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[Milesthumbs]

Ascend: Hand of Kul

Ascend is a Free to Play, Hack 'n slash, Action RPG, on the Xbox 360. You play as a Kaos, which is a vessel to carry out the work of the "New Gods" as they are called. That work, however, is quite simple; convert the world to follow your god. It sounds simple, but in reality, it's anything but, but I'll get onto that later.

Gameplay

Now, Ascend, plays silmilarly to any other hack n slash, you go around, kill enimies, and get loot. However, the game does more than that. At the start of the game, you select your alliance, you have a choice of 3; you have the Darkness, which is slow, but hits like a champ. You have the Light, which is more spell based, with powerfull spells, but doesn't hit a hard. And lastly, you have the Void, which is a balance between physical strength and magical strength. Each alliance had different spells, and some alliance specific dungeons, but each one shares the same basic plot.

You aren't stuck with that alliance you chose at the start, however. Because every 5 levels you gain, you can ascend. When you ascend, you lose all of your equipment, but you can pay to keep equipment with souls, the games only currency. When you ascend, you get to essentially remake your character from the start, giving it a name, a look, and equipment(and this is where you can add your items you chose to keep, if you so wish.). Afterwards, you chose your alliance for this life, which will give you different gifts depending who's winning in the crusades. Once you choose, you go back out into the world, with your level bumped back a little.(But enimies scale with you, so you won't be too weak).

The Crusades

The crusades are essentially the major chunk of multiplayer of the game. Your ascended champions now fight for whatever faction you chose when you made them, and will invade the worlds of other players under the control of an AI, and will take villiages and shrines that you control. You can prevent this, however, by going to the shrine/villiage that they're taking, and kill them.(The game will give you the option to teleport directly to them.) And you will gain XP for this. Every so often, depending on how many territories you have, you will be given a bounus of souls for your work in the crusades.

You also have Crusade spells, which, you can send to other players near you. You can only see a "spirit" of that player, and what they are doing, however. Crusade spells come in 2 forms, you have Curses, and Blessings. Curses send enimies to other players, with their element depending on your alliance. Blessings on the other hand, give other players buffs for 30 minutes of play time. These buffs come in the forms of either Magic cooldown boosts, Attack boosts, and XP boosts.

Souls

Souls are your currency for the game, and are used for nearly anything. Buying gear, repairing and upgrading equipment, and purchasing spells and buffs. You can get souls in 2 ways, you can either buy them, or you can earn them. Unlike most games like this, you will never truly NEED to buy souls if you can manage your equipment correctly.

Plot

The plot, while simple on the surface, is actually a very deep(?) one. You play as a Kaos, which is a Vessel of the New Gods, who all want one thing, WORLD DOMINATION. So how do you do this, you may ask. It's pretty simple actually, you have to go from villiage to villiage, converting them to follow your god. But, you have 3 other problems with this, however. You have the other gods, you have the trolls, which are the main enimies of this game. Lastly, you have the main target of the game, The titan, the old god, and the hunter, who goes by the name of Kul. Kul, is a mindless titan, who had been turned this way by the mortal world. But the people worship him as a god, and there is only one way to kill him, you must kill his 5 Apex's. His Apex's, who wish to revive him, were his hunting wolves in life, have been converted into his guardians, and the only way to kill him is to kill them. All of them.

Dominion

While Dominion is essentially a part of the crusades, I put it here because it has many effects outside of the crusades. When you take a villiage, you convert the nearby area to follow your god. When you do this, you will gain a damage and defense boost while within this territory. You also get the support of the humans in the area, which you can use in 3 different ways. You can call them, and have them climb up onto you, and they will fire arrows at any enimies you will be fighting. You can also eat them, which will restore a bit of health, and will give you 4xp.(along with killing any human enemy.) Or, you can have them climb on enemies if they are on the ground, and will deal damage over time to them. However, if a villiage gets taken from you, and you try to take it back, the human villiagers will try and kill you. The same goes for a villiage that hasn't been converted yet.

Final Verdict

Ascend is a fun game, but after you beat the main campaign, all you have left to do is take back any territories that you don't have(Which is still pretty fun), and do the endless dungeon. Also, one last thing before I give the score, I haven't covered the Spells or Buffs, and I have no plan on doing so, but if you want to know about them, you can get the game yourself. So until the game gets PvP, Co-op, and the second continent added(All which have been announced as Coming Soon in game).This game gets an:

8.5/10