Bladed Fury Review (PC)

Chinese folklore has always been a neverending source-material for movies, anime, and games, with fantastic characters wielding amazing powers save their beautiful kingdom. While this basic theme has been used hundreds of times over, Chinese folklore has a way of making it seem fresh every single time. The same can be said about Bladed Fury, a highly addictive platformer set in ancient China, where you star as a princess seeking to save her kingdom and her older sister from the clutches of evil.

Art aficionados, prepare yourselves

If you own a TV, computer, or pretty much any other instrument that allows you to connect to the outside world, then you most likely know how ancient Chinese art looks like. Bladed Fury takes that art style and uses it to its advantage, using it as an excuse to create unique looking characters, unforgettable enemies, and mind-bending environments. You shouldn't feel ashamed if an enemy manages to kill you just because your eyes were gazing at the surroundings since it's understandable. Male audiences will also most likely cheer the presence of the occasional (ok... frequent) fan-service, but it isn't exaggerated to the point where you would think that it is there to compensate for sub-par gameplay or a shallow storyline.

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A wide array of skills and combos

The combat system in Bladed Fury is my favorite aspect of the entire game and can be described as easy to learn but hard to master. Fairly early on into the story, Ji manages to get her hands on a few weapons and family heirlooms that will help her in defeating the forces of evil. These include a pair of fast-attacking dual-swords, a massive zanbato-like greatsword (that's obviously bigger than her), and a shield which ironically made of cicada wings.

Each weapon comes with its own set of combos, all of which are activated based on the keys you press, the timing of how you press them, holding a certain button down or whether or not you are airborne or not. As your journey, you'll face a wide variety of enemies, each with their resistances and fighting style, so learning how to master the basics with all weapons and your shield will make going through the game a whole lot easier.

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Bladed Fury allows both keyboard and controller support, although if you're playing on PC, you should know that keybindings cannot be changed and that they are rather oddly placed. This problem is further amplified if you're planning on playing on a laptop since the smaller keyboard means your hands will be pretty much clustered over the same handful of keys, which can get tiresome quickly. Even the game itself recommends that you use a controller instead.

Bigger, stronger, faster

Similar to the Dark Souls or the God of War series, killing enemies grant you some souls that can be spent on learning new moves, or improving the ones you already have. I loved the fact that I could preview all the available combos from within the menu, including the key-combination, and how the combo itself looked like in-game. Investing in new moves doesn't feel like a grind at all since less than an hour into the game you should already have enough souls to learn 3 or maybe even four new moves, and they aren't all that much anyway.

Maybe a bit too authentic

I don't mind the surrealism, and I've fallen in love with the art-style, but no matter how much I try, I cannot get my head around the fact that the entire game's audio is in Chinese. Of course, this is up to personal taste whether to consider it a con or if it adds authenticity to the game, although having to keep my eyes on the subs all the time reminds me of the times I used to watch old badly-subbed Chinese movies.

Some things are beautiful because they don't last

When you have a game that presents itself in an almost impeccable manner, there is only one con that is universally relevant, and that is when it is way too short. Just when you finally found out how to use the Sunstrike skill properly (or any other ability for that matter), the game ends. While it does wrap up the story in a way that brings it justice, you can't help but wonder where's the sequel just as the credits start rolling. Just so you can get an idea of what I am talking about, my first walkthrough lasted about 4 hours, and this includes all the times I died, missed jumps between platforms or just sat around in an empty level trying to master the combos.

The Good

The Bad

Conclusion