Despite being one of the bigger European developers going at the minute, MercurySteam’s back catalogue is pretty light on original games. Their most famous offerings are games like Castlevania: Lords Of Shadow and Metroid Dread, which should give you some idea on their Metroidvania legacy, but Blades Of Fire is their first proper attempt at making an original single-player adventure. The results are good if you’re looking for a soulslike with some of its own original ideas, but the frustrating, stop/start quest design absolutely gets in the way.
Set in a dark fantasy world that doesn’t have giant spiders, so that’s a plus point for originality, Blades Of Fire follows Aran De Lira, a loner who’s thrust into the destiny of queen murder when an old friend delivers him a Forger’s Hammer. In this world, Queen Nerea has cast a spell that’s turned steel to stone, but with the Forger’s Hammer, Aran is able to forge his own steel weapons to fight against the Queen’s soldiers. Also, steel is a gift from the gods and has its own spirit.
Accompanied on his journey by Adso, a child scholar, the two travel throughout the kingdom as they encounter the consequences of the Queen’s actions. Long story short, things are bad all over, and Aran and Adso have to cut their way through creatures, grunts and thaumaturgist abominations in order to reach their goal of the Queen’s castle. As far as chemistry goes, Aran and Adso have a good relationship, with both being genuinely likeable protagonists for the most part. Adso is a bit guilty of repeating voice lines though, and by the end of the game, you might want to strangle him any time you go near a ladder.
The overarching gameplay and level design is where the classic Soulslike inspiration comes in, as you’re exploring different interconnected areas instead of a full open world a la Elden Ring. As you kill enemies and explore, you unlock new paths and shortcuts that’ll make journeying from different Forger’s Anvils less of a chore if you happen to die, and every time you rest at an Anvil, a majority of the enemies will respawn.
Fortunately, Blades of Fire does plenty to distinguish itself from the competition in what became an overcrowded genre a few years back, and most of that innovation comes with the combat. Instead of your bog standard light attack and heavy attack, Blades of Fire has four attack buttons, each corresponding to a different body part on your opponent. Y or Triangle aims for the head, A or X attacks the legs, while X/Square and B/Circle swing from the left and right respectively.
Holding down the button also leads to strong attacks, meaning you always have eight different options at your disposal when attacking. Defensively, you can block and dodge, and blocking at the right time allows you to parry attacks, so if you’ve just finished with Clair Obscur and you’re looking to test yourself a bit more, Blades Of Fire could be a good shout.
What makes the combat mechanics important is that both your terrain and your enemy’s armour or weak spots determine where you should be swinging. Some enemies have huge glowing areas that can be targeted, while there are some bosses that require you to hit the correct area in order to actually deal damage. As for your environment, swinging from the right-hand side when next to a wall will just lead to your weapon bouncing off said wall, along with aiming low when fighting an uphill opponent. You need to study your opponent and environment carefully when playing Blades of Fire.
You also need to make sure you’re holding the right weapon, which is what the Forge is for. As you progress through the game, killing enough of a certain enemy type will allow you to forge that weapon. There are several different weapon families to choose from, such as swords, polearms, spears, twin daggers and more, and five different weapons per family. While the weapon families have their own movesets, each individual weapon has its own abilities, strengths, weaknesses and weapon damage, with piercing, blunt and slashing damage to choose from.
A feature that’s somewhat unique to Blades Of Fire, and something that other games should genuinely consider exploring too, is that certain weapons can support two types of damage. Warhammers would typically only use blunt damage, but players can press RT during the game to switch to the pointy end and deal piercing damage instead. This also works for some swords and spears, and it’ll completely change the actions too. Going back to the environment, using piercing attacks with a greatsword is better in tight corridors than big swing slashing damage.
Actually forging the weapons is a minigame in itself too, as you’ll need to hammer out the molten steel into the correct shape in order to create the best weapon. It’s a simple but novel concept, and infinitely more interesting that just sitting there watching Aron go through the same animation when forging a weapon like most other games do. Fortunately, too, success in this minigame only affects how many times you can repair a weapon when it breaks, instead of how much damage the weapon does, making failure less punishing as a result.
With interesting combat and a wonderful approach to weapon crafting, Blades Of Fire sounds like it should be a slam dunk, but personally, the game’s quest design and upgrade system get in the game’s way more often than not. You’ll often come across points in the story where you’re given a roadblock and are then forced to backtrack through different areas to find one of several macguffins needed to solve your current problem. Backtracking shouldn’t be a surprise given MercurySteam’s pedigree as Metroidvania guys, but backtracking isn’t so much of an option here. It’s just something you’re forced to do multiple times in order to progress the story. It feels like artificial length, like the game’s padding for time by making you do busywork.
The upgrade system is annoying too, as you can increase your health, stamina, the amount of times you can repair certain weapon types, and the efficacy of your health flask, but all of this is done by finding items out there in the environment. There’s no levelling up, no experience to be gained, no armour sets to find to increase your stats. Your survivability in game is determined by how good you are at finding little nooks and crannies, and while a good amount of hidden upgrades is great for a game that encourages exploration, having it all tied to exploration makes combat feel pointless beyond just farming for forging materials. Once you’ve got your good weapons, fighting the regular enemies just feels, again, like busywork, and your time would be better spent just running from A to B.
It’s a shame that the constant running around and the lack of upgrades outside of the items you can find hampers Blades Of Fire, as again, there’s plenty of good ideas here when it comes to the gameplay. The story and characters too are likeable enough to make it worth checking out. Is it the best Soulslike ever made? No, but the new ideas mixed with the Soulslike structure mean that genre fans should be happy.
Xbox Series key provided by PR for this review.
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