There is nothing I like more than a developer doing an original game of their own after recently playing in someone else’s sandbox. This is certainly what’s happening with Spanish developer Mercury Steam, more known in recent times by delivering the excellent Metroid Dread back in 2021 and their mixed take on Konami’s Castlevania franchise, doing an original game for the first time since 2007’s Clive Barker’s Jericho.
With Blades of Fire, Mercury Steam is taking a few cues from how they merged old school God of War-style gameplay to their Castlevania: Lords of Shadow duology, and doing something similar by combining a modern era God of War and From Software’s Souls-likes into an original game. But instead of just being a wholesale facsimile of those games, it attempts a slightly different style of combat system more reminiscent of For Honor, mixing it with the developer’s previous Metroidvania chops but now in a 3D environment.
While the combat, mixed with its forging mechanics, are a system worthy of exploration, a bland story, infuriating exploration, and a gargantuan length made the fire in this blade ultimately fizzle.
Forged by the Gods
Blades of Fire puts you in the shoes of Aran, a hermit blacksmith who suddenly gets access to a sacred hammer from a legendary group of deities known as the Forgers. After saving a young monk named Adso from certain death, Aran sets off, with Adso in tow and with his newfound hammer on a mission to go “kill the queen” without giving much of an explanation.
To its advantage and its detriment, Blades of Fire really doesn’t waste any time with any sort of preamble or long prologue before setting you out on this simple journey. You kinda get it and go on, with the hope the story will eventually fill in the gaps for why Aran goes on this single-minded quest. Unfortunately, despite some initial promise, the story gets a bit lost in the weeds due to the inconsistency in when it gives you new information and the long stretches in between when you receive meaningful information about Aran.
Sometimes, you’ll get a few breadcrumbs about what this world is, but I found the world building particularly shallow and boring despite some initial promise. The so-called revelations didn’t elicit anything more than a shrug from me. It all led to a fairly predictable ending that didn’t feel like a worthy payoff for a game that’s actually longer than it needed to be. By the time the credits rolled and got interrupted to tease that there is an actual true ending locked behind a newer quest, I promptly ignored it as I had already given the game way more time than I felt it deserved for such a bland story.
Forged in Fire
The meat of Blades of Fire mostly centers around a circular combat and weapon crafting gameplay loop that requires slaying a specific number of enemies in order to get a new weapon mold to build a different/better weapon that will aid you in your quest to slay the queen. The combat, at first glance, definitely looks like it was inspired by modern over-the-shoulder third person action games. However, once you start playing, you see the game actually employs a more unique control scheme that feels like a strange cousin to Ubisoft’s For Honor combat system.
Instead of being in the right stick, your face buttons serve as the direction you’ll have Aran strike at your enemy. While this took me a while to get used to after the recent glut of action games reliant on R1/R2 attack buttons, I eventually warmed up to the unusual control scheme that gave Blades of Fire slightly more of an identity than the glut of Souls-likes in the market, even with some elements being borrowed straight from From Software’s often copied template, like respawning enemies and the punishment of loss.
The combat is aided by a nice weapon variety, which you can earn the deeper you get into the game. While it does get old that you need to kill a certain amount of enemies to unlock a new weapon mold, the reward of a new, shiny-looking, more powerful weapon was worth the tedium of how you unlock it. When you combine it with the forge minigame, which was initially confusing until I got the hang of trying to shape the mold of the weapon for it to last me more in the field, it added a nicely satisfying quality to the weapon crafting gameplay loop that made me feel more authorship over my own weapons than in most games.
A Degraded Weapon
Unfortunately, as great as combat and weapon crafting can be, they lose their luster when you realize that, despite the different kinds of enemies that you fight throughout your adventure, a lot of them go down the same way without much in the name of variety. The idea of having to attack enemies from specific angles doesn’t add enough wrinkles that can overcome you using a charged attack to down them in one or two hits, even when you are told a weapon may not do the right damage to them. It’s more of a facade of enemy variety, where they look different but don’t really act that much different, that becomes numbing the longer the game goes without your strategy needing to change.
This being a Mercury Steam game, it’s not much of a surprise that they wanted to implement some of that Metroidvania design, which they nailed in 2021’s Metroid Dread, into their new game. Unfortunately, it pains me to say that their design chops which worked so well in a 2D environment didn’t translate into the 3D space. Some of the level design in Blades of Fire is unbelievably frustrating, with a flow within some of the more labyrinthine castles and dungeons that makes absolutely no sense, having you running around in circles like an idiot until you find the secret crevice or door that will give you progress that never feels satisfying. Or, worse, when you have to rely on a companion you find in said dungeons that have to be standing at a very specific point in your area to trigger a specific scripted moment where they then point you to a wall or crevice that you can tear down in order to progress.
Unlike the great Metroidvanias that make fantastic use of item collecting which makes backtracking into unreachable areas more satisfying, Blades of Fire doesn’t even come close to providing that level of satisfaction. It makes the moments where you have to explore a thunderous chore that deflates the experience tremendously the longer it goes.
It bears repeating: a lot of what undoes Blades of Fire falls on how long it is opposite to the kind of game it is. It’s a game where the appeal of its circular gameplay loop of fighting and weapon crafting can’t quite sustain a game where, for my money, goes for some 30 hours longer than it needs to be (I rolled credits at 57 hours). I do feel some of that length was attributed to the absolute friction its poor level design inflicts on you, and it may be alleviated if you dare play this game with guide in hand so you don’t waste time running around in circles and can focus on the core strengths of its gameplay. Unfortunately, the combination of frustrating level design next to a solid combat/crafting loop that can’t quite sustain the length of the game which sits on top of a very bland, thin story with barely anything memorable besides a few moments of levity, just led me to resent the time Blades of Fire asked from me.
To end on a slightly positive note, the game does look nice in spots, with an artstyle that evokes some of Mercury Steam’s previous work that was at its strongest when it moved away from its initial solid but unremarkable first area. Character models have a mix of old school charm mixed with modern aesthetics that work well in the context of the game, and the game’s visual identity was at its strongest the stranger the enemies started looking further into the game. At a time when a lot of developers are coalescing under the same technology, I do appreciate Blades of Fire using Mercury Steam’s own proprietary engine to make the game still feel like it had more of a unique visual identity of its own, even if it’s not the best looking thing in the market. It performed solidly enough, running mostly at 60fps with some stutters here and there that were noticeable but not enough to provide a damper on things. The less said about the voice acting, though, the better.
Blade of a Light Fizzle
Despite my excitement for the studio circling back to forge an original game after doing good work with someone else’s property, it does break my heart that I didn’t enjoy my time with Blades of Fire more. We need new IP in the game industry, but we also need it to be good. There truly is a solid core to its gameplay loop, one I hope Mercury Steam continues to build upon. It’d be a shame to not see these systems evolve in another game with a more memorable story, less frustrating level design, and tighter length that will not make you want to drive that forged blade into your own gaming system.
Thank you to 505 Games and our PR partners for providing a key for Blades of Fire. You can find Seasoned Gaming’s review policy here.
