Blade & Sorcery: Crystal Hunt Update (VR)

I first covered Blade & Sorcery back in January 2020 and it’s kind of amazing to look back at that post and see how much the game has expanded, improved, and refined in the years since. In July 2020 I talked about the Sorcery Update, which was where the magic system in the game really started to come together, and then in December 2021 I wrote about the Dungeons Update which served as the foundation to the update I’m writing about today – Crystal Hunt.

In that 2021 post I said – ‘There’s now scope to expand the game with some kind of structured progression. I’m not expecting a massively in-depth, narrative driven campaign, but some kind of level system in which you unlock new weapons and spells as you progress through increasingly complex and difficult randomised dungeons, maybe with a ‘boss’ enemy to fight at the end of each?’

And what I expected back in 2021 is pretty much exactly what we got today – a structured ‘campaign’ of sorts in which you fight your way through randomised dungeons, earn money to buy new equipment and collect crystals to unlock and level up your magic.

You begin with nothing more than a rusty old sword but once you clear your first dungeon, you’ll have some loot and a crystal or two to start building your arsenal and expanding your skills. There’s a shop you can travel to where you can purchase new gear – weapons, armour and health items. And there is a story of sorts, told through written texts you can find – although it’s not something you’ll likely care too much about.

Each dungeon has a difficulty rating and different enemy types, but they all utilise a limited pool of hand crafted ‘rooms’ that are then randomly connected to create a ‘new’ layout. It works quite well – but it’s also undeniably repetitive once you’ve worked your way through a dungeon type more than once.

It’s also feels like a bit of a grind. Ideally you want the player to find enough crystals on each run to unlock a new skill, but that’s not always the case. You may need two or even three runs to find enough crystals you need – and difficulty doesn’t seem to increase the loot or crystals you can find. At least, it didn’t seem to for me?

I really think that needs to be tweaked, because given it can take 15-20 minutes to get through a dungeon, it’s not very satisfying to come out of one with just a handful of loot items and a single crystal. There’s also no checkpoints or save system in a dungeon, so you need to finish it in one go. As someone who struggles to find time to play in VR uninterrupted of late, that’s kind of annoying as I’ve already had to cut short some runs and lost all my loot and progress.

There is, however, still a ‘sandbox’ mode in which you can access everything in the game for free with a fantastic selection of customisation options and honestly, that’s probably where I still see myself putting most of my time into Blade & Sorcery. Because as impressive as Crystal Hunt is, it’s not quite as much fun as I had hoped it would be due to the repetition and grind and it’s not really easy to play with my current interruption problems.

That said, I hope to find more time to sink into it in the future, hopefully after a few balancing patches to adust the rate of player progression and ideally some kind of save/checkpoint system. And, overall, Blade & Sorcery remains a must-have VR game in my view, even if just for the sandbox mode.