--Ayumi, Blades of Time
Blades of Time has its flaws, most notably its dated graphics and lackluster story, but its lead character Ayumi, an adventurer who can be easily compared to Lara Croft from Tomb Raider, is capable of brandishing enough weapons to justify a purchase on the Switch eShop from a devoted fan of action-based combat. The kills lack the intensity of other action games like God of War, yet the lack of mainstream hack-and-slash games on the Switch does leave Blades of Time with more room to stand out. It does not hurt that its time manipulation mechanics are actually distinct from those of more popular games that let the player toy with "rewinding" time.
Production Values
Some environments have certainly aged better than others (the pools of water look particularly outdated), and the fact that this is a Switch port of a game that debuted in 2012 on the PS3 and Xbox 360 makes this a rather natural thing. Ayumi herself, as well as the majority of the character and enemy models in the game, are among the high points of the graphics. The voice acting is neither terrible nor incredible, but Ayumi does speak to herself quite a bit. Several other characters are introduced within the first few hours, so at least Ayumi's somewhat mediocre voice acting is not the only kind of speech players will listen to, though it is by far the most common.
Gameplay
Blades of Time combines light RPG elements with hack-and-slash style fighting, the former entailing equippable items that can impact combat. Some of them amplify the elemental damage of magic attacks, which can be triggered when a "rage meter" is filled up after striking enemies enough times. In many cases, enemies can be killed by finishing moves--and the finishing moves can be slowed down using Ayumi's ability to freeze or rewind the motion of objects, which generates a duplicate Ayumi who attacks in the same way the player did before the rewind. Since some enemies are too powerful or protected for her to overpower from only one direction, her ability to rewind the positions of enemies is actually necessary to defeat certain foes.
These types of opponents can be killed by far less drastic measures, though, even if joining forces with multiple copies of Ayumi provides a different type of combat than the kind in most games. Many of the enemies are not especially devastating on their own, however, but attentiveness is still called for when fighting groups of "weak" enemies. The boss fights are not always as straightforward, and not in a clever way. For example, no specific instructions about how to even initially harm the first boss are provided in the context of the fight, so I had to look up what could have been apparent if there was even a minor but direct hint.
Story
Some spoilers are below.
Ayumi explores the mystic region of Dragonland, an island inhabited by exotic creatures and explicitly supernatural forces. She is soon able to rewind events--time itself could never be rewound for reasons I will explain below--and uses it to survive encounters with vicious opponents that would otherwise kill her. Evidence mounts that an entity called Chaos has seized control of the island, having driven out the "Skyguards" that once presided over it.
Intellectual Content
The central mechanic of reversing event sequences is blatantly conflated with reversing time. The phrase "Time has started again" is even used despite the fact that time is still elapsing even when events are rewound. If a sequence of events was to be reversed as someone watches, all that has been observed is specific phenomena going backwards. Time, contrary to popular descriptions, is not an event, but a duration in which events occur. One moment follows another no matter what happens in the physical world. It is hypothetically possible to manipulate sequences of events, yes. This is not the same as performing the inherently impossible task of reversing time itself. Beyond this, the only way to go back to the beginning of an event or chain of events that has already occurred is to time travel back to a prior moment. This would mean going back in time rather than reversing time. In other words, one would be exiting a certain point of time and reentering at another moment, but time itself would not have stopped, reversed, or reset.
Conclusion
Blades of Time offers diverse weapons and highly creative ways to manipulate events using time-related powers, but its simplistic puzzles and story do hold it back anyway. Ayumi could have been a far deeper, more complex protagonist--not that her weak characterization contrasts with the depth of the plot at all. The combat and time mechanics are handled well to the point of being woven together in some fairly original ways; it is just that the uniqueness is surrounded by mediocre and shallow elements. A serious reboot would be necessary to elevate the few bursts of excellence by putting them in a better overall product.
Content:
1. Violence: While blood and gore do not fill the screen, human and creature blood are seen during successful attacks from either party.
2. Profanity: A character utters "damn" at one point.
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