I went into my Blades of Fire demo at GDC 2025 with little hype or expectation. I came out ridiculously excited about it.
If you haven’t heard of Blades of Fire, it’s a new action game all about forging from MercurySteam, the developer behind Metroid Dread and Castlevania: Lords of Shadow. Its gameplay feels Souls-inspired, but it sticks out from any other action game I’ve played in how combat works. Not only do players need to forge their own weapons and upkeep them through repairs with gathered resources, but they also need to be very specific on where and how they attack enemies.
While the controls are a bit funky initially, Blades of Fire it provided some of the most fun I had at GDC 2025. If you like action games that take bold swings and don’t just stick to genre conventions, Blades of Fire should be on your radar. This game has the potential to surprise people when it launches a couple of months from now.
Forging a new kind of combat
In my Blades of Fire demo, I fought through a village full of soldiers and a giant troll under the control of an evil queen. Some Soulslike influence could be seen on a surface level with level design, how hard enemies hit me, and how I dropped something important when I died. Blades of Fire adds so many unique gameplay systems on top of that, though, that I wouldn’t call it a Soulslike necessarily.
All of those standout features relate to the weapons the player wields. I didn’t have to mash light or heavy attack buttons when I entered combat with an enemy. Instead, combat is directionally based, as I could target the head, torso, or sides of enemies by hitting the face buttons on my controller. I could also choose whether or not I wanted to slash at or stab enemies, which could change the attack animation and damage I dealt.
This directional combat system makes each fight a bit of a puzzle, as I had to lock onto enemies, see where they were weak, and attack accordingly. Enemies would block if I kept attacking a single area, so I had to keep changing my attacks, too. This control scheme takes some getting used to, but as I started getting the hang of it toward the end of my demo, I was having a blast with Blades of Fire. It’s the most unique combat I played in a game since For Honor.
Players gain resources by defeating enemies and can use them at forges found throughout the game to repair weapons. Players can also teleport back to The Forge and create a weapon from scratch by playing a forging minigame. During my demo, I chose to forge a hammer called Basher and spent a lot of my playtime afterward hitting enemies in the head with it.
These gameplay systems made me care about my weapons in a way I usually don’t in games unless they’re a Legendary or Exotic item. I forged them, named them, and had to actively care for them. It also made the feeling all the more brutal when I lost them after I died. Having a weapon I care about be the cost of death, and having to fight my way back to retrieve it, is a lot more engaging on a personal level than just recollecting a currency or some resources following each death.
In all those ways, Blades of Fire provides a fresh take on the action game genre I was not expecting when I began demoing the game at GDC 2025. It instantly became one of my most anticipated games, and I can’t wait to see how these systems play out across a whole adventure when Blades of Fire launches.
Blades of Fire will be released on PC (as an Epic Games Store exclusive), PS5, and Xbox Series X/S on May 22.