The Elder Scrolls: Blades (iOS, Android)

The Elder Scrolls: Blades (iOS, Android)
Developer: Bethesda
Publisher: Bethesda
Released: March 27, 2019 (Early Access)
MSRP: Free-to-play w/ microtransactions

The Elder Scrolls: Blades casts players in the role of a member of the Blades, a group of highly trained warriors once employed by the Empire. At the start of the game, the Blades is no more and your created character returns to their hometown to find it smoldering. Many of its residents have fled or been captured, and as the most skilled warrior around, it’s up to you to rebuild the city and discover just why it was targeted in the first place.

Blades is Bethesda’s interpretation of what The Elder Scrolls should look like as a free-to-play mobile game and it’s important to know what that means. This isn’t an open-world game with a vast landscape to explore and the relative freedom to proceed how you choose. Rather, it’s a largely structured experience centered on rebuilding your destroyed city. To rebuild buildings and other landmarks, you need supplies and to get those supplies you need to embark on jobs and quests rescuing captured townsfolk and gathering loot. The more people you save, the more quests you unlock and the more buildings you can construct. It’s a solid set-up as long as you can deal with the limitations of the format.

The primary limitation is found in the various timers the game holds. Blades doesn’t limit how much you can play – and you can play ad-infinitum in the Abyss – but it does limit how often you can be rewarded for your efforts. At the end of each job or quest, you’ll be given a chest. Each type of chest has a timer attached to it for how long it’ll take to open. Wooden chests, which are routinely found throughout the linear dungeons and wooded areas you explore on jobs and quests, take just five seconds to open. That timer drastically increases when you go to unlock silver and golden chests, which take three and six hours respectively. You cannot open more than one chest at a time unless you spend gems.