It’s a good thing, then, that the Assassin’s skills and the BnS NEO Divine Gems ramping up of combat in general is still enough to keep me pushing through because there really isn’t much to Blade & Soul NEO otherwise. Fighting might be its only sauce, but hot damn is it a tangy sauce.
I actually have an option available to me. For the most part I’ve been playing alone in a crowd, bar incessant party invites from bot accounts over and over enough that I had to turn on auto-decline. But I’m now at a point when I can get into a dungeon run or two provided I can find a party to join at the times that I’m able to play this game, anyway.
There were perfect counters, dodging, grappling, and air juggling. It was a game I would become obsessed with, waiting for each new trailer to appear in a grainy 720p. But excitement came and went, as Blade & Soul eventually found a Western release in 2016, four years after its debut in Korea. It didn’t arrive with a bang, but instead a whimper. And while NCSOFT pushed for an active PvP scene, it didn’t come to fruition.
Plagued with bots, gold-sellers, and an obvious favoritism towards specific races and classes, Blade & Soul clung on. However, in January 2025, NC America announced it was bringing Blade & Soul Neo, a revamp of the MMORPG made in Unreal Engine 4, to the West. And given its status as a “modern reinterpretation” of this once promising MMORPG, it’s more of a remaster, carrying over almost all of the issues from its original debut in the West.
Blade & Soul Neo is exactly what it claims to be. Remade in Unreal Engine 4, it’s more or less an exact replica of the game as it was released in 2016. There are a few things here and there that have changed such as a new user interface that is a bit easier to manage, but still has that cheap, simplistic shine of the modern Korean MMORPG, and a few adjustments to how cheap BnS NEO Divine Gems players can acquire specific items.