I picked up Iron and Blood today from my local EB. Being an avid RPG and
fighting fan, I was hoping to get the best of both worlds. I was,
unfortunately, in for a dissapointment. The storyline is great, typical
D&D stuff, one evil lord finds 8 warriors to attacka vampire who banished
him to a dark dimension, the vampire sees this, and gathers 8 of his own
to fight them. By winning battles, your character get's better and better,
you can also get relics and other artifacts that help you along (double
your attacks, make you invisable, etc) however, using these items is a
different matter. I only figured out how to use the invisibility relic
(square+tri), the others, I was unable to figure out. I didn't need to. On
the default difficulty, I beat the game in half an hour with the bad guys.
Dissapointed, I set the difficulty level on Master (the hardest) and
played with the good guys, I beat the game in 20 minutes. I have no idea
what the special moves are, but by rapidly pressing buttons, I whupped
everyone's ass. This really pisses me off, for it was a gerat idea. If you
save your character to a memory card, you keep his relics and levels, and
you can use him over and over again, it's a great idea, but it is poorly
executed. If I really wanted to, I could play forever with one of the
characters (with whom I perfected most), the wizard, by the way, and
become invincible, I just don't want to. The game has great graphics and
some wonderfull motion capturing, but I tend to compare the gameplay to
Criticom. No, no, no, it isn't that bad, but it had a good idea, and it
simply didn;t work out. If this game had gameplay like Tekken (or even
Toshinden, for that matter) it would be a keeper, unfortunately, it isn't.
Luckily for me I know my EB guy, and he is letting me return it and get
something else (Tecmo Super Bowl). Once I have played that game for a
while, I'll post another review for that one, here is the game in numbers:

Graphics: 8
Sound: 7
Gameplay: 4
Innovation: 10
Replay Value: 6
Using Gameplayers......
Final Rating: 56% Average

I only suggest getting this game if you are a big RPG and fighting fan,
and yet you aren't that good at either, then you'll get some playing time
out of it.

-MightyZug5