Blades of Fire’s story is actually pretty decent it goes a little like this, an ancient race called the forgers created mankind and gave the the power to use materials such as wood and metals to forge weapons. Upon becoming queen, Queen Nerea casts a curse upon her enemies which turns there steel weaponry into stone ensuring they where defenceless against her. Blades of Fire see you play as a warrior/forger named Arna De Lira who has received the sacred hammer and is now able to use the materials around him to forge weapons of his own, along his travels to assassinate Queen Nerea he find a young scholar named Adso de Zelk who ventures forth with him documenting the journey.
Blades of Fire is a third person action adventure game that has souls elements to it (more on this later). The game is set in a world that has some serious story to it and this story is explained through interacting with things through the map and cutscenes. The map itself has a lot of interconnecting paths that will lead the player to different zones.
The fighting within Blades of Fire I personally found very interesting you do not just hit R1 and R2 but instead you use X, O, Square and Triangle each button will swing the sword in a different pattern, holding the respective button will allow the player to use a charged attack too effectively breaking an enemies guard or stance. Blocking an enemies incoming attack will allow the player to regain some stamina or you can use the old stay out of combat to do the same, while parrying an attack can break the enemies guard allowing you to follow up with some devastating damage.
Throughout your playthrough of the game you will be killing enemies and collecting scrolls these are critical to forging new weapon variants, kill enough enemies holding a spear and now you can craft a spear but if you then take that spear to a statue holding a spear well then you can craft addition parts for that spear. Blades of Fire is heavily focused around weapon forging in fact in the whole time I was playing the game I don’t think I found one weapon on the ground, instead the game gives you materials to go and craft your own. Crafting weapons within the game works a little like this you choose your weapons a sword, spear or hammer and then you choose the material or how long you want the shaft, where do you want the hammer head to be, what material do you want the head to be made out off, there are so many variations of the same weapon and it really allows for some serious replay ability. Once you have chosen all the materials you want then you have to play a smithing mini game essentially smithing the weapon the better you preform in this minigame will yield more stars for your weapon, star equate to repair 4 stars would be 4 repairs.
Lets take a look at that souls like element, now killing enemies wont yield you any souls but instead you will get mats however you keep these mats through death, where I feel the souls element comes into play is the fact that when you die your weapon turns to stone and you have to go back to collect the weapon, upon death all the enemies will respawn too which is very true to souls fashion.
Throughout the world you will encounter anvils too these are like bonfire sites if you will, here you can choose to go back to the blacksmith area to forge more weapons or you can choose to travel or rest to refill heals and repair stones.
Recap/Overall thoughts on the game, I personally loved my time with Blades of Fire the story is gripping the cutscenes and voice acting are very well done, the graphics and lighting within the world are decent but not over the top. The game feels like a souls game but plays out in a very different way and this is something I can personally get behind.
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