Bless Unleashed

Bless Unleashed rolled into the house in 2020 as Bandai Namco's attempt to salvage the Bless IP through a free-to-play reboot. We watched it hit 389 peak viewers as players checked out Round 8 Studios' action combat and the enchanting realm of Lumios. It was standard fare for an Asian MMO brought West—pretty, vast, adequate. The PC launch later pulled 1 million downloads in the first week. But maintaining a stable player base proved impossible. Reviews settled at Mixed (63% positive), and the servers eventually closed in 2022. We were there when folks were curious, before the grind and server population issues made it clear that rebooting a poisoned franchise was a losing battle.