XJT

I came back to this game after many years and was sorry I did. The story lines are great as always but the final eternal throne quest vs. Vaylin is impossible with no hope of completing without a group. Problem is that no one plays this game anymore and you can't get help for the final quest. I'm severely disappointed and feel stupid for ever coming back. Stay away from this broken piece of junk.

The new player experience was actually quite good. I was a Kung-Fu master which requires a massive amount of button pushing and micro management, but the game provided many nice features for the new player. Unfortunately, the wheels come off when you hit level 50 and start HM leveling. You are thrown into the deep end of the pool with players who have months and months worth more of levels and huge stats compared to you. Be prepared to be berated by an elitist player base that will literally beg you to leave group content, so they can complete a daily 5 minutes faster. The player to player harassment is the worst I've seen in any game - SWG, LOTRO, GW2, Aion, D&D - none of those player communities come close the venom spewed by people who play Blade and Soul

This game requires hundreds if not thousands of dollars to play if you want to enjoy all the content. it is the Pay To Win model taken to its most extreme point. The game store abounds with misleading advertising for new players. you can spend $50 dollars in a heart beat and not received a single card. They never advertise how many shards are required to unlock a character - they make you hunt for the information. That is fine for veterans, but for new players that don't understand the rip-off scheme, it is absolutely maddening.

There are some really great parts of this game. The intro quests are engaging and demonstrate how the early game works. Unfortunately, the fun dies after a few hours when confusion sets in. it is a First person shooter with a bit of RP thrown in, but the weapons system is incomprehensible and your inventory is always full. I have yet to figure out how to equip a mod after several weeks of gameplay. if you have some friends to help out, the game can be really fun, but if you try to go it alone.....good luck

The game is HIGHLY dependent on having other people on-line. If you enjoy waiting 5-10 minutes to start a quest, then this is the game for you. The actual space combat can't compare to SWOTR or even SWG for that matter (so many years ago), but it isn't bad at all. Open space is rather confusing and makes little sense, but the game excels at the PVE quests - they are fairly easy to understand and survive. After a few hours, things make more sense - like how to fix your ship for example - but the those first 2 or 3 hours aren't much fun at a..

The game is quite bad, and I was pretty surprised for an old title like this. Initial leveling is fast and then it just bogs down and gets aweful. I couldn't figure out where I was supposed to go to grind and level - so I either ended up killing mobs over my head and then dying or killing trash for no xp. So many people wrote guides on where to go, but they are obsolete after 1-2 years. I gave the game a full 2 weeks, but it was just to horrible to carry on any more. I can't imagine how miserable end game must be. Good luck to anyone to tries to play this horrid game.

Turbine has launched one failed expansion after another and Helm's deep is by far the worst of the lot. The introduction of Big Battles is far from Epic and is just another add-on time sink. The developers have been very clear that they no longer care about PVP and especially don't care about Raids. That means we are left with nothing but a solo grind. Not even sure why they call it an MMO anymore. The updates since the expansion are even worse with addition of yet another solo grind armor system called essences. It just gets worse and worse.

The game crashes 80% of the time when I go to the map screen. Some of the basics of getting around are made much more difficult than needed. When people have to ask in chat how to change their empire name, you know the game isn't user friendly. It is also to easy pray on noobs and pound them to death, which means they usually give up pretty fast