Blade Chimera (PC, Switch)

[Tobal]

Blade Chimera is out on PC and Switch, picked it up for £15 on steam. A new metriodvania from the guys that made the decent Record of Lodoss one back in 2021, this is very much continuation of that style going for the psone SOTN look with the animation. The aesthetic is japanese cyberpunk future monks fighting demons using guns and blades.

Gameplay gives you 2 weapons slots (ideally one range/one melee) and 1 for the Spirit Blade, much like the Elf having Blade/Bow/Magic from their previous game, the other buttons jump and evade. The gun autoaims (has manual aim), auto reloads once you stop firing, infinite ammo which is nice and tends from the few weapons i've picked up early on, to do low fast damage which increases the closer you get.

Melee weapons will hit harder and the few i've picked up a vary it to slow heavy hitters with range and tiny fast daggers, kills with the melee weapon gives spirit back (green bar). The last button is for the spirit blade which throws the huge claymore at demons for combat, with various mods on it to trigger different abilities like having it hold in place and spin, killing with the spirit blade gives HP back. The Spirit blade also transforms in to missing environmental stuff so you can cross gaps or get to out of reach platforms and can be lodged in to brick wall to step on.

Not much going on in the first hour, just lots of closed off rooms and long corridors battle down, hopefully it'll spice up soon and i probably expect it to be 8-10 hr game similar to Lodoss.

[Tobal]

Put 4 hours in it now, so to add to what i've previously seen, you'll gain access to mini-quests from the save points which i think appear in Bloodstained, these seems to fall to 3 types (of the 15 i've cleared so far), kill x monster sometimes in x area, go gather materials of x monster, and lastly little story quests which sometimes end in a boss. Rewards for all of them seem to be just cash and exp which is fine. The main story is pretty on the nose about who the badguys are early on so the rest it about discovering about the demons and whatever happened 30 years prior.

Far as gameplay stuff, you'll get a skill tree to open up the usual movement options so it won't be long before you're double jumping and sliding. In addition to the spirit blade i found that shield mode (ramming the blade into the ground to create a round shield) is pretty valuable as all small enemy projectiles including boss stuff can be absorbed back into HP. The spirits timeshift stuff is barely used so far, just a couple puzzles here and there that aren't hard, maybe it'll change late game. And finally i've gotten use to the "wall jump" which is only used for hidden stuff, it's a lot of button presses to get muscle memorised in a tight frame limit, there is no bounce off the wall in the game(so far), instead you lodge the spirit blade into the wall to stand on, so when you jump you have to also hit the spirit blade button to bring it back to get it ready for the recast delay by the time you start to descend, it's pretty tough as you can't double jump without the spirit blade at your back.

As for some cons i'm coming across, of the few mini quests i've failed, it resets the progress to the start of the quest... not fun when your next save point next to the mini quest boss means i then have to warp across the maps, get the cutscene from the quest giver again, get back to the save point, warp and then run to the boss for the end attempt, seems to be a bad oversight, as you don't get this in the main story bosses as the checkpoint or save points are very close by to restarting the boss.

Only other problem is alot of melee only enemies are pretty bad, anything like a ledge to step up on or gap in the way stops them getting to you, so you can just pummel them with bullets with no reply. This lead to a pretty disappointing appearance of Nue, typically an Ape with a snakes tail.... it didn't leap round, just stayed in place with a very limited strike from the snake tail.

Lastly the new weapons which aside from the shop vendors can be found in hidden places or dropping from enemies that look like they use a weapon, so demon samurai would eventually drop a katana, assault robots dropping their guns. They also don't outright outdate previous stuff as there is niche in the damage types and where they can be used (like no eclectic/plasma use in water), and there has been a few surprising weapons like

->Open Spoiler<-

chainsaw and lightsabre

which are fun to use.

[fuse]

Yeah I grabbed this too when I got the notification that it'd released. Straight away you can tell it's one of theirs by how it looks and moves - very nicely - and there's familiarity in the UI/UX side of things too. The most immediate surprise was how prominent the gunplay is and how easy it seems to screw up your aim and be blasting away at the floor more than anything else. Not long after though you do get more weapon types and it starts to make a bit more utility out of each, i.e. finishing with this one regains you some health, and so on.

[Tobal]

Can't say i've ever had aiming issues, letting auto aim do all the work, with a few problems around the spirit transforming if you get to close to the object.

Finish at 10 hrs, all mini quests done and a completion rate of 96%, i think i was mostly missing Green jigsaw collectables (got to 49, i couldn't figure out how to get the lift ones) and probably a few breakable walls which i assumed weren't in the game till i accidently hit a wall searching for a mushroom in mini quest and sparks flew off it, looked no different to any other wall, so i wasn't about to spend hours hitting every single wall to find out.

Overall it is a poorer experience than Lodoss, majority of the enemies just can't threaten you versus your gun and circle shield, the general exploration is 80% combat rooms, and the bosses are wimps compared to the trouble i went through in Lodoss... probably not helping myself when i got the incendiary shotgun which just murders everything for at least 500dmg a shot about the 5hr mark, between that and the almost unlimited heals from all the cash i got doing the mini quests to buy ice cream i could just mostly stand still an brute force last big 4 bosses.

Still, for the price is still worth a pop if you like this genre and it's a short game so it doesn't outstay its welcome.

[briareos_kerensky]

Just finished this, around 9 hours with a lot of sidequests left undone and 10 or so puzzle pieces remaining. Just in time for Phantom Brave and Ender Magnolia. I did enjoy Blade Chimera, but probably a tad less than Lodoss.
The gunplay takes a while to get used to, and towards the end of the game some of its aspects (like being locked to one direction after a second or so without pressing the fire button) make fights against some bosses and secret/very late enemies a lot less enjoyable. Also, standard enemies and bosses that can one-shot-kill you are never welcome, especially if it's the first time you encounter said enemy.
Movement options are great but again towards the end a few boss fights require interacting with "magic" hotspots and the game seems to lock to exactly the opposite you want. I like the level design being so that it allows multiple traversal options dependign on unlocked character skills. Barely had any need for restorative items, and money went into buff equipment, once you unlock the air dash you basically forget you can create a temporary barrier by stabbing your sword to the ground, and that barrier absorbs enemy projectiles that replenish your health. Barely used offensive magic skills, between shotguns and whips, I had plenty of firepower.