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X-Blades will, unquestionably, be a game driven by its story and heroine - a curvaceous anime beauty named Ayumi. Ayumi is an artifact hunter, but her motivation is more materialistic than archeological, as she tends to sell what she find to the highest bidder. In the course of her normal history-hocking, Ayumi stumbles upon a grand plot that sets her up to save the world, despite her standard M.O. of profit over all.

X-Bades is intended as a fast-paced hack and slasher, with elements of RPG gaming to lend depth to the action. Death and destruction will be dealt by gun and by blade, coincidentally from the same weapons (somewhat logically named "gun-blades."), as well as spells and magic effects that enhance the aformentioned weapons. There are some defensively oriented game mechanics, generally in the form of avoidance spells and maneuvers, but the order of the day is mostly that a good defense is best represented by a great offense.

The guns and blades are very straightforward: guns shoot things, and blades hack up things that get close to you. The spells, however, are a bit more diverse, and follow a variety of spell trees, not all of which will be available to players depending on how they spend their "levelling" skill points. Someone investing deep into certain trees will get the ending, more powerful spells, while someone who dips lightly into a number of trees will have a wider variety of spells that aren't as effective in their given situations as the specialist spells. In either case, you'll use your magic abilities to augment you hacking, slashing, and shooting - and the end result isn't a good one for Joe Average Monster. Accepting that all spells help you towards your inevitable goalset, X-Blades will have generic "Dark" and "Light" spell paths, which will have differing effects on the same sets of spell trees. Choices between the two will be significant towards plot development, but we're not exactly sure HOW at this point in the game's revelations. All we know is that Ayumi can be savior as well as destroyer.

In terms of the nitty-gritty combat mechanics, you'll have active enemy spawn points, which may be locations or units. Identifying and destroying these will be big parts of each level, as not doing so results in a constant flood of annoying "peon" type enemy figures. Recompense for their annoying nature is found in the form of experience, which lends a light RPG element to X-Blades, where you buy up the aforementioned spells and spell-flavors with souls that you collect from the bodies of your foes. Some skill awards (via souls) are gained on the fly when levelling up, while others take an act of spending to achieve. The major way to GAIN these experience souls is by killing enemies in rapid succession, and building up rage and combo points. These can be unleashed in devasating attacks and powerups that further enhance your killing abilities, leading to a happy feedback loop of "stuff to get."

All in all, X-Blades appears to be a competent action slasher, that seems to be well aware of the various genre conventions that it needs to incorporate. Beyond that, it doesn't appear that much INSPIRED is going on, aside from the outfit that Ayumi wears - which she is often in danger of NOT wearing. As such, we can hope that the story, background, and character development of a greedy artifact-hunter into a world savior (or destroyer) will drive the game into the realm that it can potentially exist. I'm sure I'll see what happens along with everyone else!