Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
Bloodline Champions: The Official Bloodline Champions Review
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
MOBAs, or multiplayer online battle arenas, are becoming quite the rage any more. There are lots of them cropping up. One of the more notable ones is Bloodline Champions and we've been putting it through its paces. See how it stacks up against the competition in our latest review.
Cartoony and stylized: Just the way I like my women and video games. This game has a tribal and voodoo feel. As I spent a number of years in Louisiana with the swamp psychics, this game brings back memories. The characters are cartoony in nature. However, the combat is anything but: the fights are blood fueled and fairly intense, but I will get into that later. The aesthetics also aren’t demanding on your machine, letting you coffeeshop trolls who play on your laptops have a fair chance.
Read more of Alex Frieden's Bloodlines Champions: The Official Bloodlines Champions Review.
)
Comments
I like the review. Played this game in beta. While I did like it, I prefer League of Legends or DotA 2.
BLC is Great. It takes my favorite parts of other MoBa's and streamlines it into hardcore arena bloodsport.... and gives it some bad ass aesthetics. The gameplay is fun and quick... I cant seem to get myself back into playing the 50 minute LoL matches compared to the short intense and satisfying 2 minute format of the BLC arena.
Only complaints would be long queues on 5v5 modes, and that i cant have all the heroes at once. I'm really tempted to buy the 30$ bundle.
Definitely give it a try, but only if u have skills and can aim and dodge. ;-)
Very true, playin LoL for 30-50mins just to have someone leave game or screw the whole team over just gets old, and the Champ account is Definetly worth it!.
Great review, even though I think the UI is fine. I play this game alot and its a great game, it really deserves more then just the 1 try and done. It takes a few games to get used to fast paced action and keep up with whats going on. Alot of players turn back to LoL or HoN cause the game is just to hard, but I encourage people to not just turn away after 2 matches and actually try to learn.
This is a great time to start playing also, Season 5 just started today!
Dont forget to refer your friends for ingame bonuses.
5/10 for polish, but never experienced a bug... somethings wrong, and he's not sure what.....
he also thinks they should add a rating system, which the game does already have.......
bad review, imo. Polish should have gotten 9/10.
DOTA2 ftw. I think theyre sending out more betas, signup!
dota2 or HoN they are both the same bad games.. stick to BLC
Been playing this game for a long time now, quit for a few months, and today came back to it. I'm glad to see a review here on MMORPG.com - the game needs it.
It's just one of those games that's GREAT, but lacks advertisement: not enough people play it while it IS an amazingly fun game for the casual player, but it's also a great competitive PvP game, which currently extremely lacks elsewhere. We've had WoW basically fail at it / it died out, so basically all there's out there right now is all the DotA games and its ripoffs, strategy games, and... Bloodline Champions. And that's really the game that -should- imo be drawing loads of people right now, because it's the perfect substitute for all former WoW Arena players, and everyone else who's craving for a competitive PvP game.
I would tend to agree with the above poster. This game, to me anyways, is basically a combination of WoW arena and MOBAs like DotA. On the one hand the perspective is more akin to a MOBA; however, the game plays with WASD. Most things are skillshots and character facing matters, so it rewards you for being able to move well. I have been playing this game on and off for quite a while, and the only reason I don't play it compulsive is that there isn't a big enough community.
Finally a review on MMORPG.com!
I'm playing this game since beta (2010) while awaiting Diablo 3 and I'm still addicted to it. And now Diablo 3's release date has been announced I'm still playing BLC and will continue to play it after D3 got released. I'm even a bit worried that the pvp aspect of D3 will disappoint me because after playing BLC, every other game is feeling slow and long duration with regards to the PVP aspect.
I do have some comments with regards to the review:
As far as I know, only BLC has this kind of gameplay and action so for me the innovation score should be at least a 9. And also the "cons" are not really cons for this game in particular.
If you are talking about a MMORPG game (like WoW) then UI is important. But for BLC it is not, BLC is all about the fast paced action gameplay so who cares about UI. As long as I can aim, shoot and dodge in-game everything else is irrelevance for my gaming experience.
And if you say matches are over to quickly then maybe you should also state how long would you expect them to last. In my opinion when you start to put the duration of the match as a cons then it is obvious clear that you are comparing this game with the kind of LoL and Dota. To be honest, this game is not a Dota rip off and it actually should deserve it own genre. So by comparing them it is like comparing appels with pears. So the duration of the matches are fine and they should not take longer because this is how this game is developed: fast paced action gameplay. And if you want to have a longer battle you can always chose for the CTA or control-point game modes besides the standard arena matches.
Besides these points: Good review! I hope this will give some boost for the player base which we need at the moment. I can still not comprehend why (imo) this brilliant game is not having the large and competitive player base it deserves.
A good review.
This game is amazing and if it were more popular i bet bigger companies would be making copies of it. The gameplay is smooth and takes lot's of individual skill. Most of the games when you lose you lost because you were just plain bad.
Also there is a rating system and lot's of tournaments going on. Don't know how the reviewer missed those?
I curse the internets for getting me to sign up to this site, damn you!.
So yeah i am a BLC player and was directed here by the BLC forums to read this review, i found one thing to be extremely wrong, you say there is a lack of rating system, this is the exact opposite this game is all developed around several ratings combined, there are grade which you earn when you get enough rating in either Standard solo match making though the score is hidden here to discourage people playing in standard ladder instead of rated ladders where all the fun and scoring goes on or in Rated solo match making where you can see your actual score (you need to be level 20 in order to start rated though). Then there is the 2v2 rated ladder, here you make a team with a person and join some 2v2 action in the same arenas, here you can see your score after 10 placement games and you will gain grades according to your team score, in the knowledge base you can keep tight track of when you get the next new grade and the same goes for 3v3 rated ladder where basicly all the fun is in my own opinion, sometimes you meet the best of the best and other times you meet people who just started the game a few days ago which makes it cool to try and see how good you do compared to the best players in the game.
Also about the UI, you say that it is clumsy, i didn't really find any place where you state which part of the UI, so i am guessing it is all of it, the gaming ui is made to be providing minor information, like friends hp, the opposite teams hp, the current score, buff or debuffs on you, your spells and cooldowns on those, and a little map, the map is not made to have you track everything, it is only there to allow you to know how the shape of the map is. All the buffs and debuffs of this game has visuals to it, so you can see it all going on right there in the game the only reason you have buff and debuff icons are to keep track of the timers as some things do something bad in the end of their duration.
If we talk about the menu then i agree that it is new and a bit hard to get used to and sometimes some things about it annoy me a little but once you get to know it then it is fine.
A thing the game needs is a proper team making system where you can see a list of people who are looking for teams, their highest scores, their preferences in bloodlines and stuff like that, finding a team to play with for more than the 10 matches can be tricky throughout the whole game sadly.
EDIT: i forgot to comment on the matches over too quickly con.
Its almost only healers who can heal you from any of the damage you take, this means, if one of the teams does not have a healer on their team then that teams health is basicly going down from the second the match starts because you are going to exchange shots and hits all the time, this means the match will only last that persons hp and that is it. With a healer on your team you will be able to be healed up to 40% of your maximum hp (yep theres a limit to how much you can heal a person) only a bloodline medallion (long time cast, ramping up heal everyone has) can exceed that amount of recovery hp, you rarely at all get to use your bloodline medallion because people will be able to hear the sound rather far away and they will see you are not in their current visual and start doing dary things to get to you.
When you play in the beginning of the game people rarely chose healer and if they do they are most likely to suck at it because you also need to hit with the heals, and healers need to keep doing ccs and throw a little damage out every know and then while healing.
I hope this brings a lot more light in to the whole review of this game i've tried to make it as objective as possible (and told you if it was my own opinion ^^)
i forgot to comment on the matches over too quickly con.
Its almost only healers who can heal you from any of the damage you take, this means, if one of the teams does not have a healer on their team then that teams health is basicly going down from the second the match starts because you are going to exchange shots and hits all the time, this means the match will only last that persons hp and that is it. With a healer on your team you will be able to be healed up to 40% of your maximum hp (yep theres a limit to how much you can heal a person) only a bloodline medallion (long time cast, ramping up heal everyone has) can exceed that amount of recovery hp, you rarely at all get to use your bloodline medallion because people will be able to hear the sound rather far away and they will see you are not in their current visual and start doing dary things to get to you.
When you play in the beginning of the game people rarely chose healer and if they do they are most likely to suck at it because you also need to hit with the heals, and healers need to keep doing ccs and throw a little damage out every know and then while healing.
I hope this brings a lot more light in to the whole review of this game i've tried to make it as objective as possible (and told you if it was my own opinion ^^)
I don't understand why everyone (including the reviewer) is comparing this game to Dota/Hon/LoL.
I've played BLC in the top tier of ranked 3v3 and I have a news flash for you people, this is NOT a MOBA, I have no clue why anyone would think it is. This is a 3v3 Arena PvP game. It is essentially a duplication of WoW arena... does that mean WoW is a MOBA?
There are NO creeps (MOBA), there are NO items to buy (MOBA), there is no map strategy or farming involved (MOBA), there are 3 dudes trying to kill 3 other dudes, period.
I dont think you know what a MOBA is buddy. DoTa, LoL, HoN are all Tower Defense MOBA's.
BLC is Just a MOBA which means if u read the first 2 paragraphs of the review, Multiplayer Online Battle Arena. You dont need creeps or items or map strategy to be a MOBA. It needs to be Multiplayer which it is, Online which it is, Battle Arena and it is most definitely that.
The MOBA genre is defined by 3 games LoL/Hon/Dota. The name MOBA was CREATED so that those types of games have a genre to fit into. If a game is nothing like those 3 games then it is NOT a MOBA.
Comparing it to those games is pure mis-information. People reading about BLC are gonna think, "I like DOTA, I should check this game out." When they have absolutely nothing in common.
so can you in any way upgrade your toons armor or spells or what? is it just about unlocking new toons?what exactly can you buy with the ingame currency you gain by winning matches?
i did play this when it was in beta and, while it was ok for some mindless fun, i didn't really see myself playing it for more then 20 minutes a week. as far as i could tell there was absolutely no character progression.
You can purchase gems that boost various stats. You gain the currency by playing the matches. You also have a talent kind of system (you gain skill points as your account levels up). Certain stats are better for certain characters so you'll want to specialize into a certain character until you can get some alternate gem sets.
LoL the MOBA genre is Defined by YOU as DOTA, LoL, and HoN. But most people actually go by what it really means Multiplayer Online Battle Arena. And i dont know if you realised but the game is simliar to them. You pick a champion and you fight, just because their are not any creeps or towers doesnt make it not a MOBA.
The game is about grading up, anyone can hit level 25 by just playing the game, just like in league anyone can hit 30 by just playing. Thing that sets it apart is the grading system which has more meaning then the level. Grading system basically is your skill level. High grades 20+ usually are high tier players, between 12 and 19 is the average and above average people, and 1-11 is usually new players.
While playing games you get bloodcoins and you can unlock outfits and weapons for your guys, titles and avatars. Majority of your money is spent on new champions and gems and medallions traits which boost your ingame stats a bit and give some nice extra ability's.
this game has no FFA modes right? pure team-based?
---------------------------
Corpus Callosum
---------------------------