Blades of Fire Review

Smoldering embers, but no true flame.

Following up the massive success of Metroid Dread, MercurySteam looks to be going in another direction, opting for an unexpected turn by creating a more action-oriented title that is reminiscent of their Xbox 360 era Castlevania titles. In fact, Blades of Fire is somewhat a game out of time — It does not rely upon more modern quality of life design trappings like mini-maps or objective markers to guide the player from point to point — but that doesn't necessarily mean the game is dated. Rather, the intent is to make you more mindful of your actions and discovery. How successful the game does so is a bit up in the air.

Publisher: 505 Games

Developer: MercurySteam

Platform: Played on PC (Epic Games Store)

Availability: Released on May 22, 2025 for PlayStation 5, Windows, and Xbox Series X/S

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The real star of this show is its primary focus — the weapon crafting system. While weapon degradation or crafting mechanics are not novel, the way Blades of Fire has implemented it is at least interesting. For starters, your weapon degrades in durability after use, but this also decreases its effectiveness as it loses some armor penetration properties. Eventually you will need to repair the weapons you use, and ultimately, as you run out of repairs, you will need to replace them. Naturally, as you advance through the story, more crafting materials for upgrading your weaponry are unlocked. The really interesting part is that you have a lot of input on how those weapons are made. As a blacksmith, Aran must forge the weapons himself, with the player doing so through him in a mini-game where you mold the steel to the weapon shape. Additionally, the number of unique weapon designs and crafting materials at your disposal opens up a lot in the way of customizability of each weapon type, making each blade or hammer feel unique.

Unfortunately, beyond this crafting, the game lacks any real bright spots, especially in the opening hours of the game. While there is a complete and competent story, it's quite rushed early on, with the character Aran vowing to kill the queen with no real indication of who that is or why she, specifically, must die. The soldiers you fight are hers, of course, and they are killing people, but there's no introduction into the overarching ‘why’ of anything going on. And that’s mostly fine — not every story needs to be something deeper, I suppose. But the game does examine these things later, diving into character backstories and relationships. Which brings me back to wondering why a small blurb or line of dialogue couldn’t have been placed somewhere in the first thirty hours to help set the scene for those later, more impactful moments. 

This is doubly frustrating because the performances from the voice cast are excellent, and the animation work in the scenes you do get are stellar. But in the first half of the game, the areas and exploration just smother everything else, so those scenes are few and far between. The back half of the game sees this flipped on its head, with more story and cutscenes making their way up and the areas becoming a bit more easily navigable. 

Bright spots such as the story and weapon crafting are often bogged down by the lackluster combat and exploration.

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The lack of mini-map, layered large map, or objective markers is a detriment to the overall game, due to the overall verticality and interconnectedness of the zones you explore. The first few areas especially are massive, winding zones, with many paths crossing back and forth. It becomes quite easy to get lost. While in the beginning I was content to explore every nook and cranny to gather collectibles and upgrades, doing so comes at the cost of any interesting gameplay. Enemies are all over, and respawn when you rest or die, which forces you to face them ad nauseum unless you opt to try and escape. However, due to the mechanics necessary to advance through many puzzles or rooms, this is not always possible. Many enemies are also present throughout the entire game, and their movesets never change. It's not as if you can just mash your way through the encounters, either, as the combat actively punishes doing so with the stamina and counter systems in play. 

If the combat were more compelling, this would probably not feel like such a sin. Unfortunately, the battles are so simple it's deleterious to the experience. Face buttons target specific parts of your foe’s body, and you need to target weaker areas on each mook to do any real damage. You can also tap those face buttons for a light attack, or hold them for heavy attacks. There’s a block button, which can parry with timing, and a dash, which helps you avoid some blows — and that’s it. There’s no interesting combo system, situational movesets, or special attacks. Again, all of these middling aspects are not off-putting enough to deter me on their own. Many of my favorite games have parts that are just “ok.” However, it is unfortunate that so many core tenets of the game are melding together in ways that drag all of them down.

It’s a true spiritual successor to the prosaic action-oriented 360 game that your cousin never shuts up about, but nobody else cares to play.

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Which is why the game became so much more enjoyable when I stopped caring about any of that anymore. There was a point near the end of the second large zone where I decided to not engage with the collectibles, random enemies, or exploration. And all of that made it immensely more satisfying to engage in the big fights when I needed to. It made the pacing of the story feel so much better. It made the game fun. I was invested in these characters and the story, I was all in on the slower-paced fights and meticulous weapon crafting — until the credits rolled and then I was hit with a joyless collect-a-thon to unlock the true ending. I did not do that, by the way. I tried, got maybe a third of the way through and then resolved to wash my hands of this entirely. 

I couldn’t help but feel a real familiarity with this type of game. One that is certainly doing things well enough to be enjoyable on some level, but bloated in all the wrong ways — all without interesting support systems to keep that engaging over long periods of time. Which is when I remembered Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning. Now, I won’t say unequivocally that Blades of Fire is a modern day Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, but I’m not not saying that, either. It’s a true spiritual successor to the prosaic action-oriented 360 game that your cousin never shuts up about, but nobody else cares to play. If that type of thing sounds appealing to you, you may want to give this a look. As for me, I’ll stand happily off in the distance, finally free of the chains this game laid upon me.

Verdict

Blades of Fire is a fundamentally enjoyable game bogged down by a large number of truly uninspired aspects. Spiritless combat and exploration don’t mix well with a slow-paced story. Thankfully, there are enough bright spots to bridge the gap between early plodding moments and the endgame, such as the excellent voice performances and animation work. The weapon crafting system is actually a lot of fun on its own, as well. Leaning heavily into customizability, smithing offers some of the only means in which you have a say in the way the game plays, but it suffers under the weight of the other systems. It is the type of game that does just enough to keep you around, but never reaches the type of highs that seem within its grasp.

Image Credits: Taylor Rioux

Disclosure: I received a free review copy of this product from the publisher.