Bladed Fury (Switch, PS4, Xbox One, PC)

In ancient China lives a princess named Qi, who is also very skilled with swords.  One day she battles a demon in her father’s quarters, but gets tricked and ends up being accused of killing her father herself.  While fleeing from her palace, Qi notices some people who shouldn’t be there, and decides that something isn’t right.  Now in exile, Qi must battle warriors and demons to prove her innocence and find out what’s really going on in her kingdom.  Bladed Fury is a 2-D platform hack and slash with fast action and a unique visual style.  It’s available on most current consoles and PC, but reviewed on Switch here.

Qi is extremely nimble and fun to control.  She can double jump and dash both in the air and on the ground when you press the right shoulder button.  The left shoulder button blocks attacks.  She also has two types of sword attacks.  By pressing the X button, she’ll dish out quick damage with her small sword.  Early in the game she’ll get a giant sword that you can use with the Y button.  It’s slower but much more powerful.  The big sword can also break enemy armor and swat back projectiles if you time it right.  Sometimes when you defeat a mid-boss or powerful leader, you’ll be able to use their attacks by holding down the left trigger button and one of the face buttons.  The right trigger button will regenerate your health, but you can only use it a few times.  You’ll save your game at lanterns, and if you run out of energy you’ll start back at the last one you saved at.  Lanterns serve a couple of other functions as well.  As you defeat enemies, you’ll earn souls.  Spend these souls to unlock upgrades for Qi at the lanterns, and also sort out which defeated boss skills you want to have.

I really liked the visual style of this game.  The segmented sprites kind of reminded me of VanillaWare games like Odin Sphere, Dragon’s Crown, and especially Muramasa: The Demon Blade, a hidden Wii gem.  It also makes me think of cartoons like Samurai Jack.  The small and big sword attacks, plus the use of defeated enemy powers also reminded me of Brave Fencer Musashi, a PSOne favorite of mine.  Some of the levels also have neat ideas.  Like one stage where you collect these tablets, then place them on a map to create parts of the level.  I didn’t care much for the story, though.  Talking to people and reading the text really breaks up the action, and I ended up skipping a lot of it.  Really these types of games don’t need much backstory.  For all I care, the plot could’ve been “A Chinese princess decides to eat a can of spinach and beat up all the bad guys” and I’d be OK with that.  I’m glad the game has an Easy difficulty selection, but it still gets tough later on.  It also looks better in TV mode rather than in handheld mode on the Switch.  The only other problem I had was the action gets a bit repetitive sometimes.  But otherwise, this is still a surprisingly fun action platform game with hack and slash elements, and I really liked it for the most part.

Kid Factor:

Bladed Fury is rated T for Teen with ESRB descriptors of Fantasy Violence, Mild Blood, Mild Language, Suggestive Themes, and Partial Nudity.  You slash all sorts of warriors and demons who just disappear when defeated.  When you get hit, Qi gets thrown back a bit and lets out an “ugh!”  I didn’t really notice much blood, though.  The main character and other ladies wear really skimpy robes, and the way Qi moves I don’t know how her clothes stay on her.  Other adult themes are just in the text only.  Reading skill is a must, and some gamers may find it too difficult.

One Response to “Bladed Fury (Switch, PS4, Xbox One, PC)”

  1. I really like Chinese fantasy stories.

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