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I wish I loved anything as much as Blades of Fire loved blacksmithing.
Then even an odd little minigame where you have to bash your new weapon into the correct shape.
And you get to name your new murder toy!
Fire attacks still do damage, and bigger enemies happily break through your guard with ease.
So why bother blocking at all?
Well, blocking here is actually how yourestorestamina.
This isn’t a simple case of light attack and heavy attack, either.
Different buttons on the controller change which direction you attack from.
Swinging a polearm at the right angle to smack multiple enemies is wonderfully cathartic too.
You play as Aran, a mysterious loner on a noble quest to, er, commit regicide.
Within the first few minutes an old friend of Aran’s gets his throat slit in uncompromisingly gory detail.
Thankfully, this dour tone is surprisingly short-lived.
“Well done, lad!”
says Aran, who’s still fighting severalotherknights.
“I’ll read them when I have a moment!”
Adso is your constant scribe, enthusiastically putting together an increasingly detailed bestiary of everything you’re fighting.
The fact he does this while you’restill doingall the fighting is an inspired running gag.
“What a disgusting creature!
We’ll be happy to spend an entire action-RPG in their company.
Any sidekick who suggests making sandwiches if you put the controller down for too long is a keeper.
Tooling Up
“What a disgusting creature!
Time to take some notes.”
Die, and you’ll drop whatever weapon you were wielding at the time.
Monster Hunter is a clear and welcome influence here.
Go ahead and hit ‘em.
Not ideal, but you’ll still do reduced damage.
You might as well try fighting them with a broken toothpick.
Weapon degradation is a tricky mechanic to get right, often leading to a lot of frustration.
“I like how Blades of Fire encourages you to use a wide multitude of murder tools.”
Far more promising are the supernatural foes which start popping up.
That aforementioned troll’s habit of throwing up his fish-heavy lunch over you is delightfully gross.
More of these like!
There’s some clever takedowns of the bigger enemies, too.
Get that troll’s initial health bar down and the beast will merely be stunned.
You have to use this crucial moment to chop off a significant chunk of it.
Really my only issue is that a soulslike this interesting has been given the rubbish name Blades of Fire.
Pity, because MercurySteam’s forge-obsessed followup to the career high of Metroid Dread is otherwise looking very promising.
