It’s hard not to love The Elder Scrolls series. I’ve been playing them since Daggerfall myself and I’ve rarely been disappointed. I probably sank over 150 hours into Skyrim alone, and that’s before the patches came out and giants couldn’t send you flying into the atmosphere. Yeah, they’re buggy games. Yeah, some of the sidequests are weak. But there’s a magic about them that totally justifies my friend Liana’s obsession with Todd Howard. And he’s done it again. All of the sudden the other day, there was an announcement that a new Elder Scrolls game was in early access. No warning. It was just there, available for my phone. That’s right, the latest release in the Elder Scrolls series is a free to play phone game. And it’s actually fun!
The Elder Scrolls: Blades tosses you down in the middle of the wilderness as you make your way back to your burning hometown. Once the initial story settles down, you find yourself talking to the townsfolk, taking jobs and missions, and generally lending a helping hand. It sounds boring, but it’s actually quite fun! Bethesda has managed to shine where so many other phone games have failed utterly.
I’ve played a lot of phone games, and they tend to have a common theme. Play for a while and they become tedious. Rote battles, grind after grind, and no originality. Shin Megami Tensei Liberation DX2 managed to have a solid story at least, and Final Fantasy Brave Exvius was outright spectacular in terms of storyline (Hear that Squeenix? PUT OUT A RELEASE OF THE STORY FOR BRAVE EXVUIS AS A STANDARD RPG!!! DO IT!). But most of these games follow a very similar path. Log on daily, collect your daily rewards, randomly hope for draws of more characters/demons/whatever to help, never get enough fast enough, buy our digital loot boxes to get more with no guarantees. Many of my friends play these games religiously and often spend a fair amount of money.
I just gave up on the new Langrisser phone game after less than a month when I realized that there was virtually no strategy whatsoever involved and you could literally just press a button and have the AI complete all your battles. The Fire Emblem mobile game fared no better, with weak storylines and strategy. Not so with The Elder Scrolls: Blades (at least so far). Not only are you running a full 3D environment in first person mode with a touch controlled camera, but you’re wandering through dungeons just like the main Elder Scrolls games (though not as detailed of course) and fighting enemies one on one in real time! The game looks great too, although you’ll definitely need a premium superphone with a decent sized screen to run it properly.
There’s no open world here like Skyrim or Oblivion, but you’re still able to wander about town talking to people and rebuilding your ravaged town as you scrounge supplies in mission after mission. On one of your first quests, you rebuild the smithy and can then forge weapons and armor depending on your level and supplies. Select a mission and you’re transported to a dungeon where you fight until you complete the mission or give up. Combat is easy, too. Simply hold your finger down on the screen and let go to attack, or tap a spell or ability icon. Do it just right and get criticals and combos too. But how is Bethesda supposed to make any money on this game?
Well, in addition to all the gameplay, you can occasionally earn gems. Gems allow you to buy all sorts of things, including treasure chests, an integral part of Blades’ micro-transaction structure. Chests are all over the place. Wooden ones take 5 seconds to open, Silver ones take 3 hours real time, and so on. Pay some gems though, and you can open them immediately. Same goes for jobs….pay gems, skip the wait. They’re the currency you don’t need but you always want. Bethesda sells packs of gems on their store, some ranging into the $100 range with the game still in early access. I of course chose to wait because I’m cheap as hell and want to see what the game is like, but I can see why people would invest a few bucks to speed up the process. Some of the fighting can be a bit tedious, especially with the jobs available in the Job section, and if you start a chest on its opening process, you can’t open any others while you’re waiting. If you continue to play, you’ll max out your chest storage (which can be conveniently expanded with gems) and you’ll be out of luck with no room to spare if you go on more missions.
Ultimately though, the profit mechanics aren’t anywhere near as bad as I’ve seen in other free to play phone games. In addition, you’re getting some of the Elder Scrolls lore and gameplay on your phone while you wait for the next big game in the series . The gameplay mechanics are pretty neat too. The game reformats the screen depending on orientation, so you can play in either portrait or landscape mode with a simple device rotation. Personally I found the portrait mode layout a bit friendlier but the landscape mode definitely provided the best scenery while I played. Combat consists of simply holding your finger on the screen and releasing, and spells and special abilities are simply a tap of a diamond icon on either side of the screen. You can aim too, and some enemies can only be hit if you time your strikes correctly (Curse you, venomous skeever, curse you!). You have a skill tree, a perk tree, and a spell tree to expand your character with, and there are literally hundreds of pieces of armor, weapons, and accessories to choose from and unlock. Most levels have secrets hiding in them too, and overall, the world of The Elder Scrolls: Blades feels extremely well realized for a phone game.
If you’re tired of the same old phone games and want something new, The Elder Scrolls: Blades might be just what the doctor ordered…something fresh and new that ties in nicely with one of the best gaming franchises on the planet. Sure, the chest mechanic (and by extension the gems in general) is irritating and demands a certain amount of patience, but honestly, if you’re just picking up and playing a mission here and there, who cares? It’s fun! That’s all I can really ask for in a free-to-play mobile game, so I’ll at least give it a go! Just don’t expect to ever open all your chests unless you spend some cash or take long breaks from the game, and keep in mind that the current iteration of the game is most definitely still in early access and being constantly tweaked! Now go clean out that skeever nest for me, okay? I’m tired of those filthy rats…
This review was written based on a publicly available early access version of The Elder Scrolls: Blades played on a Sony Xperia XZ Premium running Android Pie.