So mighty warriors are you into free Xbox Live games? How about free Xbox Live games that happen to have a story and hours of gameplay and a multiplayer that is very similar to Dark Souls? If you answered yes to that then do I have a game for you. Signal Studios the creators of Toy Soldiers have created a free to play RPG that is actually a ton of fun and it's on the consoles.
Ascend starts out like most RPG's you create your character, male or female it's up to you. I played as a dude of course sadly unlike most RPG's where you get to pick what class you are this one basically has one kind of class melee. An argument could be made saying that the class is barbarian being that the armor that is free that you start out with is just that. After you are done creating your character you pick your god you will follow. These are factions you got Darkness God who is evil, and fire, that whole thing. There is the Light God who is good and shinny and you get powers of lighting with him. Last the final God is the Void God which is the one I chose personally; I got ice powers for choosing that one. The basic story is the humans are being overrun by trolls, sadly not internet trolls because that would be awesome. These trolls look a hell of a lot like Orcs. Hell they basically are just Orcs because compared to you they are tiny. You are a Caos or a giant human and you are tasked with the job of eradicating the troll menace and killing the last Titan that roams the Earth and keeps the Gods from ruling it. You ask well why can't the God's do what Zeus did and come down and kick some ass? Well in this universe if they come down to Earth they will corrupt it and essentially destroy it.
The game graphically looks passable it isn't the most beautiful looking game but it does its part. The enemies got a little old to look at, now I didn't beat the game so I have no idea on if the enemies change in the later levels of the game but from what I saw they introduce different types but they all are in the same troll looking species. This game is gory, not God of War gore but there is quite a bit of blood. Of course if you want your character to look like a badass it'll cost you, but if you don't mind the barbarian look then enjoy.
There is no voice acting which saddens me because that means the entire game you have to read. Remember those old school games where you had to read everyone's dialog just to know what is going on. This game is bring that back oh yeah reading and blood all in the same area.
Now you are thinking Brandon how does the game play mother fucker I've read about the story and the graphics and the sound but how does it play? Well my impatient friend the gameplay is fun and unique. We recorded a Bloody Time but it was lost due to a computer crash. The game is a third person hack n slash. You have spells which become extremely useful the more you play. One of my favorite parts of this game is the randomized look that you find in the chest. The big problem is that the loot is damn near broken when you take it out of the chest, seriously who the hell puts broken loot in a treasure chest? Whoever was the guy putting his junk in these chest is a asshole. Another thing that this game does that is super annoying is your armor and weapons can break. They will break quickly, even if you're kicking ass and taking names this shit just deteriorates. Now when I play a hack n slash I like to use the dodge mechanic like I'm doing a freaky dance. Guess which game only has a block? That is a huge pain in the ass I can't even explain for you people that are big on blocking this wasn't a problem, but for us dodgers out there this will be a huge learning curve. This game has this fun gimmick of calling the humans that worship you and having them crawl all over you. You can throw them at enemies or eat them for a tiny bit of health. They are extremely useful when someone is invading your lands. There is that Dark Souls thing I've mentioned the fact that this game is always online means that whenever you are clearing out a dungeon or doing whatever really, someone can invade your lands. You can teleport to them and kick some ass or get your ass kicked. I found out that 90% of the time someone invaded my lands I kicked the shit out of them. That is unless they are a higher level than me then I just didn't stand a chance. Towards the end of my run in this game I stopped care if people invade my areas because I didn't lose anything for it and I got tired of restarting the same dungeon over and over. The game has a MMO style of revive system where if you die you just re-spawn about 100 feet away from your body. The game can be buggy I had a horrible bug where my character stopped doing damage to enemies, but I just restarted and it was back to normal. Last thing because this is a free game this has micro-transactions. That doesn't mean you can be a level 3 and kick the shit out of a level 20 character. I had someone that did that and lost miserably. Honestly folks you are robbing yourself of this game if you just buy your way through it.
My final thoughts of this game is that if I paid for this game I would've not given it the pass that I do. If you have a gold membership it won't hurt to check this out. It can be fun and when it get frustrating you can put it down and not worry because you didn't spend anything to play it. It has long load times which hopefully later down the road they fix that. Overall I have to give this game a regular C rating.
Author,
Brandon
Ascend starts out like most RPG's you create your character, male or female it's up to you. I played as a dude of course sadly unlike most RPG's where you get to pick what class you are this one basically has one kind of class melee. An argument could be made saying that the class is barbarian being that the armor that is free that you start out with is just that. After you are done creating your character you pick your god you will follow. These are factions you got Darkness God who is evil, and fire, that whole thing. There is the Light God who is good and shinny and you get powers of lighting with him. Last the final God is the Void God which is the one I chose personally; I got ice powers for choosing that one. The basic story is the humans are being overrun by trolls, sadly not internet trolls because that would be awesome. These trolls look a hell of a lot like Orcs. Hell they basically are just Orcs because compared to you they are tiny. You are a Caos or a giant human and you are tasked with the job of eradicating the troll menace and killing the last Titan that roams the Earth and keeps the Gods from ruling it. You ask well why can't the God's do what Zeus did and come down and kick some ass? Well in this universe if they come down to Earth they will corrupt it and essentially destroy it.
The game graphically looks passable it isn't the most beautiful looking game but it does its part. The enemies got a little old to look at, now I didn't beat the game so I have no idea on if the enemies change in the later levels of the game but from what I saw they introduce different types but they all are in the same troll looking species. This game is gory, not God of War gore but there is quite a bit of blood. Of course if you want your character to look like a badass it'll cost you, but if you don't mind the barbarian look then enjoy.
There is no voice acting which saddens me because that means the entire game you have to read. Remember those old school games where you had to read everyone's dialog just to know what is going on. This game is bring that back oh yeah reading and blood all in the same area.
Now you are thinking Brandon how does the game play mother fucker I've read about the story and the graphics and the sound but how does it play? Well my impatient friend the gameplay is fun and unique. We recorded a Bloody Time but it was lost due to a computer crash. The game is a third person hack n slash. You have spells which become extremely useful the more you play. One of my favorite parts of this game is the randomized look that you find in the chest. The big problem is that the loot is damn near broken when you take it out of the chest, seriously who the hell puts broken loot in a treasure chest? Whoever was the guy putting his junk in these chest is a asshole. Another thing that this game does that is super annoying is your armor and weapons can break. They will break quickly, even if you're kicking ass and taking names this shit just deteriorates. Now when I play a hack n slash I like to use the dodge mechanic like I'm doing a freaky dance. Guess which game only has a block? That is a huge pain in the ass I can't even explain for you people that are big on blocking this wasn't a problem, but for us dodgers out there this will be a huge learning curve. This game has this fun gimmick of calling the humans that worship you and having them crawl all over you. You can throw them at enemies or eat them for a tiny bit of health. They are extremely useful when someone is invading your lands. There is that Dark Souls thing I've mentioned the fact that this game is always online means that whenever you are clearing out a dungeon or doing whatever really, someone can invade your lands. You can teleport to them and kick some ass or get your ass kicked. I found out that 90% of the time someone invaded my lands I kicked the shit out of them. That is unless they are a higher level than me then I just didn't stand a chance. Towards the end of my run in this game I stopped care if people invade my areas because I didn't lose anything for it and I got tired of restarting the same dungeon over and over. The game has a MMO style of revive system where if you die you just re-spawn about 100 feet away from your body. The game can be buggy I had a horrible bug where my character stopped doing damage to enemies, but I just restarted and it was back to normal. Last thing because this is a free game this has micro-transactions. That doesn't mean you can be a level 3 and kick the shit out of a level 20 character. I had someone that did that and lost miserably. Honestly folks you are robbing yourself of this game if you just buy your way through it.
My final thoughts of this game is that if I paid for this game I would've not given it the pass that I do. If you have a gold membership it won't hurt to check this out. It can be fun and when it get frustrating you can put it down and not worry because you didn't spend anything to play it. It has long load times which hopefully later down the road they fix that. Overall I have to give this game a regular C rating.
Author,
Brandon