Talon's Blade

Betrayed soldier driven by revenge, navigating a linear world rich in lore and rhythm-based combat, where flawed progression systems and exploitable mechanics often undermine the game's deeper potential. You assume the role of Marcus, a battle-hardened soldier from an elite unit known as the Talons. Sent by the emperor behind enemy lines to help bring a 20-year war to a close, the mission crumbles when betrayal rears its head. Captured, bound, and awaiting a gruesome execution in a remote mountain prison, Marcus seems doomed, until an unknown force wipes out his captors and grants him freedom. After that, there’s only one though in Marcus’ head: revenge against the traitor. There's no reliance on long cinematic cutscenes. Instead, the story unfolds through beautifully designed mosaic artworks and a trove of optional lore. Letters, journals, item descriptions, and location information paint a unique world. The attention to detail is quite commendable and interesting. Basic movement feels instantly familiar. You can walk, sprint, jump, and roll using standard inputs. Holding the jump button and a direction lets you perform a roll, but this move is pretty pointless because you will still take damage. Jumping also feels stiff and limited, especially during exploration where natural obstacles like boulders or shallow cliffs can abruptly halt progress. Interaction is streamlined through a single-button prompt that appears near objects. Key items have a faint glow, but this effect often fades into bright environments, causing essential pickups to be missed. Compounding the issue is the game’s linear structure since you can’t revisit previous areas, so overlooking something can be permanent. There’s a scanning mechanic tied to mission objectives and alchemy ingredients. Activating it highlights critical items, enemies, or goals, but only those connected to your current mission. Ordinary enemies and unrelated loot will not be shown. Where this game takes a sharp turn from the norm is in its combat. Instead of direct button mashing, attacks and defenses are executed using directional mouse movements, guided by a rhythm-based system. When locked onto an enemy, four direction lines appear in the center of the screen. Attacks are performed by holding the attack button and pushing the mouse in one of these directions, and chaining them unleashes specific combos. It’s important to keep the mouse button pressed during combos and simply move in the desired direction. If you let go, the game will think you’re trying to do a single attack and often won’t do anything. Blocking and parrying use the same system. One of the directions will glow red when an enemy attacks. Matching that direction allows a block, and sometimes you can even parry and counterattack when the arrow changes color. It all depends on the type of enemy; some can’t be counterattacked, and some have a delayed attack that tricks you into blocking too soon. The stamina system also plays a role here. Attacking and blocking consume stamina, but it recharges quickly, removing much of the tension. Every enemy has both a health bar and a stamina bar. Depleting an enemy’s stamina allows for more damage to be dealt during a short window, but stamina recharges so fast that the window often feels pointless, especially with bosses and elite units with their own name and health bar. Ordinary enemies pose little threat once you get the rhythm down, and many fall after a single combo. Elite enemies, on the other hand, require patience because they have special attacks and their own counterattack move, but they might reward you with new gear. The most frustrating encounters are with ghost enemies, which can only be harmed when they begin to glow. These battles quickly become tedious, as you're forced to play defensively, waiting for a brief vulnerability window that often coincides with their attack animations. This leaves you with two unappealing options: take a hit while trying to land a blow, or wait and repeat the cycle. The irritation escalates through the roof when you're up against ghost elite enemies. While the game has a RPG tag, the elements included are basic and more fit for an action-adventure. Alchemy allows you to mix six different potions, including healing brews, explosive grenades, and stat-boosting (but damaging) tonics. However, this can only be done near alchemy pots. Since the game world frequently supplies healing potions, crafting can be quickly ignored. Gear, on the other hand, is interesting. You’ll find 18 different weapons and armor sets throughout the game – some from progress, some from bosses - each with clearly marked stats with red and green numbers that make changes easy to understand. Gear also visibly changes Marcus’s appearance, adding a nice little detail into the world. Early in the game, you’re presented with a pivotal choice: accept a demon’s offer for cursed powers and resurrection, or reject it and face permadeath. If you decline, your save file is deleted after a single death. Of course, you might save this playthrough for your second run or new game plus. Accepting grants you access to both passive and active abilities, and unlimited respawns. Exploration takes place across a mix of linear pathways and semi-open zones. The latter feature maps and side quests, but progression is strictly one-way because you can’t return to previous areas. Optional objectives must be completed before continuing the main story, but not all of them are shown. This is true for elite enemies waiting in some hidden spot on the map. Saving your progress can be done at special stones or automatically by exiting the game. Dying returns you to the last checkpoint with full health and no loss of gear or XP, but most enemies stay dead, which helps with progress. However, a strange load mechanic undermines the system. If you exit and reload the game (rather than dying), all items in the world (potions and alchemy ingredients) respawn. This can be exploited to endlessly farm them. But there’s a steep price: your experience bar is reset to zero. If you were close to earning a skill point, it’s wiped clean. There’s no warning about this, and it’s entirely possible not to earn a single skill point in the entire game because you will have to quit the game eventually. Unless, of course, you manage to kill enough enemies to earn a point. This deeply flawed design choice undermines many of the game’s core elements. Standard enemies quickly lose their relevance because they drop no loot, and fighting them becomes a time-wasting chore with no payoff. The same applies to side quests: unless the reward is gear, the experience you gain is ultimately meaningless, as it vanishes upon reloading. While regular enemies do respawn after loading a save, you’re forced to fight your way through areas you’ve already cleared, making progression repetitive. Meanwhile, elite enemies and completed quests do not return, meaning their valuable experience points are lost for good. But just like with item farming, this system can be exploited if you're willing to invest hours. The first open area contains enough regular enemies in a compact zone to earn a skill point. When you exit and reload the game, the enemies respawn, but the skill point remains intact, allowing you to farm another one. Since each point always requires the same amount of experience, you can steadily grind and eventually unlock every skill if you're patient enough. In conclusion, for players willing to embrace the pure indie experience, you might find a some fun in it. It doesn’t overstay its welcome, and while it lacks polish, its heart is in the right place. It’s just unfortunate it misses on one of the most important elements: giving you the feeling that your struggle matters. If you can't ignore the game's problems, I'm afraid I can't recommend this.

Very fun combat, has a lot of potential! Also it is very easy :)

Excited to get deeper into the game as the combat seems like a fun and unique concept. Runs good on the steam deck after a little optimization which for any steam deck owner is standard. Controller support and controls have no issues. Only issue I ran into was probably just due to the size of the handheld oven but the character response boxes ran off the side of the screen as well as some of the display types not working properly (I think it was full screen and very possibly bordered window that were broken), again more of a steam deck issue, these issues have not and will not detract from my enjoyment. TL;DR: I'm excited to play more, runs good on steam deck with optimization and good controller support, only issue was with the handheld nuclear reactor's screen size not the game.

A fun time!! Combat was interesting and the world was fun to explore. The story seems cool and I kept stumbling onto intersting things to discover and fight. Would recommend