Thunderbolt – Skylander Review
Thunderbolt is a new Air Trap Master making his debut in Trap Team. He grew up on the legendary Mount Cloudpierce. He was always extremely strong and very competitive, so when his people held a contest for the legendary Storm Sword, Thunderbolt had to win it. The Storm Sword was a legendary blade with the power to change the seasons in Skylands. For Thunderbolt, this would be a great honor to have. Thunderbolt won the contest and was about to be awarded the sword when a Frost Mage stole it and plunged all of Skylands into a wintery deep-freeze. Thunderbolt took up the chase, riding twin bolts of chained lightning. He quickly caught the mage, reclaimed the sword and restored balance to the weather in Skylands. For his heroic actions, Thunderbolt was made a member of the Trap Team and now uses the Traptanium Storm Sword to fight evil.
When you first look at Thunderbolt, you notice his huge Traptanium sword which is jagged like a bolt of lightning. He also has lightning eyebrows, so besides the fact that he is wielding a huge sword, you can bet that lightning will factor into his attacks. As far as what kind of creature Thunderbolt is, he sort of looks like a giant muscular Mabu who is completely wrapped in storm clouds. His color makes him very ominous like a storm cloud ready to unleash rain and lightning. He is a deep grey color which slowly changes to a light grey at the bottom of his character and at the ends of his arms. He definitely looks like a cloud ready to strike and his sword is his lightning. He has very little armor to speak of, but he does have some dark grey coverings on his head, shoulders and forearms. None of it looks very protective. It seems like Thunderbolt may depend on a good offense to be his good defense.
Thunderbolt’s attacks are exactly what you would expect from looking at his character. His main attack is his Traptanium Thundersword, and it does massive damage as he sweeps it in large arcs around his body. The reach of the sword is so long that it’s almost like having a ranged melee attack. What you probably wouldn’t expect, is that the sword also shoots a bolt of lightning out of it with each swing. So it really is a combination of melee and ranged attacks in one. His secondary attack is not quite as obvious. Thunderbolt can throw storm clouds that rain pain down on enemies. These clouds will stay active for a very long time and any enemy that get’s near it will take damage. If you
can get a storm cloud to stop right on a slow moving enemy, it can do some serious damage before it dissipates. It’s a great attack to use in conjunction with the sword. You might expect Thunderbolt to have some kind of tornado attack, and you would be right. An upgrade will unlock his third attack called Hurricane Pain. Thunderbolt will stop, swing his sword around and create a twister which will suck up enemies, and deal a bit of damage. This attack though is not as useful as the Storm Cloud, since it takes longer to create, leaving Thunderbolt vulnerable to attack, and it doesn’t last nearly as long. Another interesting upgrade allows Thunderbolt to hit the storm clouds with his sword, which adds lighting to the clouds which damages even more enemies near the cloud. The rest of the basic upgrades include enhancing the sword to do more damage, and increasing the twister time and allowing it to suck in clouds.
Thunderbolt has two very different upgrade paths to choose from. The first is for the power enthusiasts and melee fans. It’s called “Power Conductor” and it will improve the Traptanium Thundersword attacks. Each upgrade will unlock a new combo to use as an attack. I’m not a fan of just adding combo attacks, as I never think to use them. Also, the sword was already very powerful, so I opted to take the second path called “I of the Storm” which improves the Lightning attacks. Unfortunately these upgrades are really hard to tell how much they are helping. The first upgrade called Stormier and Stormier will make all lightning attacks have extra range and do extra damage. The second upgrade allows you to charge up storm clouds with the Thundersword for extra power. This sounds almost exactly like the Lightning Clouds upgrade which was a basic upgrade. The last upgrade is called Exploding Clouds. With this upgrade the clouds can be overcharged with lightning and they will explode for maximum damage. At least you can see the effect of this upgrade when the clouds explode. Thunderbolt’s Soul Gem attack is pretty interesting and useful. The only problem with it, is that it’s a little hard to execute. The attack is called Lightning Rain and will call in a large lightning storm that will deal damage to most enemies on the screen. It’s not extremely powerful, but it will weed out the weak enemies and deal damage to all of the rest. On the Xbox you perform the attack by holding the X button while at the same time pressing the B button. This is almost impossible to do with one finger, especially smaller fingers. So to pull off this move you are most likely going to have to hold the controller a different way and use two fingers. It’s going to take some effort to do which means it probably won’t be used often. Maybe on other systems it is easier to pull off as you have to hold both Attack 1 and Attack 2 buttons.
Overall Thunderbolt is an excellent Air Trap Master. Where Gusto was a great ranged Trap Master, Thunderbolt is the king of Melee. His sword attacks are very powerful, and when combined with solid use of the Lightning Clouds, most enemies won’t even get close to Thunderbolt. His defense isn’t great so you may find yourself taking more damage than you should, but his powerful offense will ensure that no one enemy will be able to damage Thunderbolt for long. You can’t go wrong with either Air Trap Master, but you’ll definitely want to choose the one that fits your play-style the best.
SkylanderNutts gives Thunderbolt…
9.0 out of 10
Thunderbolt Video Review
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