After spending the 2010s almost wholly dedicated to the Castlevania genre, it’s time for MercurySteam to test themselves with something a little bit different. Heck, it’s been a good while since they’ve even dealt in three dimensions, after a pair of side-scrolling Metroid games that included the excellent Metroid Dread. The studio is leaping out of that genre as they look to forge their own original IP with Blades of Fire, creating a new alloy that infuses the Soulslike with some fresh and invigorating new ideas of their own.
MercurySteam CEO & Game Director Enric Álvarez told us, “We started this adventure four years ago with the guys at 505 Games, who trusted that this was an interesting proposal. It’s an original IP, we own it, and it will allow us hopefully to fly with our own wings, which is something that independent developers are always looking for.”
There’s something decidedly PS3/Xbox 360 about the look and feel of the world that Blades of Fire conjures, but I mean that in the best possible way. It has that style to the fantasy world and characters, but with a modern game engine and level of detail through the environments that feels contemporary.
Our hero Aran de Lira is a blacksmith turned warrior, but you’d be forgiven for thinking that he’s been working out full time at the Chris Redfield School of Bodybuilding – his hands in particular, look like they’re the size of his head! Right at the start of the game, he rescues the young and studious waif that is Adso from being ambushed by the Queen’s Guard, though comes to the commotion just a little too late to save Adso’s mentor and Aran’s friend Abbot Dorin. The pair of them must set off across the lands to battle through the Queen’s forces, rediscover the magic of the Forgers, and ultimately end the Queen’s tyrannical reign.
Key to doing this is Aran’s ability to forge new and increasingly powerful weapons. The Queen’s magics have turned all her enemies’ weapons from metal to stone, so Aran is now the de facto hero to save these lands. The magical hammer he now holds transports Aran to The Forge, a pocket realm where he can craft new weapons in isolation. It’s a fantastically engaging idea, nowhere near as vague as blacksmithing in Kingdom Come: Deliverance, not as obtuse as a rhythm action minigame that you might expect, and instead more of a puzzle that you can take your time over.
It starts with a Forge Scroll, a blueprint for the weapon you’re about to create, and for which you then need to choose and provide the metals, wood and other components needed to craft it. You can choose different metal variants for different parts of a weapon, lending it different attributes from this, trading off strength for speed, weight and durability for stamina depletion, and more.
From there, you need to actually forge the steel, starting with a glowing block of heated metal that needs hammering into shape. This is represented by what looks like a Hi-Fi’s EQ as you move bars back and forth with each hammer blow.
“We found this kind of minigame very close to the reality,” Enric said. “The possibilities it gives you, how hard you strike, the direction you strike, you’re moving metal in reality. So the bars are just a representation of the metal moving in one direction or the other. You always end up with a viable weapon […] the worst that can happen to you is that the weapon doesn’t have any stars, which is something that you don’t want, but it’s very easy to get a few.”
It’s a great active puzzle element; the closer that you get to completely matching the white line creating a higher quality weapon that can be repaired and reforged more times in future. It’s quite forgiving in how it rates your creation, and once you’ve forged a weapon once, you’re able to skip this process and get the same quality of weapon as you’ve made before.
I love this system, and it becomes a kind of surrogate for more in-depth RPG levelling and mechanics, outside of gathering pips of health and stamina, and a light skill tree earned through collecting cryptic Forger cylinders. There’s dozens of weapons in the game, each catering to different styles of play, and you can choose how to apply the rare metals that you gradually gather through the game.
While you can absolutely have a preference, you can’t just main in a single weapon. As you approach a fight with an enemy and lock on to them, they’ll be outlined in green, yellow, red, or a combination of colours. That immediately tells you whether your weapon is going to be effective against them, and if it isn’t, then you will want to switch weapons or even just your style of attack from slashing to stabbing in order to regain an advantage in battle. Basic enemies can often be offed by a single heavy strike or quickly following that up with a quick attack, but for the tougher enemies that you start to face after the opening hour or so, quick-switching to the right weapon is vital, and identifying if stabbing or slashing is stronger is as well.
Enric said, “This is primarily an action adventure game, it is not an RPG. Combat is a central piece and I think that the combat in this game, the fact that you can attack different parts of the body, this is an idea that came naturally from the Forge.”
“If you have a Forge where you can express yourself – I could say I like spears, I’m going to use this steel, I’m going to put the weight on the tip so I can deal more damage. If you have several ways to attack enemies, it’s mandatory that enemies have several ways to counteract that […] so it forces you to think. It’s not just that you get a brand new hammer and just button-mash it. You’re going to be in pieces in seconds.”
There’s a really pleasing weight and heft to the combat here, and some great, individualistic twists on action RPG hack ‘n’ slashing. Yes, it’s stamina-based, and heavier weapons drain this quicker, so you will be slowed if you attack too much without backing off, but regaining stamina is accelerated if you hold to block, putting you in a defensive stance. While blocking is universal, attacks are directional, using the four face buttons to aim for head, each side and from below. Some armoured enemies are without helmets, for example, so you want to aim there, and there’s other enemies that have weak areas as they build up to unleash spores, which you can prevent and deal extra damage by targeting. Heavy attacks are dished out by holding instead of tapping an attack, and some bigger enemies need this for a finishing move or they’ll regenerate and come at you again.
There’s a delightful amount of cartoonish gore throughout. Smashing enemies with a large hammer just obliterates their head with a spurt of blood, arms get lopped off if you land a final blow from the side, and there’s a troll with multiple health bars that will continue fighting, regardless of the limb you remove first.
Beating enemies will gradually unlock their weapons for you to craft – defeat 40 claymore wielding zombies, for example – and they will drop materials upon death, in addition to those you gather from smashing up the environment. Taking these to the regular anvils in the game let you transport yourself to The Forge, and these also act like Soulslike bonfires. If you die, the weapon you were wielding is left behind, and you need to trek back to that spot from the nearest anvil to retrieve it or risk losing it for good. If the game is too challenging, then there’s multiple difficulty levels below the standard one to ease off a touch.
I really enjoyed my few hours with Blades of Fire. The original fantasy setting, the characters, and their voice acting and script all work for me – Aran’s voice acting reminds me of a cross between Matt Berry and Henry Cavill – but it’s really the unique touches for the combat and the puzzle-like forging that stand out. This is definitely one to keep an eye on when it launches in May.
