Blade Symphony

Developed by Puny Human Games

 

Blade Symphony is a multiplayer game of swordsplay as you battle opponents in singles and doubles competition to prove you are the fiercest fighter out there. A collection of classes and weaponry as well as Steam workshop support creates a robust experience similar to previously covered games Chivalry: Medieval Warfare and War of the Roses. An easy to learn but difficult to master combat system gives you many options and combos to choose from. A surprising amount of depth and layering can be found here with a fantastic visual style and soundtrack which create a unique game that I highly recommend.

During my time with Blade Symphony, I played online in the games duel mode doing one on one contests against a friend and a few random users online. There was a large amount of servers to choose from and a decent amount of people playing in the wee early hours on a Sunday morning. You choose from four different classes and five different weapon types, each with distinctive combat stances and movesets. Each attack and defensive stance has the ability to be charged to three different levels and you can cycle between fast, normal, and heavy attacks at any moment using the scroll wheel. This allows you to create a surprisingly large number of devastating combos while still keeping the game friendly to new players. As I quickly learned, it’s a necessity to jump between different poses at all times in order to stay competitive and counter your opponents style. Each has it’s advantages and disadvantages and trying out what works best for you is the key to success. On top of that, there are a variety of arenas to fight in with basic parkour moves like running along walls and classes that do impressive flips and rolls. To also aid you in combat, you have the ability to do roll evasions, throw shurikens, grab and slice your opponent, and even just take a seat on the ground if you’d like. The best of three rounds wins and proves who the top dog is. It’s a game of duel after duel with the winner staying and new challengers coming in much like the old days of coin-op fighting games. Nostalgic while feeling completely fresh in it’s execution.

In order to best suit your style, the game offers four different classes that each have their own original stances and styles. The Ryoku and Pure classes both allow for extremely fast combat as they do break dance moves and acrobatic flips and cartwheels in order to evade and confuse opponents. The Phalanx and Judgement classes are more geared towards heavy damage slower paced combat where picking your moves and when to attack is essential. Each of these classes splits down in to a number of styles depending on the weapon you choose. I was impressed by how much the weapon I chose changed the difficulty and I had a much easier time performing with certain styles over others. Options to choose from include the katana, longsword, rapier, scimitar, and jian and within each of these weapon classes are different skins to choose from that are there for cosmetic differences alone. Picking a weapon changes the entire grid of how your attacks are laid out and some are well balanced between stances while weapons like the rapier have a much larger moveset with quick moves than with heavy attacks. The thing that I love about this game is that there are absolutely zero unlockable advantages in the game. Sure, there is an in-game currency that you earn by winning battles and it can be used to change the appearance of your character and weapons, but that is all it does. This tells me that even though I may be new to the game, I have a shot at winning regardless of what I have chosen. Some people might not like this style, but I praise it.

Speaking of cosmetic changes, the Steam workshop support in this game is extremely interesting and allows for the different weapon types to be skinned however you like. I messed around with the different available user created designs quite a bit and as you can see in the screenshot above even things like the Keyblade from Kingdom Hearts and a lightsaber from Star Wars have been skinned into this game already. It’s still real early in the release cycle of this game and people are already doing incredible things with the engine. There are also things to download that change your physical appearance, but I had some issues actually implementing these in to the game. It’s neat to see that they are there and will have support, but I downloaded a version of Majora’s Mask from The Legend of Zelda and it was nowhere to be found on any of the classes inventory. Possibly just a bug or an issue from the creator of the custom content, but hopefully something that gets sorted out at a later date.

Blade Symphony is a gorgeous game and everything has a nice shine and amount of detail applied to it. I’m not going to lie, in a few of the arenas I had some unfortunate dropping of frames, but that may just be because my computer is starting to become slightly dated and this game is just pretty enhanced in the visuals department. The fast paced combat looks far better in motion than it does in screenshot form so don’t completely judge it by what you see above, just know that the varied environments and characters all look fantastic. On top of the visuals, the soundtrack for this game is one of the better ones I’ve heard so far in 2014. As of this writing, I’ve been listening to it on loop the entire time I’ve wrote down my opinions and it just doesn’t get old. Each track is varied but there is a heavy amount of piano influence and a large selection of instruments that appear from track to track. Each song seems to match the environment you are in well and I just completely adore this soundtrack. Well thought out and unique all the way throughout.

I had seen other people play Blade Symphony and I couldn’t tell if it was a game I would enjoy. With a $15 price tag, it seemed like a lot to pay for a game that really only functions well in a multiplayer scenario which tends to be the bane of every indie game of this style. I’m glad to report that this game is a whole lot of fun and the entire time I was playing I had a grin on my face. I always felt like I was in full control of my character and the victories and defeats were in my control each time. I haven’t tried out all of the modes this game has to offer, but if you’re in to a competitive combat style game that isn’t like traditional fighters, this is one worth taking a look at.

For the boring statistics part of this game, I played for 1 hour an 16 minutes and fought a dozen matches or so online while trying out some Steam workshop content.

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• blade symphony
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• fighting
• games
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