Iron Blade

The year of our Lord 1307, October, Friday the 13th. By order of King Philip IV the Knights Templar are simultaneously arrested all over France on the charges most foul in nature, major part of which is trafficking with daemons and conspiring with them. Even Jacques de Molay, Master of the Knights Templar, was unable to escape his tragic fate. However, a few knights managed, and among them is Damien, player's character. A young protege of Jacques, he will have to go far and beyond in his efforts to uncover the truth behind the destruction of the Templar Order and to exact his revenge on the masterminds behind it.

Iron Blade is basically a third person action game with some RPG elements mixed in like gaining levels, upgrading gear and using skills that this gear provides. The single player campaign is divided into twelve chapters, and absolute majority of them is split into five levels, the final one being a boss fight. During the course of the campaign, Damien will visit various sites in France, Scotland and Hungary, hunting for clues, equipment and resources. Each level can be replayed countless times, the completion reward heavily dependant on the chosen difficulty level - there's four of them - and on the time it takes a player to defeat all the enemies. Certain aspects and features of the game in both single player and multiplayer modes require specific chapters to be completed as well.

Damien's gear consists of armour proper, helmet, gauntlets and boots for defence. He can do a fast, but weak, main hand attack with his sword, deliver an off-hand blow with a heavy weapon, lob off an arrow from his bow, or use his shield to either defend from an attack, or to stun his enemies. Each gear element comes in four rarities and can further be upgraded in nine tiers, each upgrade costing progressively more resources, and advancing a tier on some item requires hours of grinding more often than not. Also each gear element provides the protagonist with ether a passive or an active ability, the latter known as skills, which could be used in combat with a short cooldown period. Some items can be put together to make a set, with every two items from a set activating a certain additional bonus, and all of them come in the Demonic, Heroic and Divine alignments. The player has to keep an eye on that variety to pick the proper items to defeat various human, undead and demonic opponents, with them getting more and more stronger with both game progression and difficulty growth.

Beside the single player campaign, Iron Blade has several kinds of activities like gauntlets, daily challenges, boss hunts, alliances competitions and leader-board ratings with weekly rewards. There's no multiplayer PvP in classical meaning, though. Instead the players raid each other's strongholds. The goal of attacker is to defeat up to three waves of troops which could be garrisoned in a player's citadel. If successful, the player gains ratings and spoils. If not - the defending party gets a rating boost. The players having any control only when they are attacking somebody's fort. Defence happens in complete background without any input possible. The troops can be upgraded and advanced in their tiers as well.

Finally, there is a shop that is full of various power-ups, including the energy, which is necessary to perform any single player or multiplayer action, and which can only be restored via the purchase, challenge completion or waiting for some real time to pass. There's also an option to convert some real world money into the in-game rubies, which can be then used to purchase the strongest power-ups or items.