Blade Assault is a 2D action rogue-lite platformer with gorgeous pixel art set in a desolate science fiction universe. Fight against the corrupt military of Esperanza as a member of the Undercity’s resistance force. Bring the guilty to justice by gaining strength and fighting alongside dependable allies.
Blade Assault places you in the role of a resistance force fighting against corrupt military commanders in a desolate sci-fi setting.
The core gameplay loop consists of battling through levels, with enemy formations spawning intermittently. The levels themselves are relatively simple. They have a very horizontal configuration, and there is little opportunity for exploration. Spread throughout each level are chests from which you can purchase enhancements. These enhancements can improve your health, evasion abilities, and damage output.
At the conclusion of each level, you must activate a “port” that will spawn an onslaught of adversaries. This is connected to a unique “Assault Level” system that significantly affects the difficulty and difficulty of each run. As you battle this final wave of foes, the assault level progressively rises, and for each level it rises, enemies receive a random buff.
These buffs can make foes resistant to knockback, augment their attacks with status effects, and cause them to explode upon death, dealing enormous damage. Even at lesser levels, these enhancements can make a run extremely difficult. You encounter an NPC at the conclusion of each stage who enables you to “hack” the assault level and reduce it by one. This is incredibly useful, particularly on longer runs, but lowering the level restricts the available upgrades.
This system enables Blade Assault to stand apart from other games in its genre. It is also the fundamental factor that distinguishes each run.
Your armaments are constructed from the “cores” that you collect. During your run, fire, lightning, and freeze cores can provide status effects and stat increases. These are less diverse than those found in other titles, but they still offer a respectable amount of combat variety. There are also containers scattered across the levels that can be purchased with the gems you collect. These are more generalized effects that can increase your chances of discovering better cores, add basic effects to your attacks, etc.
In order to further diversify the gameplay, there are three playable characters, each with their own weapons and abilities. You begin with only one unlocked character, and as you earn coins and other resources, you can unlock additional characters and enhancements.
As far as world building goes, I found the character designs to be a touch hit or miss, but the animation quality is excellent overall. In addition to its impressive visuals, Blade Assault features excellent sound design and a sturdy, never-repetitive soundtrack. However, there is one flaw in the world construction, and that is the terrible dialogue in the game. The NPCs converse awkwardly with one another, and the visual and structural appeal of the game is not reflected in the manner in which characters converse.
During my time with Blade Assault, I couldn’t help but note how similar it felt to Dead Cells, another incredibly entertaining roguelike. Blade Assault is entertaining and has a solid foundation, but a few flaws hampered my enthusiasm for the game.
These issues originate from bugs and, as far as I can tell, PC porting issues. Initially, there is an issue with the updating of the interface and currency values during the trials. The values of collected gems and other items did not alter until I purchased a chest pickup or reached the next level. Roguelikes are based on planning ahead for each run, so a flawed interface is, to say the least, exasperating. It’s not the worst thing to fool around with, as all levels contain chests, but it is a constant annoyance.
However, Blade Assault’s true flaw is that upgrades do not apply correctly from run to run. There are characters in the world hub where you respawn after each run who enable you to train and improve your statistics. This is common in roguelikes, and upgrading these attributes is typically required to reach the game’s conclusion. I decided to invest significantly in my health stats so that I could survive each run for longer. As soon as I left the world center, however, the increased health was gone and I reverted to my default stats.
I also invested in other abilities, but with my health gone, it’s highly unlikely that any of the other metrics survived. Despite the fact that the interface not updating is annoying, this flaw makes the game incredibly difficult.
Blade Assault has a solid gameplay loop, but a number of bugs must be fixed before it can be considered a genuinely good game. I wouldn’t call the flaws game-breaking, but they make the game considerably less enjoyable. It’s a shame because it’s evident that a lot of time and effort went into this; the assault system is unique and requires the player to choose between reducing enemy difficulty and upgrading their abilities, which is a fantastic risk/reward system.
I would adore to play Blade Assault the way it was intended to be played if these issues are resolved.
Blade Assault: Blade Assault is a 2D action rogue-lite platformer with gorgeous pixel art set in a desolate science fiction universe. Fight against the corrupt military of Esperanza as a member of the Undercity's resistance force. Bring the guilty to justice by gaining strength and fighting alongside dependable allies. – kendajaya