The only major bit tonight was finally getting around to trying the Bladestorm demo on the 360, mainly just to free up some disk space. It was taking up a whopping 1.9 gigs of space, and I want at least 6-7 free before trying one of the HD movie rentals.

It’s reminiscent of Dynasty Warriors in that you fight large-scale battles on huge battlefields against numerous enemies, which isn’t all that surprising since it’s by the same studio. Instead of controlling a single legendary Chinese super-warrior though, you’re an unknown mercenary in the era of the 100 Years War between the English and French, and you control squads of other troops in battles since you’re rather ineffective on your own.

There’s some character-building to it, since your effectiveness over different types of squads (swordsmen, cavalry, archers, pikemen, etc.) depends on what books you’ve acquired and how you spend skill points within those books, though you don’t really see a lot of that in the demo.

The actual combat itself was pretty fun — if you take a cavalry squad. Whereas it’s exciting to take your squad of horses and charge and sweep them through enemy ranks, it’s somewhat less interesting to take a squad of swordsmen and watch them kind of get lost in the big blur of battle, and archers require a lot more coordination.

It’s an interesting game, but one I probably won’t have time for. Dynasty Warriors 6 will probably be the one I go to for my big battlefield carnage fix.