About Blade and Soul

Blade & Soul is a free-to-play, action combat MMORPG from NCSoft that initially released in 2012 in Korea but finally saw a Western release in January 2016. Blade & Soul is a martial arts inspired MMORPG that tasks players with learning action combat based combination attacks for each class. Currently, there are 7 classes available in the game; Assassin, Blade Master, Destroyer, Force Master, Kung-Fu Master, Summoner, and Blade Dancer. New players will want to research the classes prior to starting a new character since classes fall under various race restrictions when choosing from one of the game’s four currently available races.

Blade & Soul’s most notable feature is perhaps the game’s combat. Skills are learned as you level up and are displayed on hotbars in the traditional MMORPG style, but the actual implementation of those skills differs from most other games in the genre. While you will work with “rotations” in combat, it is perhaps better to think of these rotations in the form of “combinations” as each class will have a plethora of skills that can be combined in succession to perform very well animated combination attacks. These combinations may only be two or three buttons or they could be MUCH longer. Unlike other action combat MMOs though, Blade & Soul isn’t going to spoon feed you the combinations by hitting one key to trigger the next strike in the combination. Instead, Blade & Soul requires you to actually learn not only the combination itself, but each ability’s timing, and the required position to execute certain parts of the combination (Your hot bar actually can change based on position. i.e. being knocked down may give you access to abilities that cannot be used while standing). Learning these combination, aiming them appropriately, and reacting to incoming attacks are the key to the game’s fast paced and sometimes complex combat. If you liked TERA’s combat, you’ll probably enjoy Blade & Soul’s quite a bit.