Blades of Fire review: "Following up Metroid Dread with a dark fantasy soulslike full of inventive ideas that I find delightfully infectious"

You might say Blades of Fire is in conversation with the genre classics it follows on from. How often do you find some incredible weapon in Dark Souls – literally made out of the backside of a cursed God – and then guiltily toss it into the depths of your inventory, never to be seen again? Did you really go through the pain in Elden Ring of removing all your upgrades from your favorite sword, putting them back on another weapon, only to find out it wasn't for you? Sorry, soulslikes, but It's just too big an ask for me to throw away my star murder toy and start over whenever I find another.

Blades of Fire finally solves these problems by being the type of brutal parent that'd literally snap my toys in two – perhaps less 'in conversation' than a stern talking to. Every weapon you forge here will break sooner or later, and I can see this being the most controversial it's been in a game since The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. But this tough love was exactly what I needed. Breaking my weapons broke me out of my combat comfort zone. I couldn't even tell you what it feels like to swing a claymore in Dark Souls, whereas in Blades of Fire I've had to learn to fight with claymores, sabers, polearms, axes, daggers, spears, oh my!

You're Aran De Lira, a blacksmith living in isolation in the woods who one day gets a visit from an old friend. Unfortunately, that old friend immediately gets his throat slit. So Aran goes on a quest of revenge against the tyrannical queen who's to blame for this, as well as the generally miserable state of this brutal fantasy world.

Ah, but it doesn't stay miserable for long, and Blades of Fire's first pleasant surprise is the upbeat tone that blossoms shortly after that initial, er, throat-slitting. Aran is joined on his quest by Adso, a pacifist type steadily putting together a bestiary of everything that's repeatedly smacking you in the face. Aran takes a shine to Adso immediately and their friendly dynamic is hugely refreshing in what too often is gaming's most grimdark genre.

There's still darkness aplenty. The game is practically drowning in blood, you face creatures that are pure nightmare-fuel, and I'd hate to meet the interior designer who thought chandeliers would be improved by looking like they have human fingers. But there's a pulpiness to the tone, a joy of adventuring, that's delightfully infectious. Adso will tell Aran about how he's drawn pictures of the enemy you're fighting, while it's still very much trying to kill you. "That's great lad!" says Aran, desperately trying to stop his face getting sliced off "I'll take a look when I get a minute!"

Creature discomforts

Forests, deserts, icy areas, and castles have been done to death, even if they are particularly pretty here. Far more inspired are the creatures you meet in them. There's the master forger who lives in a giant flying ant. A purple ogre 'king' who seems nice enough, but would almost definitely like to eat you. As for what you're fighting, there's the usual soldiers in armor, sure. But there's also little enemies who use their swords as pogo sticks to bounce out of reach of your attacks.

Significantly less adorable are the warriors who slit their own throats and in the process somehow turn themselves into lethal spinning Crash Bandicoot-types in their final bloody moments. There's a gleefully nasty imagination at work here that makes you want to keep playing just to see what the game will throw at you next. How did something so full of bizarre ideas end up with a title as woefully generic as Blades of Fire?

Kill a set amount of an enemy and you'll be able to craft the weapon they've been using against you. It's a great incentive to properly engage with combat. A cave full of morlocks that are instant death if you let the lights go out is absolutely horrifying. But the trident forge scroll I got for knuckling down and slaying sixty of them was well worth it.

Forging is an elaborate process, complete with loving cutscenes of the process that even Monster Hunter Wilds fans might consider over the top. You have to choose what wood and steel you use, affecting things like durability, stamina cost, and the all important damage output. There's no shields here, but use the right material and you'll be able to block a few blows with your weapon. And tempting as it is to use all your rarest ingredients to make a ferocious monster-slayer, that could really screw you over when it comes time to repair it.

I imagine some of you read that last paragraph and decided there and then that you'll never play Blades of Fire. A pity, because weapon degradation is just the most obviously frustrating of the many clever ways it gets you to experiment with a wide range of weaponry. The game's UI makes it crystal clear whether an enemy is weak to your chosen weapon, will block a lot of its damage, or if you might as well be hitting it with a wet newspaper.

Sometimes I'd stubbornly try to brute-force my way through with a couple of weapons I'd grown overly fond of. But there's far more satisfaction to be had here when you take the time to engage with weapon-forging properly. It can slow the pace when you have to make yet another trip to the forge, or go on a tedious backtrack for crafting materials. But finally forging the right tool for the job and then introducing said tool to the correct monster's face usually made it all worth it.

Crushing it

It certainly helps that nearly every weapon is a joy to use, smacking foes with a hugely satisfying screen-shaking wallop, or slicing bits off them and watching their blood spray everywhere. Choosing which direction you attack from is far more important here than in the average soulslike, as is whether you swing your sword or thrust it. Tapping dodge once will move Aran, but you'll have to double tap for a dodge roll. That roll is more evasive, but also eats up time you could've spent on a counter-attack if only you'd been a bit braver. Despite blocking being a highly-limited last resort, parrying is still immensely rewarding, though I'd expect no less from the studio that taught Samus Aran how to parry in Metroid Dread. It's a really rewarding combat system to get to grips with.

And then there are the heavy attacks. Oh, the heavy attacks! Executing them is where Blades of Fire starts to feel like consistently winning the lottery. Landing these killer blows feels tremendous, and watching a massive chunk of a boss' health bar plummet is basically why we play video games.

These attacks can be interrupted, and some of the heftier weapons take longer to wind up their heavy attack than Valve is taking with Half Life 3. But when the impact is as oh-so-sweet as this, it's worth it. Besides, all the swiftest weapons have heavy attacks too. Landing several charged strikes with a pair of axes while a gigantic troll fails to get even a single hit on me feels incredible. That's another weapon I wouldn't have bothered trying if my tool of choice hadn't broken on me and forced my hand. Now I use my beloved axes all the time.

There's no levelling up, so combat is rewarded with enemies dropping crafting materials. Exploration is incentivised with hidden health upgrades, stamina upgrades, more crafting options for your weaponry, etc. All helpful stuff, and it doesn't hurt that scavenging every inch of Blades of Fires' maps for secrets is a treat.

You don't make a couple of Metroid games for Nintendo without learning a thing or two about Metroidvania design, and MercurySteam prove once again highly accomplished at keeping secrets. They're constantly rewarding you for paying attention and thinking outside the box. Fall damage is a little ruthless, considering several discoveries involve guiding Aran off a ledge, but death is only punished with dropping your held weapon wherever you died anyway, and you can go pick it up whenever you like (it actually makes for quite a handy, if slightly ghoulish, waypoint marker).

The story's a fairly standard revenge tale, but entertainingly told with fun characters and a series of gloriously shit-eating villains worthy of the best Yakuza games. Aran and Adso make for a great double act, too, though I did start to grate with Adso's repeated lines after a while. I should be dreading shimmying across a narrow ledge because of the deadly drop below, not because Adso is about to repeat the same 'hilarious' quip yet again.

Say no more

That's a mild irritant compared to one area which is almost ruined by a ghost who insists on coming along for the journey. "I'm more nervous than a ghost at an exorcism!" he exclaims. "I'm more nervous than a ghost at an exorcism!" he repeats a few minutes later. "I'm more nervous than a gho–" Oh good god shut up! Didn't we pass some sort of law against repeated NPC barks years ago?

He earns a full two paragraphs of whinging in this review because he's one of the game's very few tonal missteps. Otherwise, I love how the tone jumps effortlessly between gory Game of Thrones nastiness one second, and Indiana-Jones-esque excitement of being on an adventure the next. The cute little skeleton lad that you escort in one chapter is a particular highlight, especially because that bony boy is thankfully missing a larynx.

I started Blades of Fire skeptical that a dark fantasy soulslike had anything new to show me. But not since Sekiro snatched away my shield and made me learn to parry has one of these games so successfully forced me to entertain a different playstyle. It's got the Metroidvania chops of their Nintendo Switch high-point Metroid Dread, the fantasy-horror imagination of their Castlevania: Lords of Shadow games, and a fantastic combat system that smashes them both. A great adventure that'll make you want to try every weapon it hits you with. Outstanding.

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