There’ve been quite a lot of metroidvania titles in the past decade, however most of them now love to lean into the whole Souls-like design language, with huge emphasis on precise and punishing combat and limited healing. And there have been some fantastic examples of games done that way, some of which I could even enjoy, although in general this is entirely not my cup of tea. But apart from the great Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night, that I grew to like more as the years went by, very few games felt like a Castlevania-type metroidvania, the IGAvania, if you will. Or at least, few that seemed interesting enough to play. Blade Chimera was another such titles I didn’t get interested in at first. However, after seeing it played on streams, I found it curious enough to check it for myself. And for the most part, it is a very solid and fun game.
Being a more “IGAvania” type exploration focused action adventure platformer, Blade Chimera has a lot of action RPG elements. You get different equipment, inventory of healing items, gathering experience and leveling up, unlockable skills, side quests – all on top of the basic aspects of the genre, like gaining items and abilities that unlock more of the world and finding secrets. One of the interesting changes Blade Chimera introduces to the formula is the validity of ranged weapons – these kinds of titles tend to focus extensively on melee combat with ranged weapons being rare and often unwieldy. But in this game, you start with only a ranged weapon and apart from several enemy types and bosses, using various kinds of guns remains a valid choice. Plus, the game still motivates you to get closer to the enemy by making ranged damage scale based on your distance to the enemy.
Very soon you get a second big feature of the game – a special partner, who allows you to manipulate time of certain objects and enemy attacks and serves as a defensive and offensive tool. Mastering using these abilities will become crucial as time goes on and usually all the interesting movement tech comes from this partner, some of which is locked behind upgrade skills and is completely optional to get. In general, most of the game is rather well balanced for combat and platforming challenges with a right amount of interesting patterns and situations the game puts you in.
The world is quite fun to explore as well. The enemies take form of the typical mythical creatures from Japanese folklore, though with a post-apocalyptic twist and the visual design of the world is really nice to look at. Sounds alright too, with good serviceable tunes to explore the world to. The story isn’t amazing, but far better than in a lot of games in the genre and has a few cool twists to it.
There are few surprising additions to the typical concepts of exploration as well, most notably the ability to teleport at will to basically any spot on the map. It’s a pretty wild idea for the genre, but it works exactly as I’ve said – you just select any room/section of the map (the typical metroidvania rectangle), press the button and appear there. It leads to some surprisingly abilities to straight up break a few platforming challenges, that I actually appreciated, because to pull it off, you had to do other challenging movement things. And at least in one spot it is even required for a tiny secret. But in general, you’re only limited in teleportation to specific rooms and also the very last new room you’ve discovered – those are always forbidden to move directly to. There’s plenty of secrets to find, most of which are fun, and this teleportation is extremely helpful.
Sadly, as it happens with indie metroidvanias almost all the time, despite being mechanically “solid enough”, the designers decide to make some particular part of the game (be it a section of an area or a boss fight) extremely demanding on mechanics. Which is very frustrating, because the game demands of you what can’t be done, because mechanics and controls aren’t good enough. It barely ever happens in the game, but do expect some completely random and unreasonable difficulty spikes from time to time. There are also moments where the game wants you to do something very specific, but does not provide a clear enough explanation, or expects you to utilize a particular nuance in the game systems that always existed but was never necessary up until then and will never ever be brought up again.
Apart from those incredibly frustrating moments and mostly minor bugs, including a few moments where you can sequence break in such a way, where the game’s story isn’t sure how to deal with it, Blade Chimera is a lot of fun. I wouldn’t name it among the most exciting metroidvania titles I’ve ever played and there’s a solid chance I will straight up forget about it after a while. But I was very happy to play it. And since there’s a demo of the game available, I suggest checking it out if you’re curious about the game yourself.