X-Blades

X-Blades is a hack-and-slash-style action-adventure game in which the player must fight monsters using a pair of gun blades and spells through indoor and outdoor levels in order to progress. Monsters are encountered in both preset numbers and in areas with Monster Generators which spawn both standard and boss opponents until they are destroyed. Power-ups and coin fragments which grant different upgrades are hidden throughout the game. Power-ups include combat techniques, magic, weapon enhancements, and teleportation.

Also earned throughout the game are souls, that function as experience points which can be converted into skills. The skills range from Area of Effect attacks to weapon enchantments. These skills are of either "light" or "dark" alignment and the use of them has an effect on whether the player receives the "light" or "dark" ending.

Long, long time ago, in an age that only the gods can now remember, the universe was ruled by two powerful beings that were revered and worshipped by all races– but the brotherly relationship between these two creatures was always in question from the beginning of time, simply because no one knew who the real number 1 was. While the Enlightened was on the side of good, he was helping his people in anyway he could. The Dark One was quite the opposite, full of hate and devilish works– and so the never-ending battle between the Enlightened and the Dark One persisted for centuries. Humans suffered terribly due to this constant combat between the two– combat which shook the universe to its very core.

Finally, thanks to a trick, the Enlightened succeeded in banishing the divine power of the Dark One, imprisoning it in an Artifact– but in doing so, the Enlightened lost his own divine powers, because the two divine beings were inseparably linked to one another. This is how two Artifacts came to be hidden in a huge Temple – and how the Enlightened prevented the downfall of the entire universe. However, these two artifacts contain absolute power – both good and evil. Any human being who comes in contact with the powerful stones will be horribly cursed – and the power of darkness will once again be awakened.

X-Blades was originally published under the name Oniblade as a PC exclusive on 23 November 2007 in Russia by 1C Publishing. Oniblade was developed by Gaijin Entertainment as the first action/anime-style game in Russia and uses the Dagor Engine. In February 2008, SouthPeak Games announced that X-Blades would also be released on seventh-gen consoles in late 2008.

James Seaman, managing director at Topware Interactive, was quoted as saying "Our goal was to create stylistic characters and artwork and to mix that bombastic visual style with lightning fast action. The result is a killer title that gamers and animation fans won't be able to put down."

Electronic Gaming Monthly called its "lead character, Ayumi...a typical sassy, scantily clad, smart-talking bad girl, who proves once and for all that a bikini-thong combination is suitable armor for taking on hordes of...just about anything." GameDaily featured Ayumi as one of their "Almost Famous Hotties" pleased with her artistic depiction yet dissatisfied with both the game and her personality.

X-Blades received "mixed" reviews on all platforms according to the review aggregation website Metacritic. IGN reviewer Nate Ahearn was displeased with the repetitive hack-and-slash gameplay, mediocre special effects, annoying controls, and weak AI. G4's X-Play said of the PC version, "We can only recommend this to people who are interested in quitting videogames completely." It also received one of X-Play's "Golden Mullet Awards" as one of the worst games of the year, that same year, in the category of game that "sounds like X-play when you say it fast".