good or overwhelmingly bad. The music does its place and stays in the background, although it sounds like little more than enhanced MIDI rather than the scored pieces you expect in today’s games. There isn’t too much variety in the sound effects either. All of the grunts and groans are there of course, but there isn’t really any audible sounds to indicate just how powerful some of these attacks (particularly the Divine Attacks) really are. You could inflict an insane amount of damage and all you’ll hear is a generic “Uggh” from your opponent as they are hit. You do get different noises depending on how hard you hit your opponent or where you hit them, but these are the norm in fighting games these days and you’d expect them to be there.

The game’s replay value will largely depend on how much you play the single player game. You’ve only got two modes to choose from…either choose a character to fight through a series of battles and beat the boss in single player to earn credits, or versus mode. None of the other modes that have become standard in fighting games over the years, such as survival mode, story mode, tournament mode, time attack mode or tag team mode (and multiplayer variations of these) are available here. There is some content to unlock, such as playable characters, character profiles and an artwork gallery, which are bought with the credits you earn in single player mode…but you’ll be able to access the majority of this by simply beating the single player game once with every character on normal difficulty (which isn’t really that difficult once you are familiar with basic gameplay system). Disappointingly, there’s no online mode or network play to speak of here. It would have been a great addition, especially since the technology is already there on the PC to utilise. As it stands, your multiplayer options are restricted to having someone sitting next to you at your PC, using a gamepad or the keyboard. With no other options other than your standard versus mode, there is little to keep either player interested for more than a few matches.

Mythic Blades has the right idea…this is definitely the direction PC fighting games should be heading in. Where the game ultimately slips though is that there isn’t enough depth and not enough replay value here to keep the player entertained. The decision to release this game on the PC is actually a pretty smart one, as there aren’t really any other alternatives out there at the moment. For this reason, if you have been waiting for a half decent 1-on-1 fighting game for your PC, you could do a lot worse than picking up a copy. For the mainly console gamers, unfortunately there really isn’t anything here that’s going to attract you.

How the game scores (out of 10)

Graphics: 7

Smooth and fast, everything is in the right place. There is still some lack of detail though, some of the effects can look a bit out of place, and the rotating camera really isn’t that useful.

Sound: 6

All the sounds are there as you would expect them to be, but there isn’t really anything beyond what you’d expect. The music could also have been a little more symphonic.

Gameplay: 6.5

Repetition is the result of the design of the fighting system. Intended or not, unfortunately every game plays the same way. You would have seen everything the game has to offer after a dozen matches. There’s simply no real depth. The action is fast and demands lightning quick reflexes though, so it succeeds in this area.

Lastability: 6

There’s unlockable content, but it’s not going to take you long to unlock it. Besides that, there are no extra game types to play, and no online mode or network play. The game at the very least needed more game types to keep the player interested.

Overall (not an average): 6.5

Unfortunately, Mythic Blades doesn’t stack up to its big brother fighting games on the consoles. It lacks depth and replay value, and these are the two biggest aspects of fighting games. If you want a 1-on-1 fighting game for your PC that will test your reflexes and hand/eye co-ordination, then it might be worthwhile to grab a copy of Mythic Blades, especially for its bargain price tag. If you want a deeper fighting game though, you’re going to have to keep waiting.

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