Review: Blade Chimera
The metroidvania genre is all over everything these days, especially in the indie sphere. A dime will get you a dozen. I get the appeal; it’s one of the best ways to tell a narrative in a 2D game. But when there are so many coming out at any time, which one do you choose? It’s easy to feel burned out on them.
So, I’ve been ignoring a lot of titles that boast the metroidvania label in their press releases. I’ve probably missed out on some good ones, but I just can’t look at another rectangle-dominated map screen. Okay, one more, I guess. Blade Chimera caught my attention because it’s created by Team Ladybug and WSS Playground, the folks behind Deedlit in Wonder Labyrinth . Not my favorite game, no, but solid and dependable. Plus, it’s cyberpunk this time around, so that’s always a win in my book.
Screenshot by Destructoid
Blade Chimera ( PC , Switch ) Developer: Team Ladybug, WSS Playground Publisher: Playism, WSS Playground Release: January 16th, 2025 MSRP: $19.99
The plot in Blade Chimera is strikingly boilerplate, but the setting is at least unique. It takes place in a near-future Osaka where demons run amok. 30 years previous, people started transforming into monsters of folklore and legend and caused a ruckus. During that time, The Holy Union, a pseudo-religious group, overthrew the government of Japan and took control in an effort to protect people from the demons.
Now, this is where it gets kind of trite. You play as Shin, a guy recently found cryogenically frozen, and because of his prolonged stasis, has no memory of his life before being frozen. However, he kicks ass, and quickly ascends the ranks of the Venatars, The Holy Union’s enforcers. However, he’s principled and frequently questions if indiscriminately mowing down demons is morally correct, especially after he meets one that can turn into a sword.
So, from the start, you can kind of guess where this all is going. I wish I could say that the characters and situations make up for its predictability, but that would only partially be accurate. There are some fun moments, but it’s clumsy at best.
https://youtu.be/ZPJl5YXHylE?feature=shared
That’s starting off on a bad note, but that’s the biggest problem out of the way, and it’s nothing huge. The game itself is butter. Like Deedlit in Wonder Labyrinth , it’s tangibly Castlevania: Symphony of the Night -inspired. Forget the Metroid part; its entire framework is Symphony of the Night . Its protagonist even sports long white hair.
However, Shin is proficient in firearms. You wind up with three attack buttons, two being whatever you want them to be, and the last belonging to Lux, the aforementioned big sword. The game suggests that you use one button for ranged weapons and the other for melee, and that’s sound advice. Before Blade Chimera even verbalized it, that’s how I designated the buttons in my mind.
Lux is more than just a big sword; she’s also your source of magic attacks. You unlock these through an upgrade tree, and using them effectively can make all the difference in boss battles. As a sword, you can plant her in the wall or ceiling to hold a button or act as a platform. She also had the ability to exploit “time rifts” that were scattered around. These do an inconsistent variety of things. They’re often used for simple puzzles, but mainly, you find them as grappling hooks, bridges, or hidden pathways. It’s all simple, simple stuff, but it works as a way of mixing up things a bit.
Screenshot by Destructoid
Uniquely, Blade Chimera doesn’t really use traversal powers to gate off your exploration. It does to some extent, but mainly for secret areas. You unlock powers like double-jump and dash by leveling up, so it’s up to you how they’re prioritized. Instead, you’re mainly gated off using actual gates that you don’t have the keys for. However, the actual locked doors are rare enough that they don’t have the chance to really feel artificial.
It’s also very good at incentivizing exploration. This is largely through its 56 hidden jigsaw pieces. Throughout the world, you’ll bump into doors that can only be opened if you have enough of the pieces. If you go to the effort of rooting them out, you’ll find some of the best weapons and items behind them. It strikes me as being the bluntest way of hiding such goodies, but it’s strangely satisfying.
It’s maybe the art style that does such a good job of covering such artificialities. I hadn’t paid much attention to the marketing, and the Blade Chimera doesn’t overtly talk about it until later, but just based on the enemies and environments, I could tell it was future Osaka. Considering that, like most metroidvania games, you’re exploring an abstract 2D world, it says a lot that a cities culture can be communicated so clearly, even to someone who has only visited the place once.
But the pixelated sprites are where it truly shines. There’s an incredible amount of detail in every frame of animation, breaking away from its Symphony of the Night inspiration. The same variety of huge bosses that were so prominent in Deedlit in Wonder Labyrinth make an unmistakable appearance here and are just as thrilling. But more importantly, to a geek like me, Ladybug doesn’t commit any pixel-art faux pas. There isn’t a mixel to be seen, and everything seems to move on integers, which keeps things looking authentic. It also speaks to the underlying passion when an artist goes the whole mile to present a specific aesthetic, and it’s so well executed here.
Screenshot by Destructoid
To stretch the gameplay out a bit, there are side missions you can take, but it’s here that you find another soft spot in Blade Chimera . I initially went about trying to complete every side mission, but I found they come in two flavors: Interesting story asides and onerous grinding. The vast majority belong to the latter category. It will task you with eliminating demons within certain criteria, such as in a specific area or ones that are a specific color. What this often boils down to is finding a point in the map where these demons exist, then exiting the screen and re-entering to respawn the enemies and taking them out until you reach the goal. Ideally, you take on these tasks alongside your main objective, but these only lined up for me in a few instances.
The other side quests are more worthwhile. They usually involve helping citizens out by seeking out items or investigating crimes. More importantly, they feature moments of character development. The most interesting is perhaps between Shin and a particular rival. You can generally identify the side-story missions because they have a much higher payout than their grind-centric counterparts. I feel like the busywork could have been completely excised without compromising anything since I ended the game with far too much money, and I felt the runtime was appropriate for the genre.
Screenshot by Destructoid
Blade Chimera is exactly as I expected: solid and dependable. It’s not the most remarkable game I’ve played in the genre, nor is it very inventive. Despite its cyberpunk leanings, it perhaps leans a bit too hard on its Symphony of the Night aspirations, which hamstrings its attempts to find its own identity. Not to mention that its narrative is so predictable, the only thing that kept me guessing was whether or not it was trying to be subversive or if it was actually that obvious.
However, it’s done with a lot of skill and a tangible amount of passion. If it’s something of a clone of Symphony of the Night , it’s less plagiarism and more “imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. It makes itself worthwhile with solid design and enjoyable combat. It hides a lot of its flaws beneath a communicative art style that captures its setting and its characters so well. It’s maybe not what I’ll reach for first the next time I’m in the mood for a metroidvania, but it’s a symphony in its own right.
[This review is based on a retail build of the game provided by the publisher.]
The post Review: Blade Chimera appeared first on Destructoid .
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