Blades of Fire

As of casually finishing main campaing with most of exploration on "STEEL" difficulty: One of the best pseudo souls-like metroidvanias i ever played. Combat is fluent and easy, parry and evade is beginner/casual friendly, enemy design is fun and comes in good variety, minibosses and bosses have fun-to-counter gimmicks and moves. Crafting feels respectfully meaningful and game gives you A LOT of extra resourses, you almost never going to run out of crafting or repair materials. General exploration is also fun, going into corners never leave you unrewarded and bypassing extra enemies is fun due to good combat. Game is pretty well optimised along with looking really distinct with cool artstyle. I read that situation is different at "Titanium" difficulty, but all i have to say: don't play hard difficulties if your skill aint up for it. I know i don't do, sticking to casual modes. On the downsides i can only note few annoying enemies with long or medium length combos that don't really stop even if you parry them, so you have to either chain parry or dodge away, letting them to chill. Once i get through remainder of the "endgame" i will update the review.

Очень люблю MercurySteam. Дилогия Castlevania Lord of the Shadow навсегда в моем сердце. Когда узнал, что вышел новый проект от этой команды, я не думая купил и принялся изучать огненные клинки. По перву играл на одном дыхании, но со временем появились приколы. Как и прошлые проекты, Blades oi Fire не идеальна, но несет в себе фирменный почерк своих создателей. Чутка душно, чутка неинтуитивно, но на сколько захватывающее приключение получается по итогу. Из плюсов отмечу -Любопытную боевую систему которая заставляет тебя понимать чем и против кого ты воюешь. -Большой и красивый фентези мир. -Большое разнообразие противников. -Интересный лор. -Приятные персонажи. Из минусов - запутанные локации. Да, тут крайне часто будет возникать вопрос "куда мне идти дальше?". Причем к концу игры это будет уже вызывать патологическую болезненность, словно разрабы из кожи вон лезли чтобы запутать тебя, а карта по просту не информативна. Еще хочу отметить огромный факап в конце игры. - ДАЛЕЕ СПОЙЛЕРЫ- Прямо перед финальным боссфайтом главный злодей с помощью темной магии закинет вас в стартовую локацию игры. Прямо к дому главного героя в лесу. При этом главгад скажет фразу - "Передавай привет аббату Дорину", тому самому Дорину, что погибает в первой же кат сцене. На радостях я подумал, что раз нас закинуло в прошлое , то мы сможем спасти своего друга аббата и это изменит что-то в истории! Возможно даже будет лихой поворот и мы сумеем предотвратить гибель нашей возлюбленной! НО ХЕР ТАМ ПЛАВАЛ игра просто началась заново! Еще раз. Это не НЬЮ ГЕЙМ ПЛЮС, а просто в самом конце игры меня кинуло в начало игры — слетела вся прокачка, все локации вновь закрыты, ни один оружейный свиток не изучен. Персонажи никак не реагируют на этот странный ход с возвращением во времени, все катсцены как в первый раз. Никакого намека на заигрывания с временными петлями. Просто все с нуля! ( на этот момент было наиграно 38 часов!) Я полез в отзывы стима и нашел лишь одного человека, кто так же запорол себе концовку. Далее пришлось изучать ютуб дабы узнать что там было в итоге. Оказалось надо было не лететь сломя голову спасать своих друзей, а полазать по первой локации. Изучить пространство на опушке леса и в кустах найти призрака, который смог бы снять проклятие злодея и тогда бы меня вернуло обратно к концовке игры. Далее был бы финальный босс файт на 5 минут и титры. Фрустрация была невероятно сильной. Я даже хотел поставить негативный отзыв игре за такой прикол. Но в любом случае я не могу перечеркнуть все заслуги клинков огня из-за этой странности в концовке. Путешествие выдалось прекрасным.

Rigoberto Patapocha se parte la pierna y se le quea toa pocha, recomienda este juego Que pena que esté juego, no es que esté infravalorado, es que no está nada valorado y me da pena en parte porque 505 games tiene mucha culpa con la exclusividad de Epic de un año y por otro lado la tendencia youtuber de enterrar un juego antes de que salga y todos los borregos que repiten como papagayos y no intentan descubrir algo por su cuenta y tener una opinión propia! Joya oculta no, joya invisible y es una pena! Si tienes una mínima duda de jugarlo, por favor hazlo, no digo que sea perfecto, pero es un juegazo que merecía mucho más y que estos grandes desarrolladores no hubieran sido despedidos el 50% de ellos por no alcanzar las ventas iniciales y hubieran podido continuar con una segunda parte o un nuevo juego o lo que quisieran, que ojalá algún día sea posible. Como siempre decisiones de corbata que pagan los desarrolladores!

Overall, the game is okay and probably worth the money on sale, but I just can't recommend it. ​After about 15 hours, the game felt more and more like a chore. I pushed through to the end, but it wasn't always enjoyable. The story and characters aren't very well written, and while the combat is fun for a while, it loses its appeal after a certain point. In particular, it felt strange that the heavy attack seemed somewhat useless. Though maybe I just didn't fully master the combat system. ​The crafting system, on the other hand, is really great. I thoroughly enjoyed building customized weapons and pushing for the highest quality.

In the history of videogames, few subgenres have become as ubiquitous and pervasive as the soulslike, and while this is not the time or place for a wanky dissertation on why soulslike good, it is a genre that is always aimed squarely at our monke-given pattern recognition: Fail problem, identify, address, resolve; repetition that tempers frustration as much as rewards being avoided. This is all to say that Blades of Fire is a soulslike that is at its best when avoiding being a soulslike. BoF puts the player in the boots of Aran (no relation, I think) de Lira (no relation, I hope); beefcake extraordinaire, who, alongside his Union-appointed twink, Adso, will carve a path of destruction across an entire realm on a very much "I had nothing better to do" basis. While cutscenes are very well voice acted and animated, showing surprisingly emotive and nuanced performances; the story follows its Carmackian mandate as a thinly veiled excuse to move the action across 3 frankly enormous areas that will gradually open up to allow access to all manners of character upgrades. The graphics are excellent, performance is rock solid, the music, while occasionally over-excitable and a tad repetitive, is an epic and sweeping earworm, but the crown jewels of Blades of Fire are its intertwined crafting and combat systems. So, in Blades of Fire you can craft weapons, and it is absolutely ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ bonkers. It starts very straightforward: as you fight enemies, you will progressively unlock weapon types; once unlocked, you can craft them. There's 7 broad categories, more or less sharing moveset and general attributes, however, the player is provided with a mind-bogglingly amount of freedom as to the specifics: blade shape and length, pommel, handguard, fuller, and particularly, the material of each part, with all available types of steel organized in a triangle between damage, durability, and defense; but also with each one having a different weight which, in combination with the size and shape of each part, will contribute to every stat. Make a part bigger, or make it out of a heavier steel, and the center of mass will shift, changing its attack speed, stamina cost, parry window, guard damage, armor penetration, raw damage. There's a limit to what each type can do, of course, but it goes beyond "part X out of material Y does Z" to instead become this very tactile, vibes-based and very expressive process that at the same time allows the player to decide how it interacts with its combat system. When fighting, each of the face buttons in a controller will aim for a different body part: head, torso, or arms. Most enemies will have differing levels of armor on those parts, which, in turn, will dictate how much armor penetration you need to defeat them. Most weapons have two movesets (typically slashing or stabbing), with one doing more damage but worse penetration and viceversa. In addition to this, both fighters are governed by a stamina bar, and a guard bar: essentially, Aran will need to guard to regain stamina, meaning that you will need to strategically decide when to take a breather, and the beauty of Blades of Fire is how these three different systems interlock beautifully to allow the player to decide how to interact with them. While Adso will keep taking notes on enemies, providing suggestions and tips on how to fight each enemy type, I found it more fun to just try different tactics and see what worked better for me. The game relies heavily in managing your spacing and learning enemy movesets, and baiting them into opening for an attack never gets old, but guarding, parrying, or plowing through their guard are also options that the player can take advantage of. The game is not really hard, even in "hard" difficulty, with heals being immediate and being given a generous amount of, and if everything fails it is remarkably easy to just run away back to a bonfire (penalty for dying is just dropping your weapon anyway), and that's where the game is at its best: somewhat permissive, playful and satisfying experimentation. In contrast, unfortunately, the game sometimes also remembers it's a soulslike, and that's when things get ♥♥♥♥♥. The sub-bosses and bosses are probably where Blades of Fire shows the cracks in its armor: unforgiving, hard hitting (sometimes one-hit) enemies with tight timing and Plesioth-sized hurtboxes, that most of the time seem completely unburdened by the stamina system, are some of the worst parts of this game, with some of them leaving me just about giving up on the game, and while it's also true that there's a reason I have beaten this game and not Elden Ring, it is definitely one of its weakest aspects. The labyrinthine levels, while very intricately interconnected and full of nooks and crannies to find stuff in, were also a frequent source of frustration while exploring and finding my way around, but that is mostly due to a combination of a map system that could stand to be a bit clearer, and the metroidvania-y nature of levels being full of "come back later" doors. To finish with the list of cons, the game does drag on quite a bit towards the end trying to stretch things out, which I would have minded if combat wasn't so thoroughly entertaining. I don't usually get to finish games, so the fact that with this game I even tried to go for 100% says something. Blades of Fire is not a perfect game, but it definitely deserves way more success than what it's seen. It is a quirky, unorthodox videogame that while parting from very clear inspirations, very much succeeds at doing things its own way, allowing for a metric ♥♥♥♥-ton of player expression and providing an incredibly solid experience throughout. An absolute cult classic in the vein of Kingdoms of Amalur that I hope it gets its recognition in due time. 8.5/10.

Neat concept and the combat is fun with a decent amount of variety. I don't like when games intentionally slow you down to make it longer though. Maybe I'll give it another shot in the future.

It was so nice of 505 Games to allow me to play for 5.5 hours without issue. After that, I've experienced crash after crash after crash. After that 5.5 hours, I would crash 6 times over the next two hours (it's not like I could get a refund anymore at that point). It got to the point where it was crashing after getting into the game anywhere from 30 seconds to 1 minute. THEN I finally thought I had figured it out and was able to play for almost half an hour and it crashed again, while running around with the boney prince and running from his dead father. I'm done. This is insane. I have zero issues with other games. I'm so pissed about this because I was actually having so much fun with this game. I'm not the only one with these crashing issues. I read 505 games in a subreddit blame nvidia drivers. I dont have an nvidia card. Thanks for allowing me to play long enough to not be able to get a refund. Go ♥♥♥♥ yourselves.