Blades and Legendary Blades - Skylander Review

Blades and Legendary Blades – Skylander Review

Blades is a new Air core Skylander making his debut in Skylanders Trap Team . He also has a Legendary variant called Legendary Blades. Blades always dreamed of one day becoming a knight and going on exciting adventures in faraway lands. However, his job was to stay at home and guard the Scalos Castle where the Golden Fear Serpent had been asleep for one hundred years. One night the castle shook and a wave of fear swept over all who were inside. The Golden Fear Serpent had awoken. Blades fought his fear and slowly made his way down into dungeon and descended into the serpent’s chamber. The golden beast grinned at Blades and made him an offer. The serpent promised that he would not harm the kingdom and would go back to sleep for another one hundred years, if Blades agreed to stay in the dungeon forever. Blades realized that the safety of the kingdom was more important than the things he wanted to do, so he agreed to the serpents offer. As soon as he did, the serpent disappeared and the fear lifted from the castle. The serpent had been defeated. It turns out that the only way to defeat the serpent was to face the fear. The news of Blades bravery soon made it to Master Eon who came to see Blades and made him a Skylander.

Blades is a Dragon Skylander who uses the Air element to help him fight. He has shiny sharp blades on both of his wings and a double bladed sword for a tail. You might expect him to shoot blades or other projectiles, but he is mostly a melee character. He wears a dark blue and silver helmet which matches his dark blue scaly body. The helmet also has sharp looking horns, though he has no direct attack that uses them. His chest and underbelly are also covered in silver armor as are the bottom parts of his legs and feet. He looks like the knighted dragon that he always wanted to be and he’s ready for battle. The Legendary version is in the same pose but is colored the typical dark blue and gold. Unfortunately this means that some of his features are harder to see. His helmet is all dark blue, so it’s very hard to notice the design and etchings on the helmet. His blade wings aren’t quite as bad as you can still make out the blades on his wings, but they don’t look as dangerous as they do on the normal Blades where they are silver. Regardless of which character you think looks better, each will contain the same attacks.

Blades’ main attack is his Wing Slice where he swings his wings back and forth to cut at enemies with his sharp bladed wings. He even has a combo where he lashes out with his tail for a Tail Stab. If you use this attack while jumping then he’ll flip and attack as he bashes the ground which will damage many nearby enemies. For a free attack it certainly has a lot of options to do some major damage. His other main attack is called Blade Shards. Blades will shoot several Blade Shards into the ground. Anyone in close proximity will be hit, but those farther away will be out of range. As his only form of a ranged attack, Blades can then Wing Slice the shards in the ground and send them flying across the map. They will damage enemies at a distance, but it’s very hard to aim accurately and they don’t do a lot of damage. An upgrade will bring a third attack to Blades called the Cyclone Swirl. At first this attack isn’t too exciting as the cyclone just spins in place, but it will damage anyone who gets near it. It also lasts for a very long time which can be a huge benefit. After some upgrades though, I believe it becomes one of Blade’s best attacks. The three other basic upgrades all just slightly enhance the three already mentioned attacks. One upgrade increases the Wing Slice Damage, a second upgrade increases the number of Blade Shards and the distance they travel, and the third upgrade allows the Cyclone Swirl to follow Blades around and do extra damage.

For Blades’ upgrade paths, you can either choose to increase the Cyclone Swirl attacks or the Blade Shard Attacks. After trying both of these path’s I much prefer the increase to the Cyclone Swirl attacks in the Wind Wielder upgrade path. The first upgrade in this path allows the Cyclone Swirl to follow Blades more closely. Think of it almost like a force field that damage anyone who comes near it. You can literally just stand in the middle and watch most of the smaller enemies charge you to their death. The second upgrade will add increased damage to enemies caught in the swirl. The last upgrade increases the size of the swirl and it will now deflect enemy projectiles. The ability to deflect projectiles is not a widely used ability among Skylanders, making this upgrade path extremely useful for certain levels. The Shard Shooter upgrade path has upgrades that will randomly add Blade Shards shooting from the Wing Slice attack, increase the damage of the Blade Shards and an ability to make the shards stick to enemies damaging them over time. This sounds pretty good, but in practice we found that the damage over time is very minimal, and it takes a long time to do as much damage as a wing slice or cyclone attack. Most enemies who were hit from a distance, still made it to Blades before they were disposed of. Blades Soul Gem ability also isn’t very exciting. It’s called Instant Swirl Shards. Cyclone Swirls will automatically contain Blade Shards. This does increase the damage output, it’s just not terribly exciting to perform or see in action.

Overall Blades is a decent little Air Skylander to use. If you are a fan of melee attacks and remember to use the Cyclone swirl as protection or secondary attack then Blades will become a valuable character to use. His melee attacks are a little generic, and the more interesting Blade Shard attacks are just too difficult to aim and are too weak to rely on in tense situations. However, the Cyclone Swirl can be very powerful if you choose the Wind Wielder upgrade path. You can also gain the ability to deflect enemy projectiles in that path, which is a rare ability that can be very useful. Blades doesn’t have a lot of power so you won’t want to just go toe to toe with the tougher enemies. You’ll definitely want to use his speed to strike and dodge. Not all of his attacks or upgrades are going to be worth their investment, but the few that do work well make Blades a character worth picking up.

SkylanderNutts gives Blades and Legendary Blades…