Blade Assault XSX Review 7/10 "I Was Well On Board Even Before Picking Up The Controller" 🔪 @SuneatTeam #IndieGames #GameDev

Having seen the trailer video for Blade Assault, I was well on board even before picking up the controller. Blade Assault is a 2D hack-and-slash roguelike platformer that lets you tear through enemies at a rate of knots.

The game is set sometime in the future, with the hero, Kil, having been betrayed by the military junta of the floating city of Esperanza and thrown to the surface. 

He's rescued by a group of resistance fighters who operate from a jazz club - nice - for reasons that are, for the most part, underexplained. Never mind though, because you immediately pick up a melee weapon and start hacking your way through crowds of bad guys in order to get your revenge. You can get hold of ranged weapons later on, but the up-close-and-personal stuff was really what did it for me.

The combat mechanics are tightly put together, so from your first couple of goes you'll start chaining together combos and special moves, meaning you can get to the early bosses fairly quickly - beating them though is a little more of a challenge. And later on, enemies have a lot of health, meaning you'll need to unlock upgrades, new moves and weapons to keep your damage output to the level required. This is all done at the start of each run following death, which will happen often. 

But hey, this is a roguelike, so if you don't like it then you're in the wrong place. You also access a hub between levels, where you can spend gathered coins before a boss fight, allowing you to grab some precious health before going in swinging.

The levels themselves work unusually. You'll travel through a portal to wipe out a group of enemies before you need to trigger a second wave, where they return with extra powers. This wave is time-limited, and if you take too long, the danger level increases, meaning future enemies will get a stat boost too for the rest of the run. And when you start a run, of course, you start at the first level, so after a while, you can smash through it, but it feels like a bit of a chore. Churlish to complain given it's a roguelike, but still.

You can recruit fellow travellers to your team - two at present but with a third to be added. Jenny is an assassin wielding a sickle on a chain, and Darcy is a samurai-type who can air dash, to add a little extra agility. They both force a slight change in playstyle to get the best out of them, but I found myself returning to Kil every time.

SUMMARY

Overall, this is a good game, not a great one. 

The story could be beefed up, and some of the game mechanics better explained - particularly the varying types of currency to unlock upgrades in the hideout. 

However, it does have immediacy on its side - you can basically pick up the pad and get the feel of the game within the first five minutes. 

I'm still playing this now, and if Team Suneat and Neowiz announced a sequel, I'll pretty much be first in the queue.