Conqueror's Blade

Game overview

Conqueror's Blade is hybrid blend of medieval MMO gameplay and deep tactical warfare, which places your characters in kingdoms that you'll represent in this feudal age. You'll play as a Warlord, utilizing a chosen class inspired from both Eastern and Western cultures. In its PvE, you'll level up your class, gaining skills and recruiting units for the looming battles ahead. In PvP, expect fun 15 versus 15 siege battles where you and other Warlords fight for regional supremacy that results in better crafting yields, trading opportunities and fame. Conqueror's Blade is a free and unique MMO, but not one without its flaws.

➔ Main points:

• Free to play medieval tactical MMO
• Good choice of classes that makes combat feel unique
• Fast matchmaking ensures no downtime
• Siege battles offers exciting and competitive gameplay

Trailer

Full review

What Is Conqueror's Blade?

Conqueror's Blade by My.com is a new, third person tactical medieval warfare MMO. Players will play as Warlords, and in epic large scale fights, they'll control both themselves and their armies in a bid for supremacy. The game is free to play with optional cash store packs that can be purchased on Steam or the My.com launcher. Your first step is to create your Warlord, and this also means choosing a class. There are plenty of options available. You can be an Eastern inspired Samurai warrior, or Ninja, both have their own respective skill trees that unlocks more skills when you level them up through questing or PvP battles. Otherwise, you can opt for a more Western approach like a traditional Knight or Musketeer. This is one way the game fuses the best influences of a feudal medieval warfare period. Your class choice also determines the type of army units you can recruit. From archers to hoplites, these units only show up during PvP, but the fun part is you can control them alongside your own Warlord in fights. A short tutorial ensues before you're free to pick a starting region, which is important for joining a guild or House much later on.

The MMORPG Gameplay

Once you're out of the tutorial, you'll start to understand what Conqueror's Blade is trying to achieve - a fuse of MMORPG and Total War. You won't start the latter immediately, as the game slowly orientates you into its PvE mode first. Your Warlord will now be exposed to your chosen region's starter town, filled with quests, merchants and crafting stations that will remind you of a typical MMORPG. Quests offers a little bit of story about the area you're in alongside much needed Warlord experience points that helps you level up. This in return gives you Skill Points to spend in your Class Trees, so don't skip them. Unfortunately, questing is also the weak link of Conqueror's Blade, as they're mostly bland and boring. Any currency you earn can be spent at merchants to buy improved weapons and armor, better unit recruitment and other progression items. You'll also come across other players in town so it's a good idea to socialize and build alliances early, in case you're aim is to participate in huge House warfare down the line.

Where The Real Fun Is

While the game takes pride in being the best of both worlds, it's the PvP component of Conqueror's Blade that arguably offers the most fun. The Battle mode opens up very early on for new players and it's the epic 15 versus 15 online siege battles. Your team will be pitted against the other, and when joining quick matches you'll encounter several modes like Capture the Castle. Defenders and Attacker roles are handed out to each team randomly before the match, and the objective of the Attacker will be to breach the castle and capture all points to win. Capturing a point simply means standing in the blue circle until the timer runs out. Defenders have a very straightforward role - stop the Attackers at all costs. Before matches you'll get a chance to set up your loadout, unit selections and equipment. This part is crucial as there's no adjustment mid-match. These epic battles are fun, chaotic and definitely worth experiencing. It's quite a unique gameplay experience in that not only do you have your character to control with all your combat abilities, but you also have three army units at your command that you can use to organize defenses or set up attacking maneuvers. In the late game, territorial war among the Houses of Conqueror's Blade provides a more competitive version of these epic battles with more at stake like resources, so it's definitely something you'll want to master early on. The game's PvP is hands down more enjoyable than its boring PvE, but your mileage will obviously vary.

Player-driven Ecosystem

One key aspect that's important for players in Conqueror's Blade is the community. You can definitely play alone, but accomplishing grand feats like topping the leaderboards will require you to socialize. The game has a guild-ish system called Houses that you can join, depending on your region. This allows all players of a House to acquire territory from winning battles, crafting resources and more. Therefore, it's a no-brainer that the best spoils of war goes to the biggest Houses, and you should consider joining one or making your own if you want a piece of that meta gameplay. For the more solo-player, the PvE questing can sometimes yield a fraction of these crafting rewards too, but it's still nowhere near lucrative.

Pretty Where It Matters

From a graphics standpoint, Conqueror's Blade is a good looking game. The character models are rendered well so that does mean you'll have some nice facial customization options to play with, but that doesn't matter all that much since you won't see it as often. The worlds and environments that battles take place on are also great, which does improve the immersion factor. The downside is definitely the engine it runs on, which means gameplay optimization isn't as good as it should be. Expect the occasional FPS drop in siege battles with stuttering here and there. Oddly enough, this doesn't happen when you're in the open world map doing the MMORPG content like questing. Another potential polarizing area is the character and combat animations. Executing skills looks fine and all, but it feels like it lacks any sort of impact. And in a sea of real players and AI army units, all that glamour is lost in the moment and is often hard to pick out who's hitting who or what killed you.

Conclusion

Is Conqueror's Blade worth playing? Yes for the most part, especially if you enjoy PvP and games like Total War, For Honor or Chivalry. These elements that lets you control your character in combat, on top of your own army to wreak havoc or defend your territory is both exciting and chaotic. The PvE side of the game is not the best, but is still necessary in order to get the best out of your class progression. As far as being a free to play title goes, you won't find any brazen pay to win tactics here which is always a good thing. Give it a shot if you need your tactical medieval PvP fix.

Ready to enter the world of Conqueror's Blade? Click here to play now!

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Review summary

1. What Is Conqueror's Blade?
2. The MMORPG Gameplay
3. Where The Real Fun Is
4. Player-driven Ecosystem
5. Pretty Where It Matters
6. Conclusion