Blades of Fire is the latest title from Metroid Dread and Castlevania: Lords of Shadow developer MercurySteam. Playing as a spiritual successor to the latter, you are thrust into a violent, magical world. As a blacksmith wielding a hammer of destiny, you’ll be tasked with forging your weapons, having them break, getting frustrated at it, and having a period of great joy. Interspersed with that is a decent story, full of heavily repeated voice acting, souslike mechanics that ruin the flow of exploration, and, ultimately, a well-crafted adventure that did everything I cannot stand in an action game.
Swordly Sorcery
Blades of Fire’s story begins with a Queen’s army robbing, murdering, and just all around being evil to the inhabitants of the lands. You’re a brooding beefcake with a mysterious past. After an old friend dies to bring you a magical hammer, your journey with a young twinkish man begins. For upwards of 60 hours, you’ll slash, poke, and smash your enemies to dust across various locations.
The game’s length broke me. A few hours in, I was having a decent amount of fun, though the game’s Soulslike trappings were not helping. After 40 hours, I had to throw in the towel. I have never been so frustrated by a game’s lack of respect for my time. Many out there will love this game’s dedication to crafting and grinding through areas over and over again.
After a dozen hours, I couldn’t stand it, but I knew I needed to see as much as possible to give it a fair shot. Blades of Fire is by no means a ‘bad’ game. It’s just made in a way that in antithetical to everything I come to gaming for nowadays. The souls mechanics are mainly a bonfire system where you use an anvil to checkpoint, fast travel, rest up, etc. Whenever you rest, every enemy respawns, and this game has far too many of them.
Raise thy smithing hammer, again, and again, and again…
Blades of Fire focuses on smithing. You get one of the few hammers that helped “Forge the World”. With it, you’ll craft spears, twin daggers, swords, hammers, and more. It’s a decently deep system mostly tied to killing enough enemies to unlock design recipes. You’ll find more while looting out in the world and there is an emphasis on exploring and fighting to progress.
Having enemies that respawn when you rest and weapons that break fairly quickly led to enormous frustration. As you get deeper in, say 15 or so hours, the amount of reforging lightens up. The forge system itself is neat at first. You need to puzzle your way into getting a bunch of points to match the shape of your weapon. The faster you do it, the more times that weapon can be repaired before it breaks. Weapons break whenever they hit anything, and blades become dull fairly quickly. You can hold left on the d-pad to sharpen them up at the cost of their overall durability.
Every enemy type is weak to a damage type, slashing, stabbing, hammering, etc. Your face buttons attack the head, arms, and body. Y goes for the head, X goes for the right arm (your left), B goes for the left arm (your right), and A goes for the body. Depending on the armor or magical protection, those areas will be red (no damage), yellow (light damage), or green (full damage). The system is fun at first and becomes a massive pain early on.
When you attack, much like in a Souls game, your swings can hit a wall and stop mid-animation. If you get too close to a ledge, you can fall off either to your death or with a loss of HP. Neither of these things happens to the computer, and it makes combat incredibly unfair.
When I use a Warhammer to hit a tiny enemy 15 feet back and he hits an invisible wall that I can fall through at any time it is bullshit. When an enemy swings at me through every part of the environment but my sword swing bounces off the tiniest bit of a wall it is also bullshit.
Frustration Overload
This frustration is only made worse by the obtuse level design and weak map system. I swear that a third of my 45 or so hours was spent trying to find where to go. You’ll have the benefit of guides if you play through the game, so I know it’s more of a personal frustration, but the unsung hero of FROM SOFTWARE’s titles is how good their level design is. Things make sense logically throughout them.
In this game, I never knew when a new type of door was going to work because of how close I had to get for the prompt to show up. In a tower early on, the only way forward is randomly hidden behind a desk covered in books, with the prompt to use the ladder hidden until you randomly smash through the table.
There are numerous systems you’ll unlock as you play through, with most requiring you to travel back to the person who can do them. One character you meet will buy your weapons from you after they’ve earned “great renown”. This comes by murdering enemies as long as possible with them. Instead of the regular trash mechanic to gain some resources back, you can sell them to her and get a lot more.
Blades of Fire is full of interesting ideas, and I do think there is an audience that will enjoy its dedication to difficulty. The game has three difficulties: Hard (default), Normal, and Easy. I only tried normal and easy when I had thrown in the towel on playing more, as it disables achievements. I noticed barely any difference, with my character doing no more damage, my weapons still breaking quickly, and enemies doing only slightly less damage to me.
Custom Engines Still Exist!
MercurySteam has used their engine once again for Blades of Fire, and the game looked and ran beautifully on my Xbox Series X. Characters animate well, locations have vibrant colors and solid texture work. The framerate was rock solid at 60fps early on with only a few minor dips in some of the later boss fights where the gorgeous graphical effects were really popping off.
The game’s English dub is high quality, with a decent enough script being well read by the actors. It is failed by how often lines are repeated. In one sequence where I was leading a scaredy-cat of a ghost along a path, he said the same lines at least 200 times over a few hours. Every time I muted the game to gain back my sanity, I’d get attacked from behind and have to put the sound back on.
The music is pleasant, fitting the medieval magic themes of the land and story well. That story went a few places I didn’t expect, but it was not enough to carry me through completing the game. I always try to, but this one broke me. I couldn’t take the frustration of playing it anymore, despite how technically well it was made. There’s a lot of exploration that generally rewards you with pieces to up your stamina and health meters, crafting materials, and more. Finding them was painful because of the respawning enemies’ high number count, and how often your weapons break.
Wrapping Things Up
Blades of Fire is not going to be a game for everyone. It’s beautiful, runs great, and has some design decisions that made me pull my hair out. It’s incredibly long, and I do not think that it benefits the game in any meaningful way.
Review code provided for Xbox Series X|S by the developer’s PR company
Blades of Fire
Played on
Xbox Series X
PROS
- Looks and Runs Great
- Interesting Combat Ideas
- Varied crafting and upgrade paths
CONS
- Doesn’t respect your time
- Weapon durability is too low early on
