Blades of Fire GDC 2025 Hands-On Preview – A Pleasant Surprise

Despite burgeoning budgets and development teams growing to the dozens, if not hundreds, the AA gaming space is something where it’s rare to see a developer thrive. MercurySteam has been crafting up a variety of third-person adventure titles over the years, and we recently went hands-on with their latest adventure, slated to release in just two months. Blades of Fire is one of those titles that might sound average on paper but certainly holds its own with the right tempering.

After a brief backstory introducing the world of Blades of Fire, from the world once ruled by mighty giants known as The Forgers to an evil Queen whose magic can turn steel into stone, the lore of iron and blood runs deep through this adventure’s DNA. Players pick up the hammer of Aran de Lira, a commander’s son and subsequent blacksmith whose character designs can only be described as a down-on-his-luck Gabriel Belmont. After a brief introduction, Blades of Fire introduces the plucky sidekick Adso and an abbot whose screen time lasts a mere couple of sentences before his life is cut short, yet serves as the catalyst to send this duo on an adventure to slay the merciless Queen. It’s just enough to set the mood before Aran de Lira and his new travel buddy venture out, accompanied by a travel montage and a brief tutorial on weapon crafting.

Weapon crafting seems to be the main hook to Blades of Fire, setting it apart from other character action titles. By venturing back to The Forge between worlds, players can first pick out a learned recipe and put it together with the various ores and woods that have been wicked up during the journey; naturally, I only had access to the very bottom tier of materials given that I was playing from a fresh save file. Once all the materials are acquired and distributed, a separate mini-game plays out where the player has to hammer out any impurities and even out the thickness of metal to match the shape of the blade.

There’s a strange system where I had to select a portion of the blade on a sliding scale and then slide the intensity up and down to impact not just that particular section of the blade but also by raising and lowering the surrounding regions. It was not a system that led itself to being too intuitive to crafting a perfectly even blade and I spent too much time just trying to even out the peaks and trying to come as close as I could to the intended shape of the blade. Initially, this doesn’t seem to do much for the blade beyond raising its core stats like damage and durability, but there were other mechanics on offer, such as changing the type and material of the handle or additional flourishes and accessories to the weapon. The Forge itself feels like the main source of progression throughout Aran de Lira’s journey and the ability to customize every minute stat to a particular weapon might end to some interesting builds for crafting.

Blades of Fire also features an interesting combat system where attacks are done across all four face buttons and determine where Aran’s strikes will land. You don’t often see games that map body parts to a specific button, so it took some time to get used to aiming for an enemy’s left arm versus its right if it happened to be less armored in that location. Aran can wield two separate blades in combat and swap between the two. Each weapon can deal damage between slashing, blunt and piercing attacks, with some offering up multiple damage types. There’s an obvious effectiveness system at play where different body parts on an enemy will glow in colors from red to green that show how effectively a particular weapon or damage type works.

As much as players might want to forge an unstoppable sword and carry it through the adventure, the weapon's effectiveness coupled with a durability system for every weapon means that routine trips to The Forge will be required. As is typical of most action RPGs these days, combat is driven through a stamina system that dwindles down quickly through dodges and repeated attacks. It does recover on its own, but Aran de Lira can hold down L2 and go into a defensive position and recover at a faster rate.

MercurySteam’s strange AA blacksmithing adventure wasn’t on my radar before going to GDC after missing the initial preview event, but after going hands-on for an hour or so, I was pleasantly surprised with their latest unique IP. It’s just unique enough with the strong emphasis on forging and reforging that gives this action adventure a hook that I haven’t seen done before to this extent. The actual story itself could be a standard fantasy slop, and I’d still be on board for crafting a massive war hammer and just playing out my barbarian fantasies when Blades of Fire launches on May 22nd across PlayStation 5, Xbox Series S|X, and the Epic Games Store.