Another month, another Soulslike pledging to bring something unique to the genre. Blades of Fire has all the FromSoft archetypes: combat-heavy action, with skirmishes involving a tricky blend of dodging, blocking, and parrying; stamina management; non-linear exploration through fantastical realms. Blades of Fire is upcoming on 22nd May 2025 and it does indeed distinguish itself from Dark Souls et al. The novel mechanic personifying Blades of Fire’s experience is its forging; crafting weapons from a smorgasbord of materials and traits, with over-numerous options to create something unique to satisfy your desired playstyle or to counteract the demands of a particularly powerful enemy. Before we get into describing the blacksmithing process in-depth, there’s another obvious influence in Blades of Fire’s gameplay. The many hack and slash games that have released in recent years. Environs replete with ancient runic symbolism, magical birds, and witches dwelling inside living homesteads are all observable within a mere five-minute gameplay trailer published by the devs themselves. A concern, even from this brief glimpse, is that Blades of Fire is flying too close to modern hack and slash’s sun. This concern gathers weight when it becomes clear our sword-wielding protagonist Aran de Lira is continually flanked by young companion Adso. Adso is useless in battle. Instead, his role as keen-eyed observer is to compile a compendium of every enemy Aran encounters. The more knowledge his educated mind commits to paper the better Aran becomes at deducing strategies to take down increasingly powerful foe. Adso also provides Aran with guidance, him being able to decipher ancient text, uncover hidden knowledge, and contribute to solving environmental puzzles. From gameplay shared thus far, it seems as though Aran is clueless as to the lay of the land the pair are traversing. Adso, conversely, has prior knowledge of the realms they’re entering, and seems excited when they continue their quest into a place known as Kar-Lethal Swamp, even if both Aran and us – the players – are non-plussed. Each biome brings new dangers – again, met with excitement by Adso (after all, he would be upbeat to encounter new enemies seeing as they ignore him completely, attacking Aran exclusively). To tackle the game’s myriad opponents, of which the game is confirmed to run into the fifties, each with unique weapons, attack patterns, and traits, Aran will need to continually collect resources and materials to put into forging new weapons. This, as already mentioned, is where Blades of Fire’s unique selling point comes to the fore. Forging in this game is its own self-contained activity. As aforesaid, a vast array of options precedes Aran’s blacksmithery, with seemingly endless assortments of customised weaponry at his fingertips so long as he’s acquired the knowledge to construct them via collectable forge scrolls, blueprints amassed through killing enemies who’re wielding the same weapon. The options here are dizzying though. Seven weapon categories – daggers, twins, sabers, swords, greatswords, polearms, and spears – each with at least five distinct forge scrolls within. Let’s look at crafting a sword. Here, there are options for blade length, blade shape, guard size, and building material, the latter encompassing three categories of steel. Light, medium, and heavy, scavenge-able steel can be mixed into the perfect blade, with different blends boosting durability, laceration potential, and defensive capability. Deciding on the composition of Aran’s next blade is simplified by an easy-to-read triangle too, each corner denoting one of those three traits, with the different steel types contained within. Rarer steel types occupy the outer edges of the triangle too, so there’s an incentive to get foraging out in the wilds. A handy info box rests on the right-hand side of the screen too, it’s stat bars adjusting with every change made to the weapon’s composition before the forging process begins. The act of forging itself is supported by excellent furnace animations and a hammering minigame. Once Aran retrieves a glowing sheet of metal from the furnace, he must then hammer it into shape. His hammer can be raised, lowered, twisted, angled; the goal being to smash the outline displayed on the still-glowing blade. The better the shape the weapon is hammered, the more opportunities for repairing the item further down the line are available. It’s a system which encourages quality craftmanship and pride in one’s work and it’s rare to see this level of dedication to crafting in video games. The wealth of customisation on offer will hopefully alleviate the tedium usually felt with this kind of mechanic in other games of the genre too. Best of all, perhaps, is once the new weapon is complete it can be given a name. Is this a mechanic to foster a relationship with every crafted item? To encourage Aran to take care of it, maybe? After all, out in the forests weapon management becomes as important a consideration as it does in survival games. Durability is limited and blocking dulls a blade’s edge, reducing its effectiveness. These can be sharpened, but this comes at a cost of the weapon’s overall durability. Weapons can be repaired at one of the numerous anvils discoverable in the world but, if you remember, depending on how well the weapon was crafted there’re only a maximum of four opportunities for repair anyway. Going full circle back to the combat’s Soulslike similarity and, due to shields being non-existent, blocking and parrying seem to be the most effective ways to counteract an enemy attack. However, as just mentioned, blocking reduces a weapon’s effectiveness. Furthermore, attacks from enemies on the larger side can’t be repelled by blocking, nor can certain elemental attacks like fire be stopped. The temptation then would be to dodge ad infinitum however, in another move dissimilar to Dark Souls, blocking in Blades of Fire has a benefit: stamina replenishment. See, using Aran’s blade to defend against enemy attacks re-fills his stamina gauge. Enemies expel stamina with every one of their attacks too, so blocking, parrying, and evading by whatever means at Aran’s disposal is the way their stamina can be whittled down to nothing; to render them stunned and vulnerable. Combat is more forgiving than any FromSoftware game regardless. However, skill exists in weapon direction and body part targeting. See, each action button denotes a specific location on the enemy’s body – right-most button to attack the right, bottom button to attack the torso, and so on. Three distinct weapon directions are at Aran’s disposal too – slashing, piercing, and blunt force. Slashing is useful for crowd control, for instance, whilst forward lurching pierces most effective at puncturing certain body parts, or when Aran finds himself in a particular narrow spot. Complicating things further is the fact that different weapon categories harbour varying degrees of effectiveness depending on the enemy. To aid in rapid-fire decision making, once an enemy is locked onto a coloured outline frames their figure. Green outlines denote a weapon in Aran’s palms that’s effective, yellow if only moderately useful, and red if it may as well be made a blade made of chocolate. There’s a depth to this combat, but from the gameplay seen thus far it doesn’t seem as though it’ll ever become too complicated. Can Blades of Fire end the year as one of its biggest games? Well, there’s certainly heaps of promise here. Weapons forging and combat look to be the game’s principal draws, but there’s a ton of lore underpinning a story of revenge and retribution too. Blades of Fire could find a sizeable audience based on these factors alone.   Note: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, GamingBolt as an organization