However, that’s not all, as Version 2.0 will also go live on all platforms simultaneously. There’s a lot to be excited about in the new update, with New Game Plus being an important addition alongside Photo Mode, the Titanium challenge level, new weapon parts and skins in NG+, DLSS 4 support on PC, a new Boss Revival mode, and much more. Version 2.0 might be the definitive way to experience the game if earlier criticism dissuaded you.

Alongside PC, Blades of Fire is available for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S. Despite failing to meet 505 Games’ sales expectations, we found it to be a pretty solid, if slightly flawed, experience, and its slow, methodical combat has certainly had its fair share of takers. But its crafting systems and the way it forged bonds between its players and their weapons were the real stars of the show.

“The video game market remains affected by challenging competitive dynamics, driven by an oversupply of new releases and increasingly selective consumers,” wrote the company in its announcement. “These conditions make it particularly difficult to successfully launch new titles and to develop reliable forecasting models capable of accurately projecting sales and volumes at launch.”

The company further goes on to explain that, despite the critical praise seen by Blades of Fire, the game performed under the expectations that had been set by Digital Bros. The reason for it, the company believes, has to do with challenges that arise from releasing a brand new game that isn’t already part of a pre-existing franchise.

“This confirms the challenges faced by most industry peers and competitors in attracting consumers to new titles, particularly when these are not backed by an established brand driving a loyal player community,” wrote Digital Bros. “Consequently, revenue for the fiscal year ending June 30, 2025, which was already projected to decline year-on-year, is now expected to contract even further.”

Blades of Fire being unable to meet the company’s sales targets has meant that around EUR 8 million has to be written off based on preliminary tests done by its board of directors. The overall EBIT (earnings before interest and taxes) losses for the fiscal year is expected to sit at around EUR 10 million.

Blades of Fire was released on PC (exclusively via Epic Games Store), PS5 and Xbox Series X/S back in May. The action RPG takes cues from FromSoftware’s Souls-style of games when it comes to having deliberate combat and challenging encounters, and pairs it with its own unique progression system that revolves around the player making use of a forge to craft weapons to take on different situations.

Players take on the role of King’s Ward firstborn Aran de Lira, who has set out on a quest to stop the evil machinations of Queen Nerca, who is able to use her magical abilities to turn steel into stone.

While a demo for the game has been out for quite some time now, Blades of Fire recently also got a 10-hour free trial on Xbox Series X/S over the previous weekend. This free trial was essentially the full game, albeit with a time limit of 10 hours, after which players could transfer their progress over to the full game if they decided to pick it up.

Previously, Blades of Fire’s lead game designer, Joan Amat, had spoken about how the progression system in the game doesn’t ultimately end with players becoming magical gods. For more details about the action RPG, check out our review.

If you try out Blades of Fire through the Xbox Free Play Days program, you will get full access to the entirety of Blades of Fire for 10 hours. If you then decide to pick up a copy of the game for yourself on Xbox Series X/S, you will also be able to carry over all the progress you made in the free trial into the full game.

It is worth noting that this free trial is separate from the demo that was released a week before Blades of Fire came out. The demo, available on all platforms, only includes the first few hours of the game, rather than giving you full access to the title for ten hours. However, the demo also allows you to carry over your progress into the full game.

Blades of Fire was released on PC and consoles back in May, alongside a new trailer that gave us a look at the general story setup, while also showing off its characters and the various challenges that players will have to face.

What sets Blades of Fire apart from other Souls-inspired action RPGs out there is the emphasis placed on weapon crafting through its Forge system. Lead game designer Joan Amat had spoken about how it would work back in March, confirming that the game’s progression systems don’t revolve around allowing players to become magical gods by the end of the game.

“You definitely can’t turn [protagonist] Aran into a magic god at the end of Blades of Fire, right? There are lots of spectacular things that you could do, have your weapon shoot fireballs or other things that are really spectacular,” said Amat. “This is not our aim! Our aim is to make everything really important.”

Amat also spoke about how the weapon forging system in Blades of Fire takes real-world attributes of weapons into account rather than game attributes like strength or agility. Because of this, the studio instead focused on allowing players to choose their weapon parts of choice to make “almost infinite” combinations of weapons.

“[Historical YouTubers] are talking about edges; they’re talking about balance, the center of mass, grips and handling, and edge alignment. They’re not talking about agility, strength, stamina, intelligence, and dexterity, right? Those are not the stats,” explained Amat.

“When we moved from the stats combo into a challenge mentality, balance became so much easier. We only really need to make sure that the enemy is strong against some things and weak against some other things. There are all these other great RPGs that are about power complexity. That’s not what this game is about.”

For more details about Blades of Fire, check out our review.

The latest trailer for Blades of Fire gives us a glimpse of the general story setup, showing off some of its characters and the kinds of challenges that players will have to take on as they progress through the game’s story. Quite a bit of emphasis is placed on the protagonist Aran’s weapon in the trailer, as along with showcasing lavish, large environments that can be explored and fought through.

The trailer also gives us a look at some of the epic bosses that players will be able to encounter. As these immense challenges are taken on, Aran will have to constantly focus on crafting new weaponry he can use. These weapons serve as one of the primary progression systems in the game, with each weapon type giving Aran different move sets, each of which can be useful in different situations.

In Blades of Fire, players take on the role of King’s Ward firstborn Aran de Lira, and will have to take on the evil Queen Nerca, who can use her magical abilities to turn steel into stone, making weapons that could be used against her tyrannical rain useless.

A trailer for Blades of Fire was released back in March, giving us a look at 5 minutes worth of gameplay. Along with the action RPG systems, the trailer also showed off the Forge system through which Aran can craft new weapons or upgrade his older ones. The studio has described the game as having “near countless weapon varieties” through the use of the Forge.

Among the things shown off in the gameplay trailer was the fact that Aran has access to up to three weapons at any given time, and that switching between them is quite important in the minute-to-minute gameplay. Not only does this help spread out the wear and tear that your weapons might face, but certain weapons’ move sets might be more beneficial to use against some enemies.

Lead game designer Joan Amat had also spoken about how the Forge system is important to the main progression systems in Blades of Fire. Amat emphasised that developer MercurySteam didn’t want players to end up as magical gods by the end of the game. Rather, the studio wants to ensure that there is a healthy level of challenge throughout the title.

“You definitely can’t turn Aran into a magic god at the end of Blades of Fire, right? There are lots of spectacular things that you could do, have your weapon shoot fireballs or other things that are really spectacular,” said Amat. “This is not our aim! Our aim is to make everything really important.”

For more details about Blades of Fire, check out our review, where we gave it a score of 7 out of 10. We praised the game’s forging systems for being deeply customisable and satisfying, while criticising how it used trash mobs to slow down the pace of combat.

The one thing about this game that truly differentiates itself for me is the forging. Blades of Fire has the deepest smithing system I’ve ever experienced in a game … well, unless there’s a smith simulator or something that I haven’t played. I’d say half of this game’s identity lies in the forging systems. For one, you actually manually forge the weapons yourself deciding everything from blade shape, shaft type, and grade of metals used. It’s brilliantly customizable and immersive as heck.

The forging process starts at the blackboard where you choose all of the various pieces and metals you want to use. Some metals are more durable but less damaging than others, just as blade heads vary on their reach, speed, and damage, among other stat variables. You can really min/max your weapons and fine tune them. For those who don’t want to get bogged down by pages of customization, each weapon type starts out with an initial design, skipping blackboard planning entirely if you desire.

"You manually forge the weapons yourself deciding everything from blade shape, shaft type, and grade of metals used."

With the weapon design specified, it’s time to hit the anvil for some forge work.  I absolutely love how forging impacts your weapon in gameplay. Depending on your forging performance, you can earn up to five stars. These ‘Forge Stars’ directly determine how many repairs the weapon gets before breaking. Being good at forging therefore benefits you with a longer-lasting weapon, yet doesn’t completely destroy or hamper the weapon’s efficacy, which is fair. The forging minigame itself is, again, one of the deepest smithing minigames I’ve experienced. Each weapon has a general shape that must be closely adhered to when forging; this is represented by a white line.

The steel you’re carving from are the vertical dark bars. The goal is to strike the dark bars to fit the shape of the white line, and this is done by increasing and decreasing the power of strikes and tilting the angle of the hammer. The cherry on top is the the option to name your self-wrought weapon after forging it. Shaping the weapon through this minigame is surprisingly engaging, but there are times when I just want a another weapon without all the steps involved – and fortunately, this is possible. Previously made weapon types can be automatically forged using your previous star rating. There’s still a lot of button presses and little animations to skip to bypass the forging process, though. And considering how often players are forced to forge new weapons thanks to durability, that’s quite a lot of time just mashing skip. I lament that there’s not a single quick template button.

"Instead of forging right there at the anvil, you’re required to teleport to a separate ‘Forger’s’ realm. In general, there’s quite a bit of loading involved in forging."

That said, I wasn’t bothered by the frequency of weapons breaking. Unlike, say, Zelda Breath of the Wild, any weapon can last dozens upon dozens of fights. The frequency feels just right, and it can be further tuned through your selection of metals during forging. I’m usually a ‘no weapon durability’ guy when it comes to action games, but didn’t mind it at all in this game. Something that could’ve very easily compounded weapon scarcity is the active equipped weapon being left at the place you died at. This could’ve easily turned into something very frustrating, but instead, no matter how many times you die, weapons aren’t lost permanently; they stay in the spot you died with them. Nothing else is lost upon death, by the way, just the equipped weapon.

If retrieval run-backs sounds familiar, that’s because it is. This game has its own take on the Dark Souls Bonfire mechanic; just replace bonfire with anvil and it’s mostly the same thing. Forger’s Anvils are carefully placed throughout the map, functioning as the game’s checkpoints. Enemies respawn once the player rests at them. And resting is crucial in this game, considering the finite amount of health bottles that only get refilled when resting. It’s here at these anvils where fast travel is possible too, and where some of the game’s load times make themselves apparent.

I don’t mind a small bit of loading in between anvil teleports, but it’s also at anvils where the player must go to forge their weapons. Instead of forging right there at the anvil, you’re required to teleport to a separate ‘Forger’s’ realm which, you guessed it, requires a separate load screen in and out of. Like the fast travel load times, these are noticeable in length and add up cumulatively considering how often you’re going to be forging new weapons.

I wish forging didn’t require two load screens, another small walk to the forging anvil, and a handful of scenes but was initiated right there in the actual game world, but it’s not a deal breaker. Speaking of performance, a majority of the game runs at a smooth 60 frame a second with quality visuals still intact. Though, when large amounts of enemies are on screen at once, things tend to get a bit choppy with frame dips.

"I felt reassured in my combat abilities thanks to responsive and relatively tight controls."

Yet even in the midst of a swarm of enemies and some frame stutters, I felt reassured in my combat abilities thanks to responsive and relatively tight controls. Unlike other third-person action games, you can zoom the camera out a decent amount. No over-the-shoulder claustrophobia here. Aran has a spritely dash in any direction and a quick sprint.

Though the turning radius is somewhat wide, I never felt too spatially restricted during battles thanks to the dash and dodge roll. I did, however, feel the absence of a jump. Maybe that’s just my conditioning from the absolute free movement that Elden Ring has, but I couldn’t help wanting to jump throughout the entire game. The icing on the snappy control cake is the ability to cancel out of dodges and attacks instantly (with the exception of heavy attacks).

As the name of the game implies, melee weapons are the primary, and only, method of dishing out pain to enemies. Aran is given four directional attacks which are mapped to the four face buttons on a controller. These correspond to the four directions, which comes into play against enemies and their weak parts, some which can get dismembered.

While there’s no combos per-se, stringing together directional attacks is smooth and seamless, unless you’re out of stamina. Stamina can be recovered pretty quickly by holding the block button. That’s an important button because it’s also how you time parries, which regenerates stamina and allows follow-up attacks when pulled off. The parry window is quite narrow in Blades of Fire, but it varies from enemy to enemy how easy it is to pull off.

Since melee weapons are the only offensive option for Aran, it’s only natural each weapon fulfills different roles. Close to a dozen different weapon types exist in the game, from greatswords to daggers to polearms. Obviously, a large hammer doesn’t pierce an enemy the same way a dagger does. This leads to the three types of damage in the game: pierce, slash, and blunt.

You can switch between these damage types during combat, though some weapons only feature one type (like a club only having blunt). The really cool thing is each of the damage types has its own damage values that get progressively diminished with weapon wear. The solution to this is mid-battle sharpening, which spruces up the weapon’s damage values as good as if it were new. Only problem with sharpening is it further diminishes that weapon’s overall durability.

"You can switch between these damage types during combat, though some weapons only feature one type (like a club only having blunt)."

Again, I generally don’t like weapon durability in games, but the way this heightens weapon strategy, whether to use pierce or slash or hotkey in another weapon entirely, is engaging. Oh yeah, and each enemy is weak to different attack types, as you might imagine. Heavily armored foes typically don’t flinch at small daggers, while the speed and slash damage from daggers completely decimate the more  bestial foes. Despite the exclusive focus on melee weapons, Blades of Fire does a good job varying up its combat toybox, at least for a good while.

By the mid-point of the game, I yearned for a long-range option of some kind. Either that or some way to inflict status ailments or do something, anything, other than just swing armaments. Still, for a game solely focused on swinging armaments, there’s some impressive variety and depth here, though it may not be for everyone.

Of course, every weapon costs a certain amount of materials, some which are more rare than others. While I never felt the need to go out and farm materials to get by, I did have to farm for broken weapons occasionally. My favorite weapon just happened to break in the middle of a difficult boss fight. Instead of doing the reasonable thing and just switching weapons, or forging a completely new one, I went to the location of the weapon’s materials were and farmed them. If you grow attached to a weapon, you can always farm materials to get it back. At least the game’s menus and map make the material gathering process a bit more convenient.

"My main issues with the map are its lack of altitude and terrain distinction."

Each location on the map shows the ingredients that can be found there. It also indicates points of interest like anvils and mission markers (if you choose to turn them on). Custom markers also exist in case you find something cool that’s just out of reach. My main issues with the map are its lack of altitude and terrain distinction. Furthermore, there’s no distinction of different floors within buildings, rendering the map useless for navigation in these situations.

The main source of my map dismay comes from the level design itself. Areas can be difficult to navigate, with branching routes twisting and contorting in wild directions. I consider myself savvy when it comes to in-game navigation, thanks to all the open-world games of late, and this game confused the heck out of me multiple times with its level design.

There’s poor visual distinction between routes in a given region and very little guidance in general. I’m not clamoring for the equivalent of yellow paint, but can there at least be some visual language leading me to a point of interest? The lack of interesting landmarks in the world also contribute to the messy and tangled level design a bit, though some areas do boast impressive draw distances of past zones, rare though they are.

"While the routes within a region get repetitive and samey pretty quick, the regions themselves feel distinct and unique from each other."

While the routes within a region get repetitive and samey pretty quick, the regions themselves feel distinct and unique from each other. The swamplands of the south feel appropriately humid and wild while the indoor labyrinth of the Crimson Fort gives the feeling of faded nobility. Still, the individual regions themselves felt just a tad longwinded without enough variation, suffering from confusing layouts. The layout of one region is so bad, it requires a tour guide of sorts who signals the way forward, which leads to another gripe I have: escort companions.

The tour guide example is especially egregious because the player must actually wait in an area for him to initiate the way forward. You can imagine how frustrating it is to wait for some old geyser to remember the way forward in this game, shorter though the wait period may be. And this tour guide is with you the entire way through a region too; it’s not just a one-time gimmick. But that’s not all, there’s other escort levels on top of the tour guide one. In one indoor region, you must keep a NPC safe as he clings to your back through the entire zone. Enemies will knock him off and abduct him, requiring you to rescue him before ultimately progressing. What’s more, the NPC cries in a way that gave me Yoshi’s Island flashbacks of baby Mario.

"In one indoor region, you must keep a NPC safe as he clings to your back through the entire zone."

In isolation, escort sections don’t always end up bad, but this game has a bit of a trash mob problem. Maps are littered with common enemies, and they’re typically always grouped up. This isn’t a problem in Dynasty Warriors style games where batches of enemies can be felled in a single scoop, but this game goes for more decidedly methodical combat. Sure, if you pick the perfect weapon and have it sharpened, you can kill plenty of enemies in one hit, especially on the easier difficulties, but it requires proper set-up and excellent timing. By definition, a trash mob shouldn’t require perfect gameplay execution to obliterate.

The high encounter rate is further compounded by the level navigation issues and escort demands, making for a frustrating experience when all of these issues are present. And before you say “git gud”, I don’t mind going through these mobs once or twice, but farming for materials or retrieving lost weapons makes them irritatingly redundant.

By contrast, there’s nothing but positive things to say about the boss fights. Bosses are where enemy weak parts and limb detachment gets its proper due. The first area has a roaming troll boss that can actually re-grow its detached head, requiring swift DPS to finish it before that happens. Some bosses also have a couple phases to them. Nothing fancy or super cinematic in that regard, but the change-up in mechanics lends the fights more interesting than they would’ve been. Some bosses shoot out bullet hell style projectiles, which are fun to maneuver around despite the lack of a jump.

And each boss and enemy in the game has their own extensive bestiary entry. Heck, each grade of steel has its own entry, just to illustrate how detailed Adso’s journal is.

"Adso’s Chronicles are filled to the  brim with world lore and character portraits, all from the perspective of your companion"

Speaking of Adso, he can be sent away to the camp should you tire of his banter. And his does admittedly get tiring. He’s constantly complaining, and should you wait around for too long, oh boy will you here about how bored he is (despite the game making you wait during certain sections). He fulfills his gameplay purpose well though, completing entries on monsters, which grants new Forger Scrolls and ultimately new weapons.

And Adso always has new insights into every area you visit, but his banter can get old quick. The other supporting cast is hit or miss as well. Aran meets some pretty outlandish folk, including a ghost gravedigger, and you have to babysit half of them through escort sections, which is a shame.

But at least a majority of the characters have good voice acting. Not excellent, almost great, but certainly good. The amount of voice lines in the game is pretty impressive, though it’s the music that particularly impresses me. The way the music dynamically shifts throughout the experience means it never feels stale or repetitive. And despite the frequency of mob battles, I never tired of the warlike drums accompanying these skirmishes. The instruments also sound wonderfully rich and diverse, accompanying the environments well.

"Blades of Fire really does look and sound like a AAA title despite its more AA status."

Not that the environments even need the extra boost in atmosphere, as graphically impressive as they are. Yes, levels can feel repetitive after a bit, but darn do they look brilliant. There’s just so much detail behind each texture and object, not to mention the amount of little pots and pieces of furniture you can smash and get materials from. Blades of Fire really does look and sound like a AAA title despite its more AA status.

The in-game cinematics demonstrate this quality amply, with unique character animations and smart camera usage for every movement. Yet despite the attractive cinematics and in-depth lore of the game, I couldn’t get into the plot as much as I wanted to. The setting just felt a bit too devoid of people to properly care about. Did I want to see Aran and Adso succeed and save the world? I guess? I do like Aran as a character, stoic, if not somewhat generic as he is.

But I never felt particularly invested in any character enough to truly care what happens to them. The whole setting is meant to feel like a fairy tale and it does. Yet, it lacks either the dark mystery or the fanciful whimsy to get me excited about it. For plenty of folks, the story of the Aran and Adso’s journey to defeat the evil queen will be enough of a hook to get them through, and it barely was for me, and maybe that’s enough.

Blades of Fire is a unique take on this particular brand of action RPG. The forging mechanics are wonderful and I hope to see more games get players as connected to their weapons as this game, and that’s saying a lot for a game with durability. It’s not without its faults, but Blades of Fire comes recommended if you’re a fan of melee sword combat, which I assume a lot of us are.

This game was reviewed on the PlayStation 5.

According to the developer on BlueSky, it includes the first few hours of the hack-and-slash action RPG. Your progress will also transfer to the game when it launches next week, which means this is based on the final product.

Blades of Fire is available on March 22nd for consoles and PC and focuses on Aran de Lira as he embarks on a quest to defeat Queen Nerea. The latter ascended the throne after her father’s passing and has been on a reign of terror, cursing the kingdom’s steel into stone.

Wielding a mystic Forge hammer, Aran can create his own weapons to fight back. The blacksmithing portion is more than just a crafting exercise. It’s a full-fledged system that deeply influences combat and tactics. Head here for more details and check out our feature on the tile.

“Soon” is the operative word as a release date hasn’t been announced, but it will arrive sometime before the game’s launch on May 22nd. The amount of content also remains unknown, though it should be sizable given the 60 to 80 hours of gameplay in the full release.

Blades of Fire is coming to Xbox Series X/S, PS5, and PC. Set in a fantasy realm where Queen Nerea wreaks havoc with her soldiers, players control Aran, who wields a mystic forge hammer. Crafting his own steel weapons, he battles the queen’s forces and other monsters like Trolls.

While the combat relies on using the right weapon type, parrying, and more, the blacksmithing is equally important, with players tempering a weapon in multiple ways. Head here for more details. You can also check out our feature for everything about Blades of Fire.

Setting and Protagonist

The short version of the story is that everything sucks. The long version is that Queen Nerea has cursed the land’s steel and reduced it to stone (though her forces remain unaffected). It’s up to Aran De Lira – and Adso de Zelk – to stop her. Aran is special since he wields a mystical hammer that can create steel weapons. What’s the deal with Nerea? What are the origins of the hammer? All this and more remain to be answered, but it’s up to the player how much they want to learn about the world.

Gameplay

The gameplay loop consists of two main pillars – crafting weapons and combat. The two are intricately linked since your weapons – and the skills required to wield them – will be the key to overcoming Nerea and her forces. While this may sound like the recipe for your average survival crafting experience, Blades of Fire is more of an action-adventure title.

Exploration

The game features a vast and intricately designed world where every region is woven into the next through hidden passages and winding routes. As progression continues, the level design evolves into complex, maze-like structures that demand close observation. Navigation becomes a challenge in itself, with players encouraged to rely heavily on maps, personal markers, and memory to stay oriented. With its sheer scale and density, getting lost won’t just be possible—it’ll be part of the experience. Expect to traverse enormous fortresses, regal estates, and a variety of richly imagined fantasy landscapes.

Weapon Families

There are seven weapon families – daggers, sabers, swords, greatswords, twins, polearms, and spears – with various armaments, from a halberd and curved blade to a two-handed hammer. You can take a claymore into battle with its heft and slow but powerful attacks or opt for a more balanced sword.

Forge Scrolls

These weapons aren’t available to craft right off the bat, though. Instead, you’ll need to obtain Forge Scrolls. Slay enough of a specific enemy, and the scroll becomes available, letting you craft the weapon in question. Over 30 scrolls await, with an almost “infinite” number of weapon combos promised.

Damage Types

Of course, you can’t just use any weapon against every foe. Three damage types exist – blunt, slashing, and piercing – with some weapons capable of swapping between slashing and piercing. Depending on the enemy and their armor, the damage type can make a difference between easy fights and protracted affairs. If there are green outlines around enemies, then your weapon’s damage type is effective; red outlines mean trouble, and it’s best to switch to something else.

Making Weapons

How do you go about making weapons? Gathering materials (read: slaying numerous monsters) and with Forge Scroll in hand, beginning the blacksmithing process. It sounds simple on the surface, but there is a lot to consider.

Weapon Stats

To be more specific, 14 different stats dictate your weapon’s performance, affecting stamina, weight, blocking, and more. After selecting the right components for a weapon, the actual blacksmithing process begins where you hammer a weapon, carefully adjusting your strike strength, strike width and even the tilt. Stats can’t be perfectly balanced and some will inevitably take precedence while others fade away.

Weapon Quality

But no matter how finely crafted your weapon, it won’t last forever. As the weapon degrades, you’ll need to repair it, but even that’s limited by the star rating. Depending on the number of stars, you’re limited to that exact number of repairs. And once a weapon breaks, it’s useless, though you can always dismantle it for crafting materials. Whether the star rating affects how many resources are returned is unknown.

Combat

The combat in Blades of Fire will look familiar, given all the slashing, parrying to make enemies vulnerable, charged attacks, and whatnot. However, you can also change a weapon’s positioning. This can come in handy when, say, sweeping lighter enemies off their feet. Dismemberment is also on the menu, so make sure to target a body part and keep hacking.

Souls-Like Elements (and Differences)

A stamina bar alone doesn’t a Souls-like make, but Blades of Fire does employ the classic trope of enemies respawning at checkpoints (which are anvils, appropriately enough). However, blocking can regenerate your stamina, attacking from the high ground will consume less stamina, and parrying temporarily grants unlimited stamina. If you fall in combat, your weapon is dropped at the same spot. You must then backtrack and retrieve in a neat twist on the whole walk of shame.

50+ Enemy Types

Blades of Fire promises an extensive enemy variety with over 50 types to combat. Thus far, we’ve seen humans armed with weapons, undead, gremlins, trolls, elementals and more. On top of accounting for their attacks and patterns, you also need to consider their armor and swap out weapons to select the best choice. Which is easier said than done when you’re surrounded and need to reposition.

Adso’s Role

Adso is more than just a lore-dumping machine – he’ll also follow you around, taking notes on the enemies slain. Take out enough foes and you can fill out the bestiary note for the same. For example, Adso notes that Putrids aren’t very smart and have mostly predictable attacks, but they’re good at ambushes and those wielding axes can leap attack to deal more damage.

60 to 80 Hours of Gameplay

Blades of Fire is shaping up to be a surprisingly large experience, with projected playtime estimated to run between 60 to 80 hours. It’s still unclear how much of that includes cutscenes, conversations with Adso, or optional side content. Even so, for a linear action-adventure game without typical open-world elements, the overall scope feels impressively ambitious.

PC Requirements

The PC version’s minimum requirements include an Intel Core i7-11700KF or AMD Ryzen 5 5800X CPU, 16 GB of RAM, and either an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070 (8 GB) or AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT (6 GB). It’s enough to provide 1080p/60 FPS on High settings, albeit in Performance mode when using AMD FSR.

To play 1440p/60 FPS on High settings and Balanced FSR, you’ll need a GTX 1080 Ti (11 GB) or a Radeon RX 6700 XT (12 GB). If you’re aiming for 4K/60 FPS on the same settings, an RTX 4070 Super (12 GB) or an RX 6800 XT (16 GB) will be needed. Finally, to run the game at 4K/60 FPS on Ultra with Quality FSR, a Core i7-13600K or Ryzen 5 7600X, 16 GB of RAM, and an RTX 4080 (16 GB), or a Radeon RX 7900 XTX (24 GB) are needed.

Before we get into describing the blacksmithing process in-depth, there’s another obvious influence in Blades of Fire’s gameplay. The many hack and slash games that have released in recent years. Environs replete with ancient runic symbolism, magical birds, and witches dwelling inside living homesteads are all observable within a mere five-minute gameplay trailer published by the devs themselves. A concern, even from this brief glimpse, is that Blades of Fire is flying too close to modern hack and slash’s sun. This concern gathers weight when it becomes clear our sword-wielding protagonist Aran de Lira is continually flanked by young companion Adso.

Adso is useless in battle. Instead, his role as keen-eyed observer is to compile a compendium of every enemy Aran encounters. The more knowledge his educated mind commits to paper the better Aran becomes at deducing strategies to take down increasingly powerful foe. Adso also provides Aran with guidance, him being able to decipher ancient text, uncover hidden knowledge, and contribute to solving environmental puzzles. From gameplay shared thus far, it seems as though Aran is clueless as to the lay of the land the pair are traversing. Adso, conversely, has prior knowledge of the realms they’re entering, and seems excited when they continue their quest into a place known as Kar-Lethal Swamp, even if both Aran and us – the players – are non-plussed.

Each biome brings new dangers – again, met with excitement by Adso (after all, he would be upbeat to encounter new enemies seeing as they ignore him completely, attacking Aran exclusively). To tackle the game’s myriad opponents, of which the game is confirmed to run into the fifties, each with unique weapons, attack patterns, and traits, Aran will need to continually collect resources and materials to put into forging new weapons. This, as already mentioned, is where Blades of Fire’s unique selling point comes to the fore.

Forging in this game is its own self-contained activity. As aforesaid, a vast array of options precedes Aran’s blacksmithery, with seemingly endless assortments of customised weaponry at his fingertips so long as he’s acquired the knowledge to construct them via collectable forge scrolls, blueprints amassed through killing enemies who’re wielding the same weapon. The options here are dizzying though. Seven weapon categories – daggers, twins, sabers, swords, greatswords, polearms, and spears – each with at least five distinct forge scrolls within.

Let’s look at crafting a sword. Here, there are options for blade length, blade shape, guard size, and building material, the latter encompassing three categories of steel. Light, medium, and heavy, scavenge-able steel can be mixed into the perfect blade, with different blends boosting durability, laceration potential, and defensive capability. Deciding on the composition of Aran’s next blade is simplified by an easy-to-read triangle too, each corner denoting one of those three traits, with the different steel types contained within. Rarer steel types occupy the outer edges of the triangle too, so there’s an incentive to get foraging out in the wilds. A handy info box rests on the right-hand side of the screen too, it’s stat bars adjusting with every change made to the weapon’s composition before the forging process begins.

The act of forging itself is supported by excellent furnace animations and a hammering minigame. Once Aran retrieves a glowing sheet of metal from the furnace, he must then hammer it into shape. His hammer can be raised, lowered, twisted, angled; the goal being to smash the outline displayed on the still-glowing blade. The better the shape the weapon is hammered, the more opportunities for repairing the item further down the line are available. It’s a system which encourages quality craftmanship and pride in one’s work and it’s rare to see this level of dedication to crafting in video games. The wealth of customisation on offer will hopefully alleviate the tedium usually felt with this kind of mechanic in other games of the genre too.

Best of all, perhaps, is once the new weapon is complete it can be given a name. Is this a mechanic to foster a relationship with every crafted item? To encourage Aran to take care of it, maybe? After all, out in the forests weapon management becomes as important a consideration as it does in survival games. Durability is limited and blocking dulls a blade’s edge, reducing its effectiveness. These can be sharpened, but this comes at a cost of the weapon’s overall durability. Weapons can be repaired at one of the numerous anvils discoverable in the world but, if you remember, depending on how well the weapon was crafted there’re only a maximum of four opportunities for repair anyway.

Going full circle back to the combat’s Soulslike similarity and, due to shields being non-existent, blocking and parrying seem to be the most effective ways to counteract an enemy attack. However, as just mentioned, blocking reduces a weapon’s effectiveness. Furthermore, attacks from enemies on the larger side can’t be repelled by blocking, nor can certain elemental attacks like fire be stopped. The temptation then would be to dodge ad infinitum however, in another move dissimilar to Dark Souls, blocking in Blades of Fire has a benefit: stamina replenishment. See, using Aran’s blade to defend against enemy attacks re-fills his stamina gauge. Enemies expel stamina with every one of their attacks too, so blocking, parrying, and evading by whatever means at Aran’s disposal is the way their stamina can be whittled down to nothing; to render them stunned and vulnerable.

Combat is more forgiving than any FromSoftware game regardless. However, skill exists in weapon direction and body part targeting. See, each action button denotes a specific location on the enemy’s body – right-most button to attack the right, bottom button to attack the torso, and so on. Three distinct weapon directions are at Aran’s disposal too – slashing, piercing, and blunt force. Slashing is useful for crowd control, for instance, whilst forward lurching pierces most effective at puncturing certain body parts, or when Aran finds himself in a particular narrow spot.

Complicating things further is the fact that different weapon categories harbour varying degrees of effectiveness depending on the enemy. To aid in rapid-fire decision making, once an enemy is locked onto a coloured outline frames their figure. Green outlines denote a weapon in Aran’s palms that’s effective, yellow if only moderately useful, and red if it may as well be made a blade made of chocolate. There’s a depth to this combat, but from the gameplay seen thus far it doesn’t seem as though it’ll ever become too complicated.

Can Blades of Fire end the year as one of its biggest games? Well, there’s certainly heaps of promise here. Weapons forging and combat look to be the game’s principal draws, but there’s a ton of lore underpinning a story of revenge and retribution too. Blades of Fire could find a sizeable audience based on these factors alone.  

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For instance, Queen Nerea, who ascended the throne after her father’s death, actually grew up alongside Aran. The latter is the son of the King’s Ward commander, and the two had a “close bond.” A “tragic event” seemingly changed things and scarred Aran, though he’s determined to move on.

Other notable characters include Glinda, Aran’s mentor who also wields a Forge Hammer; Melkart, an ogre who helps in exploration but thinks of himself as a king; and Melcart, the Dorian Graves undertaker who could be the key to venturing to the Necropolis and dealing with the necromancer, Acedes Alexander.

Blades of Fire launches on May 22nd for Xbox Series X/S, PS5, and PC. Check out some more extensive gameplay here.