Quite a while ago the game Blade Kitten came out and was destined to be an episodic title. The company in question, Krome Studios, ended up having financial issues and along the way Blade Kitten‘s existence fell into disarray.
Many years have passed, and at long last, the game has found its way back to Krome Studios. They promised to release Blade Kitten: Episode 2 after a much-awaited time. Now that we’ve received a copy, it’s time to run through it and see what we think.
First up, I do want to say that it’s nice to be able to play as Kit Ballard again after so many years (roughly five years after its initial PC and Xbox release). But in that time frame, you’ve got to wonder if the game suffered at all. While the voice acting and dialog are spot on, the episode as a whole felt rushed.
When you think of it, the company has a good moral stance; they knew their die-hard fans wanted to play the rest of the story. But rather than abandoning a game that has pretty much been deceased, they opted to complete the storyline. For that, they get our admiration. They even dropped the price of the main game to a mere $3 (USD) to attract new players. The overall controls and everything are still the same as they were in Episode 1…nothing has changed. However the gameplay has gotten a bit more challenging, seeing as I was getting swarmed endlessly by creatures who kept re-spawning at such a rapid pace, it made it difficult to progress.
Another issue is that since I last reviewed the game about a year ago, I had problems re-adapting to the playing style, and at one point I couldn’t advance without Steam Community help because I’d forgotten certain controls.
This time I really enjoyed being able to continue the story of one of my favorite characters of all time, and it felt good to be able to finally see the real ending. Although truth is told, the conclusion just felt wrong. It’s one of those finales that felt rushed; added just to finish the game. The best way to word it (and trust me I’m really trying to do this without ruining things) is: “Let’s just press the simple ‘Undo’ button and reset everything to where it all began…that will fix it all.”
In summary, Episode 2 is a great continuation of the Blade Kitten story, but its ending was the most disappointing I’ve experienced from a video game in a while. However, for the price of this downloadable episode, it’s pretty much worth it just for the gameplay, commentary, and all the extra equipment you get.
An autistic gamer with opinions on games who also enjoys making dumb videos on the internet!