What if you combined League of Legends, Totally Accurate Battle Simulator and Dynasty Warriors? Well, you end up with Evolution Studio’s Blood of Steel, a free-to-play MOBA game that’s currently going through closed beta testing at the moment ahead of the January 9th, 2020 release.

The Chinese based subsidiary of YC Games has been working on Blood of Steel for some time, and now they’ve moved forward enough in development to start closed beta testing outside of China.

If you were interested in checking the game out, you can download the CBT demo right now from over on the Steam store page. Don’t worry, the demo is free and there’s no price for entry.

Now there are some good and bad points about the game. I’ll start with the good.

You have different heroes from different eras fighting against one another across giant battlefields. This includes Sparta’s own King Leonides, Guan Yu from the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Joan of Arc, and even Alexander the Great.

You can get an idea of what the encounters are like with the three minute gameplay video below.

Again, the good part is that you have an army at your command. Much like Mount & Blade you’re able to command your troops and even strategically execute formations and defensive positions to guard against incoming volleys or enemy charges.

In one of the gameplay images we see the Spartans turtling to protect themselves against all incoming attacks. So there’s definitely layers to the combat.

Unfortunately, Blood of Steel is super janky.

The combat seems to be like a mish-mash of typical MOBA titles but with a hint of Dynasty Warriors.

Having to take over chokepoints and lead your troops to victory could be a fun venture, but taking over command posts seemed rather confusing and the AI was all over the place.

However, the game still isn’t complete and they have plans on running through the CBT to fix what they can before the January 9th, 2020 release date.

If they can make the combat more refined and less spastic, as well as corral the AI in so that they behave more like soldiers instead of ants tethered to the player, maybe… just maybe Blood of Steel might turn out okay.

Anyway, if you were interested in a thousand-army game like Dynasty Warriors, but you enjoy the strategic elements of a MOBA, you can check out Blood of Steel over on the Steam store page by downloading the demo ahead of the game’s official release on January 9th, 2020.