Blades of Fire review: Forging a path with mid-budget retro charm

Having toiled away on critically-acclaimed titles in the Metroid series and reviving Konami’s Castlevania series, developer MercurySteam has taken the risk of co-financing their latest project. Blades of Fire is its chance to prove their development skills at crafting their own original idea, and there’s a lot to love about this game’s blend of dark fantasy and mythology.

That being said, it’s hard not to feel the weight of legacy and industry trends, rather than instilling this world with bold new ideas, holding this game back from greatness.

Rather than focusing on the negatives, there’s much to appreciate in this new game, particularly the father-son-esque bond at the heart of this story. While the game builds up a story about an ancient race of giants known as Forgers, instilling the knowledge to craft weapons from steel into humanity, with this power being seized by the anointed Queen Nerea to curse those who oppose her and turn steel to stone, the plot is simple. Aran de Lira possesses one of the ancient hammers necessary to forge his own steel, and alongside Asdo, the son of his deceased friend, embarks on a quest to kill the queen.

Classic is queen

There’s an almost-quaint retro simplicity to which the world of Blades of Fire is introduced: Aran is a lonely figure with an unspoken past that fuels his desire for a solitary existence, yet he’s more than willing to go and save an old friend he hears in danger nearby. The child desires revenge for his father’s death and, thanks to his knowledge of the Forgers, goes on this adventure with Aran to take down the queen.

The contrast of scholarly child and mysterious scarred older man soon warms to you, and not solely due to the similarities between their bond and that of Kratos and Atreus in the recent God of War titles. Asdo is far from an annoying sidekick, balancing wisdom with genuinely funny quips that are enough to make you laugh without grating (and you can always send him away, if you do wish for him to be quiet). I felt a warmth for Aran and a desire to learn more of his past, especially the guarded secrets of his past relationship to the Queen before her descent to despotic control.

Having first expected a practical but minimal story, I was surprised to find myself attached and with a desire to learn more of the rich lore the devs instilled into this world.

There’s an unabashed videogame-y nature to this world and cast, imbued with a quirkiness reminiscent of mid-budget adventure games abundant in the Xbox 360 and PS3 era

This is balanced with an engaging combat system that, though its quirks and intricacies will take time to learn, thanks to an at-first clunky and uncomfortable control scheme, you soon come to appreciate. Victory requires players to learn enemy attack patterns and the best weapons to counter each of them.

All four face buttons are each mapped to their direction of attack: on a PlayStation controller, this means Triangle will strike from above, X from below, and Square and Circle from each side. Depending on an opponent’s armor, it’s required to consider where you strike in order to deal maximum damage, or at times, inflict any damage at all.

The need to be aware of not just when but where you strike is most important in boss fights. One early sub-boss, a troll, requires you to whittle down its health, then slice off a part of the enemy’s body in order to drain it further before it can regenerate. Whether fighting big bosses – one boss at the end of the Crimson Fort is particularly interesting in how it forces you to learn both attack patterns and strike direction to defeat it most effectively – or small-fry enemies, it rarely tires even after dozens of hours have passed.

It may take time to get used to the stamina system that is required to inflict stronger, quicker attacks, and your hands will strain getting used to the unusual grip of having both block and dodging mapped to the left bumper and trigger, but you soon adjust to the fascinating tension it instils to high-stakes conflict.

Nerves of steel

Embodying the blacksmith skills key to the game’s identity, you must collect materials around the world to forge new weapons. You have complete control over the type of steel you use, which determines weight, speed, strength, blocking, and more, and once you’ve refined this selection, you must then physically hammer the weapon into shape. The closer to the real shape, the more refined the weapon, and therefore the more you can repair it before it’s unusable.

It’s fun, at first. After a while, it becomes repetitive and time-consuming. If you craft a good enough weapon, you can automatically recraft it to this level without replaying the minigame, but if you wish to improve this stat or build a new weapon, you must spend upwards of five minutes forging, grinding the momentum to a shuddering halt.

It’s one of a few issues holding the game back, many tied to the long legacy leading into this game’s development and the weight of adjusting the game’s design to chase industry trends. Many senior developers on Blades of Fire worked on the mostly forgotten 2001 action title named Severance: Blade of Darkness, which, beyond visual similarities, is often regarded as a precursor to the Dark Souls genre in its careful use of stamina and deliberate action.

While this makes it perhaps unfair to compare a game refining these 2001 ideas to Dark Souls, it’s hard not to see their implementation, and many other mechanics not found in Severance but introduced to this game are clearly inspired by the industry’s wholesale embrace of the beloved FromSoftware title. Players have limited flasks of health potions that can only be restored by resting at anvils, this game’s thematically fitting equivalent to bonfires, and upon death, players must return to the location they were felled in order to rescue their weapon.

Even if we were to credit these ideas to Severance and not an attempt to create a Soulslike adventure, Blades of Fire’s level design and enemies feel best suited to a style of action opposite to the plodding action and unstoppable attack animations of both titles. In battles against undead hordes, you can at times be facing close to a dozen enemies at once, and even your fastest weapons are useless with the rate at which your attacks are interrupted.

As this game lacks the punishment of lost resources or the risk of losing your weapon forever if you die before reclaiming it, recovering your weapon feels more like a chore and an obligatory feature to adhere to the formula than a design suited to the pace of this adventure.

A search for souls

It contributed to an overwhelming feeling that the embrace of so many Souls-isms only served to hinder the natural flow of the game, rather than enhance it.

This is before we discuss the game’s cumbersome map, which, through its lack of dimension, can become nearly useless when navigating more complex, multi-level terrain for the next objective.

This is only compounded by the fact that there’s no clear indication in the environment on where to go next, and even the optional objective markers activated by navigating menus and automatically disabled upon clearing that specific objective, unless reactivated, are often useless in more complex multi-level areas. If you’re navigating a multi-floor fortress and miss an inconspicuous door you must unlock with a newly-obtained key, even a marker won’t stop you wandering in circles for 20 minutes or longer, lost and frustrated.

Yet despite my complaints, I felt just enough charm to find myself soldiering forward. There’s an unabashed gamey nature to this world and cast, imbued with a quirkiness reminiscent of mid-budget adventure games abundant in the Xbox 360 and PS3 era, like Enslaved: Odyssey to the West, but non-existent in this modern era of spiraling budgets.

For all I can complain about Soulslike inspirations that these days induce more groans than excitement, there’s a simplicity to this quest to go and kill the queen while offering just enough mechanical depth without bogging you down in an overwhelming number of unnecessary systems.

You craft weapons, you fight enemies, you move forward. Simple, but the sense of a human hand touching every asset rather than some overcautious executive or an overzealous focus group drew me even to its flaws.

Blades of Fire is charming, even if its soulslike eccentricities were more of a hindrance to the characters and adventure housed within. This blend of retro simplicity and modern flair won’t be the best game you play in 2025, but it’s likely going to be one of the more charming (and as such memorable), and isn’t that just as good?

Should you play Blades of Fire?

Play it if…

Don’t play it if…

Accessibility features

Accessibility features in Blades of Fire are limited. Camera shake and motion blur can be adjusted, alongside the size and color of subtitles but otherwise, the default text is small, and it lacks many commonplace accessibility features such as colorblind modes.

How I reviewed Blades of Fire

I played just over 30 hours of the game on a base PS5 model using a standard DualSense controller on standard difficulty, getting all the way through the game to the latter stages of the main story.

I utilized an ASUS VG27AQL1A gaming monitor, while for audio, a mix of Denon speakers and a wireless audio adapter, and AirPods Max were used.

First reviewed May 2025