Blades of Fire came out of nowhere for me. I had no clue it existed until a few days before launch. I had only heard the name and thought, “What a terrible name for a game. Doesn’t sound very interesting at all.” I saw a couple of screenshots and thought nothing of it. Fast forward to the day of release, and I am offered a review code. “What the hell?” I said to myself, not expecting much. I feel like a bit of an idiot now, because after 25+ hours into Blades of Fire, I realize that I’ve been playing something that is on the verge of greatness… if only it didn’t stumble over itself.
Blades of Fire is a soulslike, sure, but it’s more than that. It does soulslike game design in a way that I haven’t seen previously – it’s also a Metroidvania – but it goes even deeper than that. The big, cool selling point of the game is that you are constantly creating new weapons on a proper blacksmithing table. Due to story reasons, you are given a hammer that can forge any weapon. Your weapons do degrade over time with use, but depending on how high-quality your weapon is, you can repair it more often, and therefore, use it for a longer period. The weapon that you had been using at the moment of your death will be dropped on the floor and be available to grab on your next respawn. It’s like collecting souls in Dark Souls after you die, except in Blades of Fire, you have to run back to collect a weapon you have grown an affinity for. It’s a fun twist on the typical Soulslike formula.
Making weapons is where Blades of Fire shows its creativity. As you fight your way through the world, you’ll encounter many different enemy types who all have different weapons. Some have dual-wielding daggers, some have battle axes, swords, etc. Each time you kill an enemy, you will gain a stack toward unlocking the weapon that they are using. Once you have killed 30 dual-wielding dagger enemies, for example, you will now be able to craft daggers for yourself. Crafting is also a ton of fun to figure out, but so difficult to master. Whenever you approach an anvil in the open world (this game’s bonfire equivalent), you will be able to go to the forge.
The forge is one of the few places in the game where you are truly safe. It’s also where you are able to craft your weapons. Each weapon archetype has a bunch of different variants that you can unlock by playing the game. Polearms, for example, you can build warhammers, battle axes, warpicks, etc. When you select a weapon for the first time, you will be shown an outline that tells you how to hammer the hot steel. You can adjust the force and angle that you are using to hit the steel with. I’ve never made a weapon that had over 4 stars of quality. I do think it’s a little bit harder to use than I would like, but I think there are people out there who probably figured it out in no time. Thankfully, if you want to craft another weapon of a type you’ve already made, you can just auto-craft it with the highest quality you’ve previously reached. That’s usually good enough for me. I seriously think that this design of blacksmithing gameplay is so close to perfect, and I think that there will be many game devs who will flat-out steal this mechanic in the future.
The story is where the game loses me, because I have been doing my best to pay attention, but I have no idea what the overarching story is. I do not know where we are going, or why we have to kill the queen, but I just know we have to kill her because the main character said so. You play as a big, hulking man named Aran, and you’ve got a teen boy who follows you around named Adso. Adso is a way more interesting character than Aran, in my opinion. He seems to be someone who is hungry for knowledge and is constantly journaling and drawing things he sees. You can even send him away whenever you want and then call him back on a whim, if you’d like. Sometimes he’ll need to go back to camp to research something, but you can usually keep him around. You can always talk to him to discuss locations or story beats. Aran, as far as I’m concerned, is just a guy who gets access to a godlike weapon that allows him to forge weapons. He’s not very interesting, but I found both main characters had fantastic voice acting. Even though I don’t find Aran interesting, I do like him. Adso is charming and often makes me laugh with the things he says to Aran. He’s often calling him fat and stupid, which never fails to make me giggle. There are some side characters who get introduced along the way, and while I like them and think their voices are terrific, I do think they talk WAY too much. There is an old ghost that you meet a little later into the journey, and he doesn’t shut up ever. Dude has something to say every 8 seconds or so. He only has so many lines, so they often repeat themselves, and it got so annoying that my girlfriend asked me to turn the voice volume off.
Funny enough, playing the game without any voices made me realize how spectacular the ambient soundscapes and overall music presentation are. The vast majority of the game takes place outdoors in these vast jungle-scapes and cliffsides. I would often just set my controller down and check my phone so that I could listen to the ambient noises. Now and then a boss would piss me off and I would treat myself to the built-in relaxing soundscapes that Blades of Fire has to offer. The soundtrack took me by surprise! There’s a ton of variety in it that I wasn’t expecting when I booted up the game for the first time. Lots of really booming orchestral moments, some quieter vocal moments with really gorgeous voices, and some more upbeat stuff as well. It’s not going to wind up in any of my soundtrack of the year conversations, but I wasn’t expecting all of that from this game.
Where Blades of Fire loses some of its brilliance for me is how it doesn’t feel very consistent. When you are in a one-versus-one fight, the game feels excellent. Rolling away from attacks, perfect parrying and going in for a few hits before retreating back to safety. All that stuff works really well. There are many sections where you are just fighting one to three enemies at once, and that is where the game feels at its best. There are moments where you fight large crowds of enemies who all die in one or two hits, and those also work really well, and make you feel like a total badass. The game starts to get frustrating when you mix the large crowds of enemies with mobs that take 5-6 hits to kill. Oftentimes, these combat sections are mandatory to run through for story progression. I found myself dying over and over again, all while ruining the weapons I spent a lot of resources on. Even if I fought my way successfully through those spots, I would have very little health left and likely used all my healing potions anyway. It got frustrating for me, and this happened way more times than I would like.
I think there’s also an identity crisis happening here. Blades of Fire is extremely similar in look, tone, and gameplay to God of War (2018) and God of War Ragnarok. Badass shredded main character, scrawny and unimposing young boy as your partner. Travelling through a mystical realm, meeting strange characters along the way. Retreading old ground over and over again to get to new places. It all feels extremely familiar to me in a way that almost feels like it’s just copying other games. Again, I think Blades of Fire is great! I’ve had a blast with it, but it doesn’t really hold a candle to the games it is clearly emulating. It does a lot of really cool, unique things, but it kind of loses itself when it is directly compared to literally anything it’s taken inspiration from.
Blades of Fire is a shockingly good experience. I found myself constantly amazed by the more out-there mechanics. Smithing your own weapons is a really, really cool idea. Using weapons you spent high-quality materials on and seeing how far you can take them is a really cool way to evolve this genre that hasn’t seen a ton of evolution recently. However, I do think it’s tough to recommend this game at full price given my issues with it. Blades of Fire is actually a good game. It’s way better than I was ever expecting it to be… I just think it feels a little half-baked. Tons of great ideas, lots of good execution, some baffling design and balance choices. Some areas require a ton of revisiting, and the game does a pretty poor job of explaining that to you, which is often a death sentence for Metroidvania-style games. Blades of Fire is extremely ambitious, and when it works, it soars. It’s a little tough to recommend at full price, but if this ever goes on a big discount, I think it’s a no-brainer. This is the type of game that will eventually hit Playstation Plus, and people will play it and think, “damn… this is pretty good.” If you can get past the awkward hiccups and bumps that the game seems to impose on itself, then I think you’d agree with me that Blades of Fire could one day become a cult classic.
