Stray Blade

Stray Blade tries and fails to free the Soulslike from gloomy settings and opaque storytelling, falling short of both its own ambitions and the genre’s standards.

Stray Blade is an enjoyable entry-level Souls-like RPG with a beautifully built world to explore. Its intriguing narrative and comical companion, Boji, will keep you entertained for its full 20-plus hour duration. Although bugs and frame rate issues are present, we would recommend Stray Blade to those looking to get a foot in the door of the Souls-like genre.

With its colorful fantasy setting, and decent lore, characters, and story, Stray Blade could have been an enjoyable action role-playing game, but having plenty of heart is not enough to make a game one that is universally worthy of playing. The clunkiness of combat, the bad level design, and the general lack of polish make the journey to the Valley of Acrea a frustrating one that only die-hard action role-playing game fans will have the stomach to complete.

Stray Blade is unfulfilled potential. It could easily aim for the highest possible ratings thanks to its music, visuals, and unconventional skill tree. But that’s not enough. The Souls-like elements actually hurt the game, and even though Farren is very likable, his focus on fighting a single monster is incredibly limiting. Especially considering how often you end up fighting. Not to mention the hopeless gameplay design. It doesn’t help that the game doesn’t know exactly what it wants to be and, just like me with Farren, finds itself lost in the woods. As a result, it sinks into mediocrity, from which few will be willing to pull it out.

Stray Blade is a more than decent third-person action-adventure, blessed with a level design and exploration-reward loop that is very satisfying. The combat, despite the developers' efforts to diversify encounter setups with a wide variety of weapons, could eventually become monotonous. However, despite these flaws, Stray Blade remains one of the most interesting AA productions we've had the pleasure of exploring in recent years.

I’m sorry, I am just so frustrated by this game’s decisions. On the one hand I am all for a gaming studio taking a big swing at trying to shake up a formula; it just sucks when it turns out poorly because it just means that other developers will stick with the status quo to find success. The combat in Stray Blade for instance is trying something new but due to the overall clunkiness of the controls and the timing of the enemies’ attacks it makes it all but impossible to find success with the system in place. Stray Blade has its ups with the colorful graphics and likeable protagonist but it’s a combat heavy game where the combat just isn’t fun which makes this one hard to recommend.

There are things to love here, and there is visible potential within reach. A lot of the major problems with this game could be fixed. That said, with combat as poor and as prevalent as this, Stray Blade is very difficult to recommend to anyone.

Will Farren find a way to break the bond with Acrea?

Looking a little different than your usual Souls-like isn't enough to make Stray Blade worth checking out. Unless you've always been keen to explore the genre but aren't skilled enough to actually play the games -- in which case, I guess, here's your chance to try one with a much lower difficulty level -- it's hard to see who'd really enjoy it.

There is no doubt that Stray Blade manages to appropriate well the mechanics that have become popular in recent years and it does so in a game that is concerned with its narrative and its fantasy look. But some flaws in the combat and exploration design end up undermining some of its best ideas, which doesn't take away its merits, but unfortunately overshadows the experience as a whole.