If the 90s was an era full of platformers and the 00s was all about first person shooters, nowadays it’s the souls-like!

From Software captured lightning in a bottle with the Dark Souls series – now more recently with Elden Ring – and everyone wants a slice of the pie. Lies of P. Mortal Shell. Lords of the Fallen. Remnant 2. And now, kinda, sorta, Blades of Fire.

You’d be forgiven for not having heard of this one. There’s been so many games in the past few months and there’s definitely no shortage of Souls-likes, as we already established. But here’s the first reason this should be on your radar – Mercury Steam.

If that name sounds familiar, it should. They created the wonderful Castlevania: Lords of Shadow games, and more recently, the excellent Metroid Dread and Samus Returns. Their pedigree is healthy and strong and it’s enough that they deserve a chance to do something under their own steam. Geddit?

So now they’re branching out with their own IP and right away you can sense those Lords of Shadow vibes with a hulking, long haired bad-ass who is proficient with a blacksmith’s hammer and can sever limbs on a whim. Aran is a typically brooding, hulking mass of a man and is about as cliche a game hero as you can find, but from there on, things started to get blurry.

Blades of Fire does send some conflicting messaging out of the gate. You can sense that Castlevania feel initially, and there’s this, early PS2-3 era style of game that presents an overly colourful world with broken up dialogue. Which then starts to become a little bit God of War as you’re introduced to a young sidekick.

This offers something quite interesting as this little fella doesn’t really get involved too much in combat, though he can be targeted by your enemies, but he is a constant source of dialogue throughout your adventure, makes notes about everything you fight against so you can learn more about their weaknesses and can even be sent back to camp to craft maps and layouts of areas.

It’s quite a smart, clever approach to adding an additional, constant narrative layer to a game type that often just likes to shroud itself in mystery. There’s quite a rich world here as a result and a chunky amount to unpack, though hilariously the way the game sets up that story is just Aran telling the boy ‘I’m going to the Kingdom, you coming? I’m off to kill the queen.’

So it’s like, oh, ok, then, just another day at the office?!

Blades of Fire’s story isn’t going to win awards, but the way you can gradually learn about its world, the way action is introduced as well as the wider environment is smart and have everything be introduced to the player at a steady pace so it doesn’t become overwhelming. On that, the team should be fully commended.

And here’s another thing to commend – the combat and movement. It’s really fluid. There’s a good bounce-around to it, nice parrying system that works, as well as a variety of weapons which suit different playstyles and even have increased proficiency – and deficiency – against certain enemies. Swords are good all-rounders in general, but often times you’re better off using a spear that has range and more effective tips to poke through armor.

Or fuck it, just use the warhammer and quite literally smash an enemies head off their shoulders. In fact, one time I was in the middle of a fight with an ogre and despite me doing that, it continued to fight, though was throwing hands wildly and missing me the whole time. But that was quite an impressive sight to see, considering the enemy should be dead and buried.

Blades of Fire is certainly gory and graphic. You’re regularly severing limbs – and that’s even encouraged as certain body parts are weaker than others and can bring enemies to their knees, making them exceptionally vulnerable – as well as pounding bodies around and swatting them away from you. Don’t let the vibrant style fool you, this is a violent game, with a great many options at your disposal in combat, and it’s all quite satisfying actually. Especially with the strong attacks, as well as body swipes and strikes. Mixing them up really gives you some good flexibility in battle.

And in true Souls-like esque style, requires patience, timing and keeping a head on a swivel. You might think you’re fighting one enemy, but pretty soon you’ll have others swarming in from the sides to bring you down. There’s also different enemy types fighting you at a time, some at close range, others at far. And then there’s the larger, mini-bosses who even get their own names and pose a greater risk to the player who stops paying attention.

But perhaps most interestingly is rather than dropping souls and losing a way to level yourself up, this time it’s a weapon! On the easier difficulties, this isn’t too much of a worry as when you die, you summon at anvils scattered all over the world, and from there can just craft a new weapon from resources you find in barrels, crates and from dead bodies and chests. But if you’re getting toasted often and haven’t had a chance to build up a selection of materials, you can actually find yourself running to collect a weapon. With no weapon or means to defend yourself at your disposal.

This is an absolutely diabolical addition to a game, that, is close and akin to those naked runs you have against a boss in Souls games. And depending on how far away that weapon is, you might have a world of trouble finding it and have to sprint though any number of hard-hitting mobs to get to it.

Also in true Souls-like fashion, Blades of Fire’s opening hours are arguably its hardest. It’s all about adjustment and once you’re dumped into the game proper and have to find your way through the game’s large scale map to reach your goal, you’re not given a whole lot of guidance. Anvils are like bonfires, there’s large guards and ogres and water elementals wandering around waiting to take you out and the game’s story has been kept vague enough for you to learn more about it.

You’ll bump into random symbols and sigils, find unexpected characters and apparitions and gradually spend a lot of time talking about things you’re not entirely sure are making sense. And then there’s the crafting of weapons which is absolutely going to split players down the middle. Its both an intriguing element of the game that deserves praise but is almost the most infuriating part of this whole experience.

Basically, each weapon is formed of different types of metal, wood, length and adjusting various combinations of these ahead of forging can give you more powerful, effective variations of weapons you’re already wielding. You can also learn about new weapon and armor types by defeating a certain amount of enemy types, which encourages you to grind a little bit, but also not to just bypass enemy types entirely in order to collect a full set.

But here’s where it gets divisive, because Lords of Fire has a forging system whereby you actually channel the overall efficacy of the weapon, giving it a star rating by chiseling away and improving the quality. Each star you earn, gives the weapon one additional repair slot, and once it’s out of stars, the weapon is good as useless once its quality is depleted, unless you find additional resources to help with that.

The chiseling mini game is … hard. Basically, you have to bring bars up and down to the level of a running line through the centre and try to align them as much as possible. You even angle the hammer so that you can fine tune the lines up. It’s a cool idea and gives you a sense of ownership of each weapon you wield – you can even name them what you want – but it is surprisingly difficult to get right. And the tutorialisation around it isn’t great.

I do appreciate what Mercury Steam have tried to do here, though, giving you the chance to shape and sculpt the ultimate weapon, finding the right build and type that suits you, then call it what you want and charge into battle. It’s a really cool approach, considering how important weapons and armors are perceived in this game and setting.

And that’s where I am a bit bewildered, because there’s both this strong element of polish and jank to Blades of Fire. It’s possibly the most polished janky game I’ve played in some time and I actually found the more time I spent with it, the more I enjoyed it. Like really dug it. While at the same time kind of disliking it. Like traversal just feels a bit clunky, the onboarding is a bit rough, and it falls into the trap most Souls-like spin-offs do of just throwing the most difficult challenges at you right out of the gate and not pacing that difficulty.

At its price point, realistically, I think this one is going to struggle. It’s a good game that kind of runs the risk of being forgotten about in a spate of unbelievable games and one of the most competitive landscapes I’ve seen in recent memory. On the other hand, this one deserves the chance to be played and enjoyed because there’s something fundamentally quite strong underneath the hood. This isn’t your typical throwaway spin-off, Mercury Steam have actually tried to do something different here and it shows.

But equally there’s base things here that could have been refined, like traversal of areas and figuring out where to go next or how to move forward. And yet, this also presents a fun, interesting challenge that rewards discovery and provides some fulfilment in exploration. It’s a game that both draws you in and pushes away in equal measure and as such kind of leaves players on a middle ground, a bit baffled by what they’re playing, but digging it enough to want to go further.

Don’t sleep on Blades of Fire. It has some great ideas, striking presentation and an overall good feel to it. I was really drawn in by its world, but it definitely brings negative elements along with that which ultimately diminish and undoes some of that great work.

Verdict

Blades of Fire is an interesting take on a familiar genre, offering some clever ideas, well engineered combat and a vibrant world. There’s challenges with this one, though, like traversal, iffy mini games, and some grind. However this is a mostly enjoyable romp that deserves the chance to be played and appreciated and a game that ultimately presents in a positive light.