Where do you go after making both a Metroid and a Castlevania? It's a question that Madrid-based developer Mercury Steam are in the unique position of pondering. "We are the only true Metroidvania developer, the only developer that can really say that,"jokes Enric Alvarez, Co-founder of MercurySteam.
After reviving the long-dormant Castlevania on Xbox 360 with the Lords of Shadow duology, MercurySteam reunited gamers with Samus Arun in 2017's Samus Returns and 2023's Metroid Dread. Naturally, speculation has been rife about what comes next from the Madrid maestros. Yet for Alvarez and his MercurySteam co-founders, their next project was obvious – it was time to finish what they started in 2001.
On first impressions, Blades of Fire fits that most groan-inducing of descriptors – a Soulslike. In the last few years, the Soulslike genre has become inescapable, with almost every other title shown at The Game Awards seemingly borrowing from Miyazaki. As I charge around a burning village, dodging, parrying and cleaving my way across an enemy-littered town square, I initially feel a twinge of disappointment. Is this all that Blades of Fire has to offer? Yet as I begin to peel back the layers of its directional limb-severing combat, smile at its endearingly fantastical cutscenes and click with the satisfying heft of my newly-forged weapons, I catch a glimpse of that MercurySteam magic.
Forging ahead
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Blades of Fire isn't the first time that Alvarez and his team have delved into Soulslike territory. In fact, they may well have beaten Miyazaki to the masochistic punch. Back in 2001, MercurySteam's co-founders released a pioneering action game called Blade Of Darkness. Published by Codemasters and largely overlooked at the time, it introduced brutally unforgiving combat, dismemberment-focused swordplay and precision dodging and blocking – eight years before Demon's Souls hit PS3. Classed as a hack and slash and baffling players at the time, Blade Of Darkness is regularly credited as doing Dark Souls before Dark Souls.
"We released that game, and it had a few of the things that we have in Blades of Fire – tactical combat, the fact that the lesser enemy can kill you in a second if you don't pay attention, the gritty environments…" says Alvarez, "So for us it's like revisiting the first experience we ever had as developers."
It explains why as I slash my way deeper through Blades of Fire, its action feels familiar, yet oddly novel. Draped in the same stylized, cel-shade-lite aesthetic that defined Lords Of Shadow, hero Aran De Lira moves with a refreshing amount of agility. Controlling somewhere between your generic Tarnished Souls avatar and God of War's Kratos, I duck and weave out of the way of blade hits with a satisfying nimbleness, before cleaving through two hulking soldiers, coating my blade in torrents of crimson. Knowing its origins, Blades of Fire's name suddenly feels reverent, not generic. Playing the 2025 action game feels like stepping inside a parallel universe where we got Codemaster's noughties successor to the first ever Soulslike - or should we say, Bladelike?
Yet amongst all the delightfully precise limb-severing, parrying, and swinging a hammer to pummel foes to a bloody pulp, there's a God Of War-esque cinematic flair pulsing through Blades of Fire. I meet cackling three-foot tall Scottish witches, climb sentient houses, and obliterate a worrying number of what I can only describe as bloodthirsty, sword-riding Ewoks.
"First and foremost, it's an action-adventure game," replies Alvarez, when asked if Blades of Fire is a Soulslike. "It's narrative driven, but an action adventure that gives you an enormous amount of freedom."
At the crux of Blades of Fire is its central quest – reaching and murdering the realm's evil queen, Nerea. Put into the tattered leather boots of the King's Ward's son, Aran De Lira, Aran finds himself suddenly inhabiting a world without steel. With Queen Nerea's magic turning her enemies' metal to stone, Aran uses his mystical hammer to forge magic-resistant weapons, embarking on a quest to take down the Queen. It's in this map-sprawling journey where MercurySteam's Metroidvania experience shines brightest.
"Playing this game is accompanying Aran and [companion] Adso in their journey towards the royal palace. But the royal palace is very far away," says Alvarez. "It's a fairly big scale. You're going to get lost very easily, and you're going to find incredibly creative environments. It's an adventure and the sense of discovery is essential to any adventure, right? So that's why we chose the structure the game has where you move forward, meet very colorful people in all senses and fight terrible enemies. Discovering new things is essential to have a feeling of adventure, not constantly going around very similar environments."
With everyone but the queen's Steel being turned to stone, forging your own sacred weapons is a crucial part of Blades of Fire. Forger's anvils are this world's bonfires, allowing you to rest, repair weapons and forge new ones. Aran de lira is gifted a sacred hammer in the forge of the gods, and as you enter the forging realm, your initial smithing is overseen by a gigantic looming Galactus-esque deity. As you prepare to smith your fearsome new weapon, you are able to customize everything from its core components to main material and even the handle. It all looks initially fairly deep and intriguing, yet it's let down by an utterly baffling mini game.
This interactive segment shapes how successful your forge is, with the angle and position of your hammering determining the quality of your creation. Try as I might throughout multiple weapon forges, I couldn't once make sense of the mini game, the curve and raised bumps of its graph fluttering up and down like a boozed up equalizer. Success results in your weapon being granted one of four stars, each which further extends the weapon's lifespan. The problem was, the quality of my weapons and the resulting stars awarded seemed almost random, and the more I attempted to understand the minigame, the less I did.
Thankfully, the weapons themselves feel great. In a nice touch, new weapon blueprints are discovered by defeating the enemies that wield them. Tired of your hammer and want to build a shiny new spear? Well, then you'll have to slice up 20 speary lads. While the FromSoftware comparisons are obvious, there's a nimbleness to weapon blows and character movement that lends encounters a hack and slash breeziness. Battles feel far more forgiving than FromSoftware's signature sadism.
Most weapons have multiple stances, allowing me to swap from stabbing to slashing motions as I desperately dismember a gigantic troll. As the lumbering monstrosity swings his hulking arms at me, the right arm I just severed suddenly grows back. Thankfully, blocking regains Aran's stamina, and as I eat up each lumbering blow, I manage to slice and cleave my way to decapitating the brute – severing off his arms too, just out of spite.
One for the road
Joining you on your journey is a mysterious magic-wielding ally, Adso. Rescuing him from a deadly ambush, the teenage companion joins Aran on his quest to kill the queen, lending his magic and offering up some surprisingly enjoyable, grounded chit-chat.
Blades of Fire is more story driven than most of its contemporaries, incorporating puzzles, inter-character dialog spliced over gameplay and light magic-imbued puzzle sections. In other words, there's more than a touch of Kratos and Atreus to Aran and Adso, yet thus far, the accompanying boy feels less hands on, and more a walking encyclopedia, listing enemies weaknesses like a sentient Pokedex.
"Adso is an important companion for you for a number of reasons,” adds Alvarez, “ I can't say anything right now as I don't want to spoil the surprise, but he's not only a quite interesting character to deal with, but he will also be extremely helpful."
My time with Blades of Fire, then, feels like unearthing a long-lost Xbox 360 classic – the kind of endearingly odd single-player adventure that you rarely see in 4K. Its combat is novel, its world intriguing, and it's filled with personality – questionable blacksmithing mini game aside. Thanks to its developers' experience forging the masochistic genre, it feels unfair to call it a Soulslike. Blades of Fire looks poised to walk its own new path in the action genre. Whatever you do though, don't call it 'AA'.
"I still don't know the difference between AAA and AA", shrugs Alvarez,."For me, AAA means an attitude more than a number. AAA is the attitude to push things further than anyone else ... push yourself – your limits – beyond what you can imagine, and create stuff that has never been created before. For me, Triple A has nothing to do with budget - it means quality, commitment, effort and talent."
He pauses, thoughtfully. "We hope that Blades of Fire resonates, because we think it puts something relatively new on the table."
Blades of Fire is set to launch on May 22, 2025. You can pass the time by playing these hand-picked best action games.
