X Blades P

While the story still manages to suck, at least the game itself has some promising features, including a combat system that’s slightly better than X-blades’ mediocre attempt. Blades of Time’s combat is simple and straightforward, where one button does Ayumi’s quick attacks and one does her kick attack, a move that launches enemies into the air allowing you to jump up and do air attacks and then finish off with the kick again, sending the enemies back down to the ground in a cartwheel spin of swords. It certainly looks fancy when Ayumi’s doing all these cool looking sword moves, but she only has the same set of moves for the whole game. Finishers can be done when the opponent is close to death, which results in Ayumi jumping at the enemy and stabbing them. Overall, the combat is shallow where you end up just bashing a button to attack.
Along with her twin blades, Ayumi also has access to magical attacks that are activated pressing two buttons in succession. These can freeze opponents, set them ablaze or push them away to give you space. She can also dash to opponents in the air using the lock-on button (like Sonic the Hedgehog)  and hack them to pieces while suspended off the ground. It’s extremely easy to do thanks to the good controller layout. I played the game using the Xbox 360 controller, which the game picked up fine. All you need to do is go to the options and turn on controller support and the interface is changed to the same as the Xbox 360 version that launched earlier in the year.

MINIMUM

Windows 98/2000/ME/XP
Pentium III or AMD Athlon 800MHz Processor
256MB RAM
2GB Hard Disk Space
Nvidia TNT2, GeForce 1, 2 or 3, ATI Radeon 7000, 7200, 7500 or 8500, or Matrox G450 Video Card
DirectX Compatible Sound Card
DirectX 9

MAXIMUM

Windows 7/Vista (32 or 64 bit)
Intel i7 Quad Core 2.8Ghz or AMD equivalent
3GB System RAM (High)
30 GB Hard dDisk Space
nVidia GeForce 9800 GTX / ATI Radeon HD4850 Video Card
Direct X 9.0 compatible supporting Dolby Digital Live
DirectX 9.0 - DirectX 11