Booming Games’ Conqueror’s Blade is a game that’s most impressive when you consider its colossal, nearly dizzying scale. Though you’ll spend much of the game besieging and defending fiefs, the end of every combat encounter returns you to the game’s sprawling open world, a living, breathing continent replete with hundreds of cities and villages to explore.
It’s a game of such enormous depth that even its developers can’t quite wrap their heads around it. “We have no idea what genre this game is supposed to be,” Booming Games Founder & CEO Xi Wang said. “We often joke that we have to define a new genre for this game.”
Ultimately, team siege combat is the heart and soul of Conqueror’s Blade. Fourteen defending warlords face off against 15 attacking warlords in epic medieval battles over territory.
For starters, each warlord not only chooses their own weapon class but their own unit, as well. These units range from archers to pikemen to horsemen and can contain as many as 40 troops. The sheer volume of bodies on the battlefield adds a sense of gravity to every combat encounter. Even amidst the chaotic din of war, cinematic moments occur quite often.
For example, let’s say you’re on the defending team. Despite your valiant efforts to keep the enemy siege towers at bay, the enemy team adapts and decides to opt for a front-door approach. They sic a battering ram on the main entrance and manages to create an opening. That moment when you witness the enemy troops spill into your fortress is at once terrifying and breathtaking. It’s how you know some serious stuff is about to happen — it’s the thrill of the battle.
After the fight finishes, you return to Conqueror Blade’s open world. This is where the game reveals its impressive scope. Sure, there are plenty of ways to develop your character and prepare for more battles. But you can also wander freely within and between cities and towns, interacting with their denizens or enjoying the open fields.
Furthermore, Conqueror Blade’s greater metagame is structured around Territory Wars. Joining a House or Alliance with other players allows you to participate in larger struggles for land. This device extends the game far beyond individual battles and elevates it to a shared-world experience of mind-blowing proportions. Suddenly, your global map looks like it’s ripe with potential targets.
Conqueror’s Blade wasn’t originally intended to be this massive. Xi explained that the game evolved over time, slowly adopting more MMO elements. “We started from a very simple combat demo, but we gradually, gradually added more and more elements into the game,” he said. “It took us years to make the whole thing happen.”
Booming Games didn’t want to stop at Asian medieval warfare; they wanted to represent the history of medieval warfare at a global scale. “The most interesting thing about Conqueror's Blade is that when we do the research, we have to research both Western and Eastern history and cultures,” Xi said. As a result, the game contains a diverse roster of weapons, units, and military technology borrowed from many different countries. It’s an entire world of war packed into a single continent.
Booming Games was careful to make sure that all of these game elements stay balanced, even if the dynamics between them might create historical anachronisms. For instance, while Spanish musketeers used light armor, musketeers from Japan and China tended to wear little to no armor at all. To account for this, Booming Games granted the latter a faster shooting rate to make up the difference. “We face a lot of these kinds of design challenges, but we try our best to find the perfect balance among them,” Xi said.
It’s difficult to account for all that Conqueror’s Blade has to offer. There are PvE scenarios to tackle, customizable campgrounds, and economic activities like trading and crafting. It’s free-to-play, so there’s no excuse not to try your hand at helping manage your own fiefdom. Whether you’re looking to join a House or start your own empire from the ground up, the glory of conquest is only a few clicks away.
Conqueror’s Blade is available for PC today.
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