Blades of Fire

2025-08-03
After God Hand, nothing makes me want to play a game more than when IGN gives it a low score. It's like the Bat-Signal for the contrarian in me. So when they slapped a 5 on Blades of Fire I rushed out to Best Buy to buy the only existent copy in the Boston area. And popping it in and playing for the first day I felt redeemed. How could they be more wrong? Punchy fast combat with weight and an incredible crunch as you decapitate and mutilate enemies. A knotty, windy map with locked doors and stat upgrades hidden all over like a metroidvania. Oh and of course the core conceit of playing a blacksmith who doesn't know how to wash his hands but can also forge his own weapons, with successive types being unlocked by killing new enemies. But by day 2 I could see the paint flecking on the walls and by day 3 I wrote down in my notes "I can see why people hate this game." At some point after I started to hate this game, this happened.

Blades of Fire lures you in with its good ideas. Why, yes, I would like a metroidvania with customizable weapons and beefy Souls-like combat. But the follow through is so off you're left with something diabolical. The world, the cornerstone of a metroidvania, is ruined both by slow pacing--due to having to fetch 3 thingamajigs every other door--plus a flat 2D map used to represent a complicated 3D space with multiple levels. Is my goal up or down? Which areas have I not explored? Fuck if I know because the game won't tell me.

The combat in true Souls-like fashion earns your favor with its focus on weapon reach, timing, and parrying...and then squanders all that good will with a plethora of cardinal sins. No iframes, no animation canceling, enemies that hit you repeatedly when you're running away, enemies that fully stunlock you (see my video above), dumpster fire encounters with multiple minibosses with no real reward, dumpster fire bosses with multiple phases, too much health, and boring mechanics...with no real reward.

Even the blacksmithing is underwhelming. The minigame for crafting is cool but is simple enough that it becomes rote after 3 times. And while you can collect different weapon parts across the map, most of 'em offer no real significant change.

And even if I could forgive all of these myriad problems it's all so LONG. I thought I was at least halfway through the game after finishing the Aecides fight (fucking awful boss, by the way) only to be greeted with "CHAPTER 2" coming up on the screen. 35 hours in total to complete the thing and I didn't even engage with the back-tracking, collectathon hellscape they want you to do to get the True Ending. Among all the other affronts, I consider it a crime to make someone listen to this game's soundtrack for that long.

Amongst the drudgery there is charm to be found. A terrifically weird cast of characters including an ogre "king" with a speech impediment, a goblin who opens a gate and farts (his only appearance, but I consider it a pivotal role), an old man spirit companion who legit spams inane dialogue like "I'm more nervous than a ghost at an excorcism" as you wander around, and a multi-armed demon knight summoned from another world who is paradoxically the only being with honor in the world. The world is gorgeous and it feels like a fair amount of thought went into tying it all together. Even if the story is a bit of a travesty. Genuinely when you meet the villain near the end of the game, the main character, Aran, asks him "You killed your loved ones. Sank the world into chaos. Why?!" and he just replies "What can I say. I am what I am." Oh, you wanted characterization and motivation? Nah fuck that. You get "Dunno guess I’m evil lol".

Nothing pains me more than to return from my mission to find an underrated gem and report back that no, the masses were right: Blades of Fire ain't good. Despite all my whinging I did have some fun. When you craft the perfect weapon and lower the difficulty to the minimum[1], to mitigate the poorly tuned nature of the combat, you can find pockets of fun while you're exploring new areas, killing new enemies, and unlocking new weapons. But really I'm just glad I won't have to hear this woman singing anymore.

1. I played the game on the hardest difficulty up to Aecides and it was not fun.