Fire Blade: First Preview
Blog Andrew Joseph 07 Mar , 2025 0
When I sat down to play the latest project of developer Mercurysteam, Blades of Fire, I expected to return to the studio's modern style update of Castlevania: Lords of Shadow Games: God of War. An hour later, I thought I was playing a soul, even though all the stats were in my weapon, not the RPG character table. By the end of the three-hour hands-on course, I realized that both observations were true and wrong: It was an unquestionable game that was built on worn ground, but the unique arrangement of its borrowed components and new ideas brought new and interesting ways to a new and interesting approach to action additives.
While this is not a clone of Sony Santa Monica’s work, at first glance, you’ll be forgiven. With its dark fantasy world, violent strikes and third-person cameras that keep close to action, Fire Blade has a lot in common with the Nordic era of the Kratos journey. Of course, I can talk about more similarities: In a demo at the game's opening time, I explored a tortuous, treasure-breasted map with a young companion who helped solve the puzzle. Together we searched for a wilderness woman who lived in a house on a huge creature. Sometimes it feels a little also Familiar, especially when you consider many of the elements stolen from FromSoftware library, including anvil checkpoints, are refilled with your limited health potions and reborn enemies while resting.
All this familiarity filtered through a world of fantasy about the 1980s. As you can imagine, the Barbarian Conan easily blends together in its incredible buffs soldiers, and in Jim Henson's maze, a bunch of orange-like enemies bounce on bamboo pogo sticks would not look an out of place. Even the story has a retro vibe. An evil queen turns steel into stone, it's up to you – essentially Aran de Lira, kills her and restores world metal. Despite these old-fashioned charms, at this stage I doubt that the story, character or writing will prove it convincingly – everything is incredible Video Games-ysimilar to many forgotten stories from the Xbox 360 era.
Like many games of the past, the best achievements of fire seem to be mechanical. It has a combat system rooted in directional attacks that utilizes every face button on the controller. On the PlayStation pad, tap the triangular aiming head, the cross goes toward the torso, while the square and circle slide left and right, respectively. By carefully reading the enemy's position, you can use these attacks to break down defense abilities. For example, a soldier holding a blade to protect his face can overcome his face by bowing his head and strung with his intestines. The impact was a huge scream, and the wound caused by thick blood burst out.
In some cases, the system does glow. The first major boss of the demo is a smooth troll with a second health stick that can only be eliminated after dismembering the beast. The falling limb is determined by the angle of your attack, so I can use the right-hand strike to separate the left arm of the club, literally my enemies. Even better: You can cut off the troll's entire face and make it waving blindly and aimlessly until it can regenerate eyes and continue fighting.
Interesting wrinkles like this can be found in many combat staples. Your attack and dodge the endurance meter must be manually restored by holding the block button, rather than regenerating automatically. But while these new ideas offer a distinctly different advantage to Fire’s battle, the general battle tone is undeniable Soulsian. Attack pattern recognition and the slender Dodge/Block/Pari window are the name of the game here, and the risks and rewards are the same – even if the punishment is not that serious. This is enough to tempt your brain to reach for muscle memory, but sadly it won't save you here: the directional attack system requires a very different control map, namely the security that prevents repositioning to the left trigger.
After rewiring my brain to remember that there is no face button to dodge, things started to click. The unique approach gradually made all of this souls central to the center stage and I quickly discovered that the battle was refreshing. Smart Weapons Systems can increase the deal of core damage, which allows you to wield the blade in different postures, either cut with sharp edges or stimulate with tips. Like the directional system, you need to evaluate the enemy (and some useful HUD tips) to determine which method works best.
If the title is not given up, then your weapon is at the heart of the Fire Blade. They need a lot of attention compared to most games. Repeated edge weapons are dull, meaning each consecutive strike is less damage done than the last one. This all adds up over time, so you need to use sharp stones to supplement the blades of your weapon. That or switch to a different position; the edges and tips are tired independently of each other, which helps these feelings are tangible items that are influenced by your fighting style.
Like Monster Hunter, you will learn to make room for your sword to fight in the midfield. But no matter how much you take care of each weapon, there is a durability meter that keeps running out of time. When your weapon inevitably breaks, you can do repairs at the anvil checkpoint. Alternatively, you can melt it into its raw materials to start remaking the most important and distinctive innovation of the fire: Forge.
It is an understatement to say that Mercury has made a wide range of weapons production systems. The life of each weapon did not find new arms in the world, but began in forging. It starts with the choice of choosing the basic weapon template, which Aran outlines on the blackboard. From here you make adjustments and modifications. For example, when designing the spear, I adjusted the length of the rod and the shape of the spear. Each decision is reflected in the weapon's statistics; longer poles increase the spear's range, while the shape of the head determines whether it is more proficient in cutting or puncture. Different materials can affect weight, which in turn changes the weapon's need for a stamina pool. All of this makes you really Production Your weapon. You can even name your creations.
Most production systems will end here. In the fire, it's just halfway. Once the design is finished, you have to physically hit the metal on the anvil. This is achieved through a very involved mini-game where you can control the length, force and angle of each hammer. The curves on the screen represent the ultimate ideal, and with each hit of the hammer, you try to arrange a series of vertical bars similar to the graphical equalizer to match the shape of that curve. Overworked steel will result in weaker weapons, so the purpose is to recreate this line with as few as possible. Your efforts have been awarded a star rating. The more stars you get, the more you can repair your creation before it breaks forever and is lost forever.
I really like the idea of fakes and how it introduces skill elements into the usual menu-driven system. But even after a few sessions at the anvil, I found the mini game frustratingly dull. There seems to be no clear connection between the area I hit and the area between the metal shape. Hopefully some improvements are implemented before launching, or just a better tutorial – this would be shameful for Fire's most interesting features.
The core idea of forgery goes beyond the boundaries of a three-hour presentation session. MercurySteam wants you to be deeply attached to the weapons you created and carry them with you on the go – the journey that developers claim will be “not less than 60-70 hours.” As you explore the world and find new metal, you will be able to redecorate trusted swords, axes, hammers and spears to enhance their properties to ensure they are always suitable for new, more difficult challenges. The system of death emphasizes this relationship between you and your arms. After failure, you drop the weapon you use and respawn.
This is another mechanic inspired by the dark soul, but can be based on another more meaningful bond: lost souls can always be supplemented with more killing, but a clever sword you build with you can be irreplaceable. Fortunately, your discarded weapon will remain in the world forever, so your only challenge is to find a way to recover what you lost. I look forward to seeing this perform throughout the campaign, and if any kind of backtracking can reunite you with weapons from a dozen hours ago, you can rebuild and rebuild your relationship with you.
It is not surprising to see Mercury adopt multiple ideas from the dark soul and its siblings. This is partly due to the seemingly irreversible influence of Software on action games, and also because Fire Blade is the spiritual successor Dark blade: It is a relic from the early 2000s, developed by the founding members of Mercury, and (at least a follower of the cult) is regarded as a pioneer of the Souls series. In many ways, these developers simply picked up from where they left, implementing other studios’ progress during their time away from the genre.
While I was playing, I could feel the gravity of all the influences that Mercurysteam clearly influenced – the project’s brutal battles of decades-old predecessors, Fromsoft’s innovations and World of War Design. But while these ideas are clear, they have not yet defined the studio’s latest work. Those firmly built systems did not make soul-like people or like God of War as part of a larger canvas of thought. Fire's blades have their own recipes that can successfully stand out from any obvious gaming touchstone.
I do have some doubts – I'm not sure if this rather versatile dark fantasy world is coping with the challenge of a 60-hour adventure, and in three hours I did the same Gatekeeping Miniboss three times, which brought me into questioning the variety offered. However, the depth of the relationship between your forging blade and the enemies you face makes me completely interested. In complex and frankly speaking, blunt games like Elden Ring and Monster Hunter have become mainstream hits, I think Fire Blade has the potential to contribute something fascinating to the scene.
Matt Purslow is an advanced feature editor for IGN.
