Blood of Mehran

hack and slash with parry for generous price :-)

Arabian Knives, Arkham-style An old-school throwback to the linear hack'n'slash brawlers of generations past. Play as Mehran, a grizzled mercenary who retired from life of violence to find inner peace with his wife and daughter. Except his former commander who usurped the throne of AURA, (the fictional Mesopotamian kingdom we're dealing with) comes back into his life with cruel callousness. Mehran loses his family and ends up in a desert prison, where he breaks free and vows vengeance. What follows is 12 stages where Mehran hunts down the King's lieutenants before facing the ultimate villain. The game is all about combat, and it's best described as a brawler, since there's no jump button, and your arsenal is basically light/heavy/special attacks, along with a dodge/roll, and block/parry commands. Striking enemies builds up Rage, which can be used to go into Rage mode and bypass armor; killing enemies fills out Chakra points, which can be used to fuel either special attacks, or healing- and it's the only way to heal, aside from refilling health from a merchant. There's no auto-lock (though there's aim assist for ranged combat), and you need to use your movement/direction keys to point Mehran towards the enemy you want to hit. This can be a bit off-putting when you're mobbed, as he might stay focused on someone he's been attacking before after a dodge, even though that enemy is now in the back of a conga line. There's also a fine line between blocking/dodging enemy attacks and trying to pull off combos, as getting hit disrupts the combo build. There's 3 primary weapons – a saber, saber with shield (only way to block projectiles), or saber & scimitar dual-wield (useful against heavy enemy types). Each has its own skill tree with basic 4-button combos that alternate light/heavy attacks, with an impressive canned animation in the end, dealing extra damage, and sometimes AoE. Skills are bought with Exp, which you gain by killing enemies. To unlock higher tier skills, you need to spend gold with a merchant to upgrade each weapon type. There's also a bow, which is useful for dealing with ranged enemies. Arrows are can either be picked up, or you can restock by pulling out enemy arrows from your shield. The bow has its own skill tree, which focuses on charged shot, which can be improved to strip armor and deplete enemy stamina.. The levels are largely linear, with side-areas containing optional treasures and memory flashbacks. The treasures allow you to increase HP, and collecting 3 armor pieces gives an extra Chakra slot; flashbacks boost either HP or rage bars. Since there's no non-contextual jumps, each level has walls, ledges, ladders, etc that are marked with yellow paint. There's not a ton of exploration, but I've encountered a few hidden areas that made me feel satisfaction for correctly veering off the beaten path. Gameplay is a mix of combat and stealth arenas. In certain areas, you have the option to crouch and stealth-kill patrolling enemies one by one. It's pretty basic, as you get a whistle ability to draw enemies to you, allowing for contextual kills. This is largely optional, as if you are discovered, the enemies in the area mob you and you need to fight them all at once, and due to this it's fairly rudimentary- you can't drag away bodies, so the enemies can spot a fallen body and get alerted, and run to investigate, and trying to rush 2 unaware enemies at once is a cointoss at best- but it does add some variety, and it's fitting in the setting of most levels, especially the ones on city streets and markets filled with civilian NPCs. Although the game's pretty grounded (with exception of one level leaning more supernatural), there's a fairly good enemy variety. Between ranged and melee enemies you get the typical archetypes (light melee, heavy armored melee, un-armored fast melee, etc) and you need to adapt to the attack variety. There's 3 attack types- regular (can be blocked or dodged), yellow (can only be parried, but break a holding block), and red (must be dodged), and various troops types have preferences for different types. The biggest challenge is keeping distance from enemies, b/c getting too close can leave you unable to react to the windup for an unblockable attack, as Mehran gets too close to enemy hitboxes. The gameplay is light puzzle,s though there's some lever challenges, and setpieces when you need to escape spreading flames of poison clouds. There's also a few turret sections, and in one of these I encountered a bug- when killing the enemies too fast, I'd break sequence and not trigger successive enemy waves to the point Id' get stuck and need to restart a checkpoint. Speaking of bugs: there's a few. I had one boss fight where the enemy got stuck at a fixed distance from me, with Mehran unable to close in and hit them. There were also a few crashes in cutscenes, but this only happened on a 3060ti- when playing on my other PC with a 4060, this didn't happen. The UE crash reporter doesn't work, so I couldn't send it out. Getting back to bosses- There's a few. Overall, these one-on-one fights are not particularly difficult (on Normal difficulty), with some mob encounters requiring more restarts,while some boss fights could be done in one try. Still, the variety was nice. The story and voice acting had setting-appropriate accents, but overall, being a classical revenge tale. The game's music is quite nice, though, one of the game's highlights. Doing a long exploration run takes about 15 hours. Once you finish the game, chapter select becomes available, with a collectibles count for each level, which helps with achievement hunting. Each level also has a bunch of “treasures” that can be sold to the merchant- sometimes these are in breakable containers and these are clearly marked- but others can be in equally breakable boxes that are far less visible, as there's a lot of breakable clutter in the levels. So this can get a bit annoying for the completionists. Since the levels are linear, there's also a bunch of one-way progression gates (doors, jumps, wall-vaults) that can leave off unexplored side-paths, if you go “right” way first. Overall, the game is old-school, and clunky. And simple. Some of the gameplay variety and set-pieces are nice (stealth, bosses), but others (the ballista-dodging sections) can feel more tedious. The game isn't a technical marvel, though I liked the art direction; few of the levels felt a bit too long, with repetitive city quarters, but different enemy compositions; Still, it's refreshing to see a game with this type of setting, and once you get the hang of it, the combat can be fun; This isn't a must-play,, but it is enjoyable for what it's trying to be. I did not regret my purchase.