Gray is reflected on his sword, while Bud, Tina and Raybrandt can be vaguely seen in the background.
This is a story of a continent called Atranart, where an affluent civilisation prospered. Both the arts of technology and magic where studied as equals, and this enabled the natives to flourish under the disaster struck, and the Gods suddenly disappeared, plunging the paradise world into war and turmoil.
"A new legend is born."
Raging Blades (Raging Bless in Japan) is a High Fantasy-themed Beat 'em Up/Hack and Slash action game by PCCW Japan released for the PlayStation 2.
Set in the Kingdom of Basel in the Continent of Atranart, a sorceror named Diglight has unleashed the forces of chaos across the land, causing widespread havoc and destruction. The wise ruler of Atranart, King Basel the VII, sends his royal knights to investigate, and when news of Diglight selling his soul for unlimited power is uncovered, King Basel immediately organizes a quest for volunteers to seek and defeat Diglight and free Atranart from evil...
Playable Characters
- Gray Bradford, a Knight in Shining Armor armed with a sword who serves as The Hero, who's on a quest to save Atranart under the orders of His Majesty, King Basel the VII;
- Bud Chamberlain, an ax-wielding barbarian warrior on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge after his village was attacked by Diglight's army;
- Raybrandt Lungnal, a wizard and Magic Knight with a dark and troubled mysterious past involving his dabbling in occultic arts, with him being The Atoner at present seeking to defeat the forces of evil with his Magic Staff;
- Tina Iblies, a Bare-Fisted Monk in training, who seeks to defend the kingdom to impress her father, as well as the sole character who uses Good Old Fisticuffs in combat.
Two other characters, an Angel and a Valkyrie, can be unlocked by finishing the game.
Raging Blades contain examples of:
- Animated Armour: One of the many bosses you'll face in the Palace of Divine Being is a giant, floating suit of armour assuming a humanoid form, that repeatedly reforms itself after each hit until you remove all it's health, at which point it breaks apart for good.
- Beam Spam: Diglight in his One-Winged Angel form loves spamming his energy blasts. His tentacles will constantly blast the arena with tendrils of beams, and every now and then Dighlight will fire an energy bolt taller than you into the center of the screen which can remove over half your health if you're hit.
- Big Bad: Diglight the Evil Wizard who commands the forces of chaos invading Atranart, and you must fight your way through his armies and confront him in his quarters, the Palace of Divine Being. He'll shed his human form into a One-Winged Angel monstrosity as a Final Boss.
- Blade Below the Shoulder: The cultists serving the Fallen Angel of Fear in the Tower of Apocalypse stage have curved blades grafted to their right hands, which they'll use to slice and dice. There's also the first boss whose arms are both BFS.
- Boss Rush: The final stage, Palace of Divine Being, with each area containing a previous boss of the game that you'll need to defeat in order to reach Diglight.
- Breath Weapon: The dragon boss and Draconic Humanoid enemies, expectedly, can repeatedly breathe streams of flames as an attack. There's also ghouls in the Cavern of Vortex who breathes a powerful mist that drains your health.
- Carry a Big Stick: The Tower of Apocalypse has armored enemies that swings spiked maces as weapons.
- Crosshair Aware:
- Bosses that cause obstacles to fall from above, like the cyclops and minotaur - when the shadow of a falling obstacle is on you, run!
- The Fallen Angel can summon pillars of flames via pentagrams she magically creates. As soon as a glowing red pentagram is at the floor you're standing on, it's time to dash or jump aside, or be incinerated in seconds.
- Cyclops: A chubby (but acrofatic) cyclops serves as one of the bosses, using a warhammer larger than you as a weapon, where he'll alternate attacks between swinging his hammer or jumping on you to squash you with his guts.
- Damage Sponge: Whoo boy.
- The Dragon boss has only two attacks, spamming his fiery breath from a distance and clawing or biting if you're within range. However, your attacks can only do pitiful amount of damage to it's health bar (that stretches from one end of the screen to another!) and you're unable to stay in place attacking the dragon, since you'll need to dodge aside periodically to avoid it's close-range attacks. The entire battle is a tedious practice of dodging flames, attack from up close, avoid getting clawed while you slash the dragon's hide, rinse and repeat until it's defeated which can take around 5 minutes.
- Diglight's demon form, as expected for a Final Boss, takes forever to defeat. He floats all over the place spamming energy bolts, and sometimes retaliates with a powerful blast that takes up most of the screen, besides carrying a sword coated with demonic energy as a close-range attack. Trying to hit Diglight without getting hurt is difficult enough, and his health is even more durable than the dragon's. At least there's an awesome cutscene after if you kill him.
- David Versus Goliath: With the exception of the Cobra Man, Hel the Ice Witch and the Fallen Angel, most bosses (and some of the Giant Mook enemies) are several times larger than your characters, which you'll fight and defeat throughout the game in order to save Atranart.
- Degraded Boss: One of the earlier bosses is a Mechanical Monster that towers above you and can absorb plenty of hits before going down, besides dealing some serious health damage if it hits you. Said monster re-appears in the Tower of Apocalypse as recurring Giant Mook enemies and a lot easier to beat than the initial encounter.
- Dem Bones: As expected from a medieval-themed game, skeletons are recurring enemies after you're halfway through the game. The Cavern of Vortex have skeletons belonging to some unknown chaotic races, having horns on their skulls and a skeletal tail, while the Tower of Apocalypse have the more traditional human skeleton enemies.
- Draconic Humanoid: Dragon-men with large wings appears as enemies in the Tower of Apocalypse, and can attack you from a distance by breathing fire.
- Dual Wield: The first boss has two BFS in place of arms, while the Minotaur use two axes at once. There is also a power-up that gives you two weapons simultaneously.
- Enemy-Detecting Radar: There's an indicator on the lower corner of the screen that point out directions enemies are approaching and lets you know which area to proceed next.
- Energy Beings: In a few areas, you'll fight sentient orbs of light that electrocutes you if touched. They're somehow vulnerable to your weapons and disperses with a single hit.
- Fallen Angel: The Fallen Angel of Fear on top of the Tower of Apocalypse, where she's now a servant of Diglight and serves as the second-to-last boss of the game.
- Flash Step: By hitting jump while you're running, you can move at borderline Super-Speed (with Speed Stripes!) to avoid enemy attacks. A very useful move in boss battles, especially against Diglight the Final Boss (in order to avoid his constant spamming of energy bolts).
- Foul Flower: The swamp and cavern levels have sentient flowers that can shoot Bullet Seed projectiles at your direction. They're rooted on the ground though and dies in a single hit.
- Giant Space Flea from Nowhere: You fight a Transforming Mecha who can Beam Spam lasers on you from it's Arm Cannon as one of the bosses in the Tower of Apocalypse... in a Medieval Fantasy-themed video game where your enemies are goblins, knights, skeletons, minotaurs, or at the very least adheres to the setting. It isn't a Steampunk-styled robot either, looking more like something from a Mecha game and it's one of the very few bosses that doesn't reappear during the final level's Boss Rush.
- The Goomba: Goblins, who appears in the Forced Tutorial (that takes roughly two minutes to beat) that ends with a fight against a slightly stronger two-headed goblin before leading to it's actual first stage, Castle of Immortal. You'll later encounter entire legions of goblins in the swamp and cavern levels, including their two-headed brethren (this time in far larger numbers) but they're no longer an actual threat at that point.
- Ground Pound: Most of the bosses, including the cyclops and minotaur, have this attack where they smash their weapons into the floor causing rocks and stalagmites to drop all over the arena on you.
- An Ice Person: Hel, the Winter Royal Lady Ice Witch boss, will spam freezing mist that drains your health, as well as summoning icicles from the ground that can skewer you.
- It's All Upstairs From Here: The Tower of Apocalypse have you traversing one floor after another, going upstairs and defeating enemies on every level in order to confront the Fallen Angel of Fear on the top floor.
- King Mook: The Castle of Immortal have you fighting enemies clad in crimson armor who wields gigantic swords on you. After battling dozens of them, you confront the stage's boss, a giant wearing the same variety of crimson armour, with two BFS resembling those used by the lesser armored mooks attached to his hands.
- Magic Staff:
- Raybrandt Lungnal, the Token Wizard of the playable heroes, wields a magical staff as his weapon.
- Hel's powers comes from her icy staff which can fire freezing projectiles, spawn icicles in the boss area capable of hurting you, teleport mooks to assist her or allow her to Teleport Spam all over the place once she's hit.
- Subverted with Diglight, who wields a staff as you confront him. Instead of using the staff as a weapon, Diglight taps it to the ground and triggers his One-Winged Angel transformation into a powerful demon, and the staff is never seen again.
- Multiple Head Case: Two-headed goblins are another recurring enemy, being stronger variants of the common goblin mooks that attacks in increasingly larger numbers as the game proceeds to later stages.
- Ominous Fog: The swamp level is constantly clouded in mist that allows goblins to suddenly sneak up on you.
- Ominous Floating Castle: The first stage, the Castle of Immortal, is a fortress on a floating rock in the clouds.
- Our Dragons Are Different: There's a Red Dragon boss (simply called "Dragon" in-game) at the end of the Cave of Vortex, who resembles more like a bipedal dinosaur than the classical Medieval European dragon, and having extra-long goat horns and tusks on it's cheeks.
- Our Goblins Are Different: Goblin mooks serving the forces of chaos are mostly mindless (compared to the armoured human enemies), and their only weapons appears to be blades grafted into their arms. There's also two-headed goblins as an upgraded version of common goblin foes.
- Our Minotaurs Are Different: One of the bosses of the game is a fearsome chaos minotaur that Dual Wield gigantic battleaxes to attack.
- Shield-Bearing Mook: The Castle of Immortal has recurring chaos warriors armed with sword and shields which provides some slightly higher defense for them.
- Shock and Awe:
- Some enemies are armed with electrified pikes capable of blasting thunderbolts on you from a distance, either a straight beam of blue electrical energy, or a hovering yellow lightning ball that explodes if it hits you.
- You can collect electrical power-ups that stun enemies with each blow.
- Secret Character: Iria the Valkyrie and Alicia the Angel can be unlocked, the former by completing the game and the latter by finishing on Full Attack Mode
- Snake People: The Cobra Assassin is a boss that appears in the Cavern of Vortex. He does have legs however, instead of a serpentine tail like other examples of this trope.
- The Smurfette Principle: Subverted with Tina, the only member of the four default characters who's female. You can unlock two other heroes, Iria the Valkyrie and Alicia the Angel, both which are women.
- Sword Lines: Your weapons (from Gray's sword to Tina's fists) will leave behind glowing energy lines if your power level is at maximum, dealing extra damage with each hit.
- Unique Enemy: Ghouls appears in only one section in the Caverns of Vortex. They're the humanoid mooks that breathes a powerful mist that damages your health, and usually appears alongside large numbers of skeletons, a more common undead-themed opponent.
- Unrealistic Black Hole: The game's final cutscene. Upon defeat, Diglight in his demon form then gets Dragged Off to Hell by a black hole, starting by ripping off his wings and then sucking his body, legs first, with Diglight's upper body desperately trying to claw his way out before he disappears entirely through the vortex.
- Wolverine Claws: The Cobra Assassin attacks you primarily with clawed gauntlets attached to his knuckles, and in fact taunts you by Licking the Blade with his forked tongue before the battle begins.
- The Dark Clouds vanished, and the blaze of sun comes.This eternal story is finally coming to an end...
