Rating
The Elder Scrolls: Blades
Take the Elder Scrolls anywhere you go with The Elder Scrolls: Blades. Revealed during the 2018 Bethesda E3 Showcase, Blades is an all-new Elder Scrolls game from Bethesda Game Studios. Launching in winter 2019, Blades will be free-to-play on iPhone, iPad and Android devices.
Details
- Released
- May 12, 2020
- Developer
- Bethesda Game Studios
- Genres
- Action · Role-playing (RPG) · Hack and slash/Beat 'em up · Adventure · Open world
- Publisher
- Bethesda Softworks, Bethesda Game Studios
- Platforms
- Switch
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The Elder Scrolls: Blades Reviews
Professional reviews from gaming critics
While totally different from Elder Scrolls on your console or PC, The Elder Scrolls: Blades is a lot of fun and feels like it belongs… I was mystified by the energy and joy that Elder Scrolls games bring, despite not being able to explore an open world. The Elder Scrolls: Blades has a little something for everyone, even if you’re looking to just past the time.
The Elder Scrolls: Blades is a visually impressive mobile game, and its satisfying combat provides just enough variety to at least partially salvage an otherwise repetitive and lackluster adventure. While technically an Elder Scrolls game, this watered-down version of Tamriel has very little to do with the RPGs it’s based on, and the fun that is here suffers from intrusive microtransactions that bog things down.
The Elder Scrolls is a franchise that I have grown to adore over the years, with Oblivion and Skyrim being two of my favorite games of all time. Yet while playi
I actually do not hate what Bethesda has attempted to do with The Elder Scrolls: Blades. What we have here is many of the base elements you know from the core Elder Scrolls series, boiled down to the basics. Dungeon exploring, talking to NPCs in a town, beating down a variety of monsters, collecting weapons, gold, and materials… It's all here, and it all works as you would expect. This is an Elder Scrolls game in every way, except the iconic open-world. Well, that makes sense for mobile. So why does The Elder Scrolls: Blades still feel so lacking, even with version 1.0?
The Elder Scrolls: Blades is a simple case of a mediocre game on mobile just not holding up on an actual console. Concessions made for mobile play just don’t make sense here. Not to mention when blown up to a TV or even the modest size of the Switch’s screen, Blades is pretty ugly. It's a downright joke when compared to the actual full Elder Scrolls game already available on the platform. Unlike other Bethesda mobile offerings like Fallout Shelter, Blades is a simplification of a complex game rather than a game built with mobile limitations in mind. When you take away the reason for those…
The Elder Scrolls: Blades uses its nature as a mobile-first title as a thin excuse for being a boring, mundane, monotonous experience. It may be free, so there's no point asking if this is worth your money- but is it worth your time? Absolutely not.
This game is a creatively broken, anti-intellectual insult. Bethesda spat in our faces and, because saliva is a kind of “content,” figured that it could monetise it. Sadly, the success that Blades has seen on mobile – and will no doubt translate to success on the Switch as well – just goes to show that when it comes down to it, consumers actually like being spat on, because it means that they are getting content.