Blades Of Fire PC Review
Summary: Wield a sword/dagger/spear etc of your own construction in this entertaining action adventure with a captivating story.
4.5
Forging Fun
There can be a fine balance between telling too much and too little in game introductions. Blades Of Fire sprinkles just enough information, in just the right way, to grab the player’s attention. You play as Aran De Lira, and the game starts with you racing to try and help some people in distress. Unfortunately, you aren’t fast enough to save them both. Your interaction pairs you with Adso, whose traveling companion bestows upon you a magical hammer before he passes away. Thus, your quest to kill the queen begins!
That magical hammer is linked to what makes you special: you have the power to forge Steel. The Queen isn’t too happy about this, as she has cast a spell to make her enemies’ steel turn to stone (and indeed, when you die, your weapon does turn to stone, but when you revive, you can recover it). That forging is key to how to play. You will learn new weapon types and upgrades as you progress, and you can forge a number of different weapons that you can swap between in combat. Different weapons will have varying effectiveness against different enemies.
Fortunately, when you lock on to an enemy, they will be surrounded by an outline that indicates how effective your strikes are likely to be and where they are going to be most effective. In this way, you can determine the best weapon to use on a given enemy, where to focus your strike, and even what sort of strike to use for best effect.
As you use your weapons, they will wear down and eventually break, so it’s wise to forge more than one weapon (you can hold a few at any one time that you can swap between). You can use one for general enemies and keep your more advanced weapons for tougher foes to ensure they last longer. You can resharpen and repair weapons a certain number of times. The number of times you can repair a weapon will depend on how well you do when you are forging it—a sort of mini-game in which you can strike the heated steel at various locations, angles, and strengths to most closely match the shape of the weapon you are attempting to forge.
In addition to your own skill with your weapons, your companion Adso will make notes of the enemies you encounter, and by studying his notes, you may pick up clues on how best to dispatch your foes. Stamina also plays a role in combat, and if you don’t remember to replenish it, you will find future strikes are pointless. This is something that can be impacted by your weapon forging, as you can vary the materials and balance of weapons to reduce stamina drain, though you may be doing so at the cost of damage and vice versa. It all just adds some extra layers to the combat mechanic; nothing that makes it too challenging, but it makes it a bit more personal and allows you to put a bit of finesse into how you approach combat.
In addition to the fantastic fighting mechanic, there are some puzzle elements as well (Adso can be a great help here) which just helps to break up the travel a bit. Sometimes it’s just a case of moving an object from one location to another (or drawing the power from one location and moving it to another); sometimes it’s figuring out which path to take to get where (a bit like a 3D maze of sorts). It’s nice to have a bit of mental challenge from time to time amongst all the combat.
Final Thoughts?
I was quite taken in by the story of Blades Of Fire, which is a good start, but I was further drawn in by the intriguing and fun forging mechanic. Building my own weapon and being able to add my own little touches to it really helped invest me in combat in a way I never thought of before. If you like action-adventure weapon play with a touch of magic and a lot of monster slaying, I’d say grab a copy—it’s a lot of fun!
About the Author
Chris O'Connor Father of four, husband of one and all round oddity. Gaming at home since about 1982 with a Sinclair ZX Spectrum. Moving on to the more traditional PC genre in the years that followed with the classic Jump Joe and Alley Cat. CGA, EGA, VGA and beyond PC's have been central to my gaming but I've also enjoyed consoles and hand helds along the way (who remembers the Atari Lynx?). Would have been actor/film maker, jack of many trades master of none.
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