Blades of Fire - A Digital Dive Recommendation

I started playing Blades of Fire this weekend, and I've absolutely fallen in love with it. I'm playing on the Xbox Series X, and a 2.0 version is coming out May 14 (free update), and will then be available on Steam.

It was released the same month as Expedition 33 and Tainted Grail: Fall of Avalon, and it got totally overshadowed by both of those, which is a crying shame.

It's from Mercurysteam. They most recently made Metroid Dread, and before that the Castlevania Lords of Shadows games, and the team is made up of people who made Severance: Blade of Darkness. Blades of Fire is a spiritual successor to Blade of Darkness, and has elements of the Metroid and Castlevania games as well.

It's one of the best sword & sorcery style action adventure games I've ever played. I love the simple set up of the narrative - there is an evil queen, and she has to be killed. That's it. Perfect.

The game calls itself and action adventure game, and not an action RPG, and that makes sense. As a matter of fact, it feels like a long lost relic of Xbox 360 and PS3 days, and I mean that as a huge compliment. While playing, I kept thinking of games like Fable, Kingdoms of Amalur, and even Mark of the Kri on PS2.

Your character is kind of a magical blacksmith who is bestowed with a magical smithing hammer, and you have to craft all of the weapons you use. The blacksmithing is super detailed. You earn schematics by defeating enemies, and then you take those to a magical forge, and you get to craft every element of your weapons. The tip, the blade, the hilt, the shaft, the pommel, everything! You also have to hammer the steel into the proper shape. You can choose the mats to use, raising and lowering the stats of the weapon. And after you're done forging, you actually get to name your weapon!

It's amazing.

And once you craft a high quality weapon, you can skip all the smithing mini games, and just quickly craft a weapon based on one you've already made.

Combat is also unique. It's got Souls DNA - slow and methodical with a focus on commitment. You rest at anvils that will refill your health potions and respawn enemies. And it can be challenging, but not overly punishing. However, the combat itself feels more like the Surge games, because positioning and attack direction is crucial. Each of the four face buttons on the controller swing your weapons in a different direction, and enemies will have armor on certain limbs, or their head, or bodies that will be strong or weak against the three main types of damage - slashing, piercing, and blunt. Different weapons will have different stances that will change the type of damage they do!

Takes a while to get into, but once it clicks it becomes so much fun.

There's also almost no hand-holding. Very few quest markers, and the game doesn't really tell you what to do. This can be a blessing and a curse. The level design is amazing, and this is where it feels kind of like a 3D Metroid style game. The exploration feels totally old school like the old Tomb Raider games.

However, traversal is somewhat limited, and you can only interact with the environment through in game prompts. You can't jump or mantle up a ledge whenever you want to.

The environments are varied and interesting, I've read there are over 50 different types of enemies (including humans, monsters, skeletons, elementals, beasts, etc.), and I've heard the game is quite long and epic.

This review from Eurogamer does a great job of examining the game, warts and all, and explains why they loved the game even despite some of its shortcomings.

https://youtu.be/ZjLvrgsvdpI?si=Cv0d2DzciZuhI9af