Today we’re taking a look at Bladed Fury on the Xbox One, which is also on the Switch and both Playstations. As is with a lot of these indie titles, this one was already released on Steam a couple years back. Better late than never though, right console owners?

Now I love me some action platformers and I’m also suckered in by a nice art style. I like hand drawn art especially, since it seems like a lot of what’s released now is this novelty-retro pixelated style which I personally am increasingly tired of seeing, or on the total opposite extreme you have the super realistic stuff where if the main character flicks a booger, it has its own physics engine and it’s been motion captured by an actual booger for realism. Also that booger cost like 20 grand and is part of the reason you’re paying $30 for a season pass. So with all that said, my sweet spot is somewhere in the middle and that’s where the art style of Bladed Fury is also.

That’s easily the thing I like most about this and it fits perfectly with the story. You play as Ji, a princess who’s framed for the murder of her dad, and she’s out to get not only revenge for who set her up, but also to get to the bottom of just what’s going on. It takes place around 2500 years ago in ancient China and you’ll see lots of mythological demons and monsters and they’ll speak of the afterlife, spirits, and in particular how she’s got the ability to wield her weapons fight all these baddies to begin with.

It’s not that epic of a story, but it does tackle things like personal responsibility and freedom, a government’s role in everybody’s lives, and as Ji intends to fight on for the freedom of people everywhere, the game leaves itself open for more adventures. The final conversation between her and the big bad is unintentionally poignant and afterward the narrator openly asks if this era envisioned by Ji, where everybody is a master of their own lives, arrives at all. Fast forward to 2021, I think you know the answer to that, whether you want to admit it or not.

The music and sound design are really well done, with what I’m assuming is chinese voice acting and no english dubbing to speak of. The music is what you’d expect from something taking place in this era and picks up and gets more epic when it’s appropriate.

So the story’s decent and thought provoking, the game looks good, how’s the gameplay? It’s fun, however kinda shallow and it was good enough that I was disappointed there wasn’t more of it. You have your basic weapon which are dual swords, and then not too long after you start you’ll get a single large sword, and you can alternate between the two how you see fit.

Mashing either button will let you do a basic combo and you can also do some air combos, but that’s about it. Killing enemies awards you souls. There’s an upgrade system in place but there’s not a whole lot there, and depending on whether you find all the extra souls hidden in each chapter, you’ll either max out everything or you come close by the end of the game. Honestly some of the stuff I upgraded I didn’t really use.

I generally take my time in a lot of games and I think I cleared this in about 4-5 hours. There’s no backtracking and the game is pretty linear and once you beat it that’s basically it.

There’s a parry system in place as well and as you can guess you’ll hit the guard button right as you’re about to take a hit and you’ll counter the attack, which is also one of the best ways to break the enemy’s armor and leave them vulnerable. Bosses range from being pretty basic like large warriors, to more elaborate ones like giant spiders or this one girl with large robot arms, and the last boss is considerably harder than the rest, but not unfairly so and I felt pretty satisfied when I beat him after several tries.

Something unique that this game brings to the table are Soul Slivers. They’re basically magic spells that are cast when you summon the soul of someone you’ve defeated. There’s several of them to choose from and they’re mapped out to each of the face buttons when you hold down the left trigger. They’ll do things like rain down arrows, heal, there’s a black hole that’s cast at enemies which is cool. My favorite one is from the robot arm chick I mentioned – the parts from her arms come together and if you like fighting games, they form what’s basically Iron Man’s proton cannon hyper combo from Marvel Vs Capcom. They all have limited uses before you have to recharge them at a save spot, but they’re all really useful in a pinch, or if you’re like me you’ll just save them until you fight a boss and unload on them.

To accompany what is unfortunately shallow combat, is also a pretty short game in general. I generally take my time in a lot of games and I think I cleared this in about 4-5 hours. There’s no backtracking and the game is pretty linear and once you beat it that’s basically it. There’s no new game plus, and the only thing left to do afterward is play either Hard Mode or the Boss Rush Mode that both unlock, and that’s all.

So this is going to be one of my shorter reviews because again, there just wasn’t that much here to cover. Bladed Fury is a really pretty game with a great art style and interesting characters and mythology that accompany a good story. The action is fast and fluid, but also needed more meat to it and this is a game that I was hoping would have more going on because I did want to spend more time with it, but the boss rush mode and hard mode aren’t really enough to keep me coming back. I still think it’s worth a purchase though, but just releasing on consoles at $20 with it normally being half that on Steam, I would definitely catch it when it’s on sale if you’re adamant about getting it on a console.