Blades & Battles – The Forgettable Brawler

Blades & Battles – The Forgettable Brawler…

Blades & Battles feels very much like a Golden Axe wannabe, just without one of the coolest parts — riding around on creatures and kicking the living crap out of everything in sight.

Visually, the game goes for a low-polygon, low-resolution 2.5D style that clearly wants to look cool and retro. Unfortunately, I don’t think it really works. Instead of giving the game a distinctive old-school look, it ends up making everything look rather cheap and rough around the edges.

Thankfully, the actual fighting is a bit more enjoyable.

There are plenty of moves at your disposal, and most of them are easy enough to pull off without having to memorize complicated combinations. The special attacks and dodge moves are particularly useful — actually, maybe a little too useful, as they can almost feel like a cheat once you figure out how to take advantage of them.

The game also supports two-player local co-op, which is always a welcome addition in this type of brawler. There are multiple difficulty settings too, although the balance isn’t particularly great. It seems to jump from being ridiculously easy to becoming annoyingly frustrating rather than offering a genuinely satisfying challenge.

One area where the game does surprisingly well is the music. The soundtrack is cool, suspenseful and helps give the battles a bit more atmosphere than the visuals manage to provide.

Short, Very Short…

The biggest problem with Blades & Battles is simply how little game there actually is.

I finished my first playthrough in less than one hour, and by that point I was already sitting at around 60% trophy completion.

From what I can tell, getting the Platinum trophy should be perfectly possible for pretty much anyone without too much hassle, so trophy hunters might actually get more out of this than most players.

You get to chose between two heroes, both offer enough varity to play through the game twice, thst said, second playthrough will most likely take half the time of your first one.

There are also two routes through the game, although the second one has to be unlocked. Once you’ve beaten the game, you also unlock a stage-select option.

Why?

I honestly have no idea. The entire game is so tiny that selecting individual stages hardly feels necessary.

I had fun with Blades & Battles, and that’s probably the most important thing I can say about it.

It’s not terrible. It’s not particularly memorable either.

Summary…

What you’re getting here is a pretty mediocre old-school beat-’em-up that can provide an entertaining hour or two, especially if you’ve got someone around for some local co-op. The problem is that we’re absolutely drowning in games from this genre, and there are hundreds — if not thousands — of alternatives that both look and play better than this one.

Still, the combat works, the music is surprisingly good, there are enough moves to keep the fighting entertaining, and chasing the Platinum might give you a reason to squeeze a little more life out of it.

Just don’t go into Blades & Battles expecting the next Golden Axe.

Because it ain’t.