Could Naraka: Bladepoint be the surprise challenger to break the battle royale stalemate?

By Alex Spencer

Game Naraka:Bladepoint

Developer 24 Entertainment

Publisher NetEase Games Montréal

Format PC

Origin China

Release August 12

Put aside for a moment the fantasy setting, and the brace of swords and spears – if you want hard proof that Naraka: Bladepoint is doing things differently to most battle royale games, you need look no further than the very beginning of a match. There is an island, yes, and there are 60 players all trying to survive within its ever-shrinking circle, but it’s missing what must be the genre’s single most iconic moment: the drop. There’s no plane or bus to jump from here, just a simple gridded map with players claiming squares like this is some massively multiplayer game of Minesweeper.

Once spots have been picked, and the countdown reaches zero, players are magicked over to the island in a shower of bright petals. Instead of entering from the sky, you all begin the game on the ground. Just don’t expect to stay there for long.

Every piece of scenery on Naraka’s Morus Island – the trees, the cliff faces, the tall slope of its buildings’ Xie Shan roofs – is there to be climbed. Every vertical surface can be run along, clambered up, clung to, every inch providing a potential handhold, a point where you can catch your breath before the next stage of your ascent to the peak. Or you can take the easy option, and simply grapple your way there.

Powered by spools found among the usual colour-coded loot, the grappling hook is perhaps the single most important tool in Naraka’s arsenal. It can grab onto any point and launch you headlong in its direction. This can be used to set up treetop ambushes, to flee when you’re outmatched, or to stay right on the cusp of the circular boundary as it closes in. It can also attach to another player, letting you close the gap instantly and – if you can time it right – land a blow that will knock them off balance, which can be enough to swing the entire fight in your favour.

Once weapons meet, Naraka veers entirely from the battle royale formula, revealing itself as an accomplished action game. Every melee weapon has a horizontal and vertical attack, each of which can be charged up to unleash a more powerful variant. However, these are vulnerable to parrying, which not only creates an opening for your opponent but has a chance of disarming you entirely. It’s a simple rock-paper-scissors foundation for a combat system whose skill ceiling we suspect will be considerably harder to reach than that of the local architecture.