Die by the Blade

I desperately wanted this to revive the nostalgia of Bushido Blade but... DBTB it feels so lacklustre. Movements, animation fluidity and combat system is way too clunky for a fighting game made in 2024. It almost felt like playing a PS1 game with a modern-day graphics overlay. If this game was made as a solo project, it deserves props. Anything else and it is missing too much give it any lasting credit. It's possible it could get better with dev support but currently - it dont cut it.

[h1]Just roll and strike[/h1] [i]Die by the Blade[/i] is lacking when it comes to the single player content, and I would wait until they add more and fix its current issues. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XsKT83E8vKw - [b]Singleplayer content is lacking[/b]: there’s only a practice, versus and challenges mode (which is basically last man standing aka endless versus battles). - [b]The enemy AI needs work[/b]: even on the highest difficulty, you can easily kill them by just doing a roll attack, as you can see in the video. It is a 99% guaranteed kill - [b]The reward system is weird[/b]: in every match, you'll receive 50 EXP and 30 coins. Every. Match. so 1 round against an easy opponent will get you the same reward as defeating an expert opponent in 10 rounds - [b]Technical issues[/b]: massive FPS drops and it crashed a few times. I’ll be honest, the reason I’m only focused on the singleplayer content is because I think this is another dead on arrival game, and it relies heavily on the online PVP modes. Looking at the number of views of their videos, as well as steam discussions and overall lack of interest, I don’t think [i]Die by the Blade[/i] will gain much traction

Alright so here's the deal, going to try my best to give a fair review after 5.5ish hours of playing. I bought this game as a meme. I didn't take it too seriously or expect it to be a AAA fighting game. If you have that outlook on it, I think you will be able to really enjoy it for what it is. - Pros: Fun and engaging PvP combat. The stance switching requires strategy and reaction to execute and deal with from your opponent. The feinting works nicely on defensive opponents, and the spacing and whiff punishing works nicely on aggressive opponents. There's ranking leaderboard for ranked PvP. The netcode seemed good, game mostly felt offline. I honestly don't know what type of netcode the game has, but if it's rollback I did not notice a single rollback, and if it's delay, I didn't notice any delays. So it just felt legitimately offline and next to perfect when fighting other people. No necessary or highly incentivized microtransactions. Once you buy the game you're good to go, you'll just have to spend a minimal amount of time unlocking what you want. - Cons: The camera is all messed up. Sometimes it'll swing over to you when you're on 2player side at the beginning of the match, and you will literally not see your opponent for the first second or so of the match. They can roll at you or attack you and it'll be flying right at you as the camera readjusts itself. Sometimes the camera swings around randomly during the fights too. Sometimes it gets caught behind a box and you literally cannot see your character or theirs. That's pretty rare, but it has happened to me. The camera is definitely the worst part of the game, and a real annoyance if you are taking a match seriously. I didn't have any FPS issues during the actual fighting, but when you get a kill or a cinematic finish the game does hiccup and the frames do not smoothly transition from one thing to another. It doesn't impact the outcome of a fight, but it may annoy you. Game does not feel particularly optimized overall, and it also screwed with my google chrome BADLY when alt/tabbed, but the bread and butter fighting of the game works fine. When you get a ranked match you will not be able to see your opponents rank, and also when you finish the match you will not see how much your rank changed, neither positively or negatively. You'll have to go to the leaderboard and monitor your rank points through there yourself, since the game doesn't tell you the changes after a ranked match. Limited Training Mode Options are another con for sure. The training mode is very barebones. The tutorial mode mostly worked, but when testing the provided combos it did bug out near the last one and reset every time I struck the training opponent. Gotta list that as another con. - Overall fun game and I can recommend it to someone who can appreciate it for what it is. A memey, fun, mess around fighting game, to get some 1-hit kills in and have some laughs. But if you expect it to be a polished, perfect, AAA fighting game, you're better off avoiding this one, at least for now.

I was the only person on earth playing it. No multiplayer working. No single player. No arcade. Just PvAI 1v1 with 5 or 6 weapons and characters. Don't buy until this game is actually done

So let's look past the game's appearence for a minute. The combat is ok, but struggles to communicate properly through animation. But what really really bothers me is the unlockable content. You start with one character and one sword. No choices to make. And it takes FOREVER to get to lvl 2. So if you wanted to boot this game up and play with friends with a bunch of characters, you can't seemingly. If you wanted to try someone else, that's gonna take a really long time. And for what? Combat that doesn't even feel that good because it's like.. a simpler version of what I'm assuming they assume Souls parry based combat is. No thank you. When I buy a product the least you can do is give me the whole product. If everything was unlocked all at once then I'd probably like this game. But saying "lol. Grind, loser," in a fighting game to get my own content that I already paid for? Pass...

Absolutely zero single player arcade mode and it does not connect to play online with Steam Deck.... DOA

dead game, servers off

Die By The Blade is a great Bushido Blade inspired game where you take down opponents in strategic one hit kill battles. There are some bugs especially around keyboard controls but the devs are very passionate and are aiming to push stuff out quickly. Medium skill floor and high skill ceiling Combo system takes a little time to get used to, but once you learn the game more you can do feints effectively and play mind games with your opponent The dismemberment system is badass, but needs some fine tuning. If I were to give it a rating out of 10.. 8.5/10, has its kinks and obviously not for everyone but seriously this game is addicting. I'll be playing much more of it for sure. May your blades strike true

Very fun, but game is dead. unlucky.

Keep the updates and patches coming! not bad at all on steam deck (medium graphic settings recommended) UPDATES AFTER 18 HOURS: I still REALLY like this game. Takes time in the training lobby/ challenges to get your skills up, but once you have found a weapon you like and get the feel for the system, its nothing but fun. Cleaning up input system for the combos or 'sequences' helped ALOT with combat feel and cant wait for more updates and patches to the new special moves. The community is great, just would like to see an investment in UA to get the player count up. Maybe develop the single player options more, so give new players more opportunities to get good, so they are not easily scared away from the ranked duels.