Damn.
They got me. They really got me.
Worst… Ending… EVER.
Ending spoilers first: This game ends with you losing to the final boss. That’s it. So long, see ya, have fun wherever! The credits roll, the game is over. If you’ve ever run a marathon just to have someone kick you in the teeth and piss in your face when you reached the finish line, then you know what it’s like to finish Blade Dancer
First Dragoneer’s Aria, now this? To steal a line from pro wrestling, if you put an S in front of Hitmaker, you’ll know exactly what I think of the company that made this game. Don’t play it. Not even for free. It’s not worth your time.
And the sad thing is, right until that final battle against the Dark Lord, I was all set to write, well, not a glowing review, but at least a few cautiously positive lines about how Blade Dancer is not as bad as people make it out to be. The game isn’t, anyway. But that ending? Who can I sue for this?
The story goes like this: There’s this Dark Lord who was sealed away 1000 years ago. Lance is the reincarnation of the only guy who could fight against that Dark Lord. Along the way, Lance picks up a girl named Tess who used to be the Dark Lord’s slave and who, for various reasons, cannot disobey his commands. So we go up against him at the end, she leaves the party, and then we layeth the smacketh down on his ass. At the end of the battle he uses his boss hax powers to leave us all with 1HP, then flounces off laughing with Tess in tow. Okay then, now we’ll just go through the final dungeon and rescue Tess and then– Huh? Wait. Why are the credits rolling? No. You can’t mean… This can’t be… NOOOOOOO!
Gwahaha. The end.
Nippon Ichi Software. Hitmaker. Would it have killed you to have added just ONE more dungeon to the game? Or heck, scrap that. Just add one more scene where Tess shakes off his mind control, then we all beat him down, then roll the credits. An extra 15 to 20 minutes, that’s all. Is that so hard? Is that really so much to ask for in exchange for 25 hours and 58 minutes of my life?
That was your one chance to make things right, because it’s not like Blade Dancer is all that good anyway. Most people probably don’t even get that far, because the game is chockful of flaws from start to finish. The biggest one is having to walk everywhere because warp points are few and far between. Another one is the long loading times. A third one is the high random failure rate of crafting. Then there’s the low-quality graphics and the cartoony character designs. Plus the story is as shallow as a plate of air. And we haven’t even gotten into the highly breakable weapons or the great number of non-stackable items when space in your pack is severely limited.
None of that stuff was enough to deter me. In fact I was almost enjoying myself. I liked the characters. Gozen and Felis were likeable filler, and Lance’s irreverent attitude to his mighty destiny was a nice change from the usual somber stuff. “I’m the Blade Dancer? Ya don’t say. So when’s the next fight?” I liked that the NPCs changed their lines as the game went along. I didn’t mind the breakable weapons at all, since it just meant you had to do extra preparation before setting out, and I got the chance to refashion nearly worn-out weapons as newer, stronger ones. All the developers had to do was end the game well and I would have been satisfied.
What hurts all the more is that this isn’t even sequel material. There’s nothing to make a sequel about. You can compare this to Trails in the Sky, which also ended on a cliffhanger. There they evidently took the decision to milk the game early on, so they introduced mysteries right from the start and left some plotlines unresolved at the end. To be honest I still don’t think they have enough material for a sequel, but at least it didn’t come out of nowhere. Blade Dancer has nothing left to achieve (that the player cares to do anyway).
Plus let’s not forget, necessary or not, a sequel to Trails in the Sky did come out. Sure it’s not localized yet, but if you start learning Japanese this very second, you’ll be good enough to import and play it long before it ever comes out in the West. I do hope no one’s holding their breath. Meanwhile, in the almost 6 years since Blade Dancer came out, Nippon Ichi hasn’t even released a post-game drama CD or comic to tell us how it ended. And there’s a “Comics” section on the official site, so it’s not like they didn’t have the chance. Not even a few lines on the game website saying “And this is what happened after that.”
You know what, I’m not going to waste my energy talking about this any more. It’s too early in the year to get riled up like this. Those 25 hours aren’t going to come back just because I whine about them. And Criminal Girls was admittedly excellent, so maybe NIS learned a lesson or two from this fiasco. *sigh* Yeah, all right. Moving on.
LOL
That ending surprised me, at least it’s… unexpected! Well, now I won’t have to play it but somehow you raised my curiosity… There’s a part of me that REALLY likes trolling endings, but not of this kind. More like Drakengard.
Remind me to stay away from Drakengard then. I don’t mind if the ending is brief or shallow or even just “A Winner is You!” but no ending at all? After all that? I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
Nahh, Drakengard has 5 different endings. It’s just that the fifth is really hard to get and it’s a massive trolling XDD the other 4 are good enough.
If this game was made to have a sequel like TitS and NIS didn’t do anything, not even a comic… yeah, it’s really bad.
Well, Drakengard is an action RPG and I tend to avoid those anyway, so I don’t think I have anything to worry about. As for NIS, I’m starting to think they’re a really bad company and Criminal Girls was just a fluke. Blue Roses was meh, I can’t get into Disgaea, and Rhapsody, Dragoneer’s Aria and Blade Dancer were complete disasters. They’re currently 1 for 5.
Just one thing: Drakengard isn’t an action RPG, it’s more like a Dinasty warriors game with some 3rd person shooter parts (the dragon riding). Drakengard 2 is more like an Action RPG, since items exist and you can even buy some weapons! I guess you also tend to avoid that kind of game.
BTW, have you tried My World My Way? You may like it. More or less (I’m speaking of the NDS version).
Finished My World My Way almost exactly one year ago. I wasn’t aware there was any other version apart from the NDS one, but now Wikipedia tells me there was a PSP version as well. Interesting.
THANK YOU for this post!!!! I watched a video on Youtube showcasing this game (the video only had a few thousand views, and my understanding is this was a fairly niche/unpopular game). A few comments on the video mentioned this game had “infamously” bad ending. That really piqued my interest and and I started trying to find a synopsis or review of the story somewhere to read so I could find out about this game’s ending.
I ended up searching through the archives of three different game websites to find their circa-2007 reviews. None of the reviews discussed the endings. I was about to give up when I found this post you made 5 years ago.
And that ending…wow. It’s not even a “bad ending” that is retroactively interesting in how unique, abstract, punishing, or whatever, it is. Some “bad endings” are semi redeemable because of how unconventional or different they are. This ending just sucks. This ending reminds of when a long running manga gets cancelled during the climax of an arc. When that happens often the mangaka won’t try to create a rushed ending to accommodate the story being cancelled. Instead the authors will abruptly end the story with 0 resolution at the end of the last chapter. The story will continue like normal until the last page, where the last panel says “Thanks for reading! Please enjoy my next work at ____ Magazine”. Those endings are horrible, but at least the circumstances for the series ending abruptly like that makes sense. This ending makes NO sense. Why would they do this?! It’s such a poorly planned idea on so many levels.
Ok, I get WHY they thought ending the game like that was a good idea, they wanted to “leave room for a sequel”. But anyone who has ever played even just one game from a mutli-entry JRPG franchise knows that the games are all self-contained, and each respective story in a JRPG series has basically no bearing on other game in the series. I.E. The story in Shining Force I has nothing to do with the story in Shining Force II. No-one feels like there wasn’t enough “narrative room” for Shining Force II to exist, because Shining Force II will create its own story that is new and different from Shining Force I. Likewise, the story of Final Fantasy VI has nothing to do with the story of Final Fantasy VII.
The developers didn’t need to make some bs cheap cliffhanger ending to make people buy FFVII after they played FFVI . People bought FFVII because the studio established they made great RPGs. Imagine if a Blade Dancer 2 actually came out, and it completed the story from Blade Dancer I. This would be such an insulting way to try and get people to buy Blade Dancer II. They would be selling an unfinished product (Blade Dancer I) with the intention of tricking the consumer into caring about the story and characters, and needing to see how the story ends (in Blade Dancer II). It’s treating your fans like crap, having 0 respect for the people who buy your games. I’m mad about this stupid ending even though I’ve only spent an hour researching this mediocre game and not 30+ hours like you spent playing it. I can only imagine what that must be like….
I’m so glad my spoiler helped save someone from the shock and disappointment I felt when I played it. An ending like this should not be allowed to exist. Believe me, there was absolutely no room for a sequel in Blade Dancer. There were no great mysteries, no grand world building, no hints of a true boss, nothing. It was just an ordinary RPG, and a fairly decent one at that. Why oh why didn’t they just finish the game properly?! Urgh
I thought I was over it, but I guess I’m still a little bit mad. Thank you for reading and taking the time to comment!
I agree. This has to be the worst ending of a videogame I have ever seen and Im sorry that you wasted your time. This kind of reminds me of the ending of Crimson gem saga but to be fair at least that game was good and they were hinting to a sequel by the end of the game, but it still kind of ruined the experience for me.
Crimson Gem Saga had a bad end? I’ve been meaning to play it since I got a PSP years ago, now I know not to bother so thanks for the heads up!