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.

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.

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.  

Note: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, GamingBolt as an organization

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.

Though it’s inherently a hack-and-slash title, Blades of Fire forces you to consider which weapon to use against which enemy, including mini-bosses like the Troll. Stunning enemies allow for chopping off limbs, which changes their strategy. For example, removing the Troll’s left arm will take away its club. It’s also possible to behead the beast, causing it to attack frantically, even if it can’t see you.

Another interesting tidbit is that Adso, the scholar who follows you around, noting details about enemies, can be sent back to base if you’re not a fan of the constant chatter. However, sometimes there’s no choice since he may discover an artifact that must be studied.

Blades of Fire launches on May 22nd for Xbox Series X/S, PS5, and PC. Learn more about the different types of damage here or brush up on how blacksmithing works.

Damage types are key because some are more effective than others against certain enemies. If their outline is green, your weapon is the best choice, but if it’s red, it’s not as effective, and fights will take longer.

Adso, who accompanies protagonist Arin, also proves very useful, recording details on enemies. Slay enough, and he’ll provide information on their lore, strategies, things to watch out for, etc. You can also unlock a Forging Scroll for a weapon upon felling a certain number of enemies, which lets you craft a new weapon of its type.

Blades of Fire launches on May 22nd for Xbox Series X/S, PS5, and PC, and promises 60 to 80 hours of gameplay. Head here for more details on the blacksmithing process.