Wonder Blade

Wonder Blade is a good brawler with a surprising amount of depth given its primary genre.

Wonder Blade is a fun, albeit hard and button-mashy beat’em up. Frustrating boss battles and questionable detection aside, it’s easy to pick up and play, mixing melee attacks and magic to create fun combos and the lite RPG elements make it an interesting and lengthy game to tackle during the coming, drought-y months. If you’ve played Castle Crashers, this will feel very familiar; if not, this is definitely a must play.

When I first saw Wonder Blade, I kind of assumed it would be a goofy little adventure, nothing too much more. But I was proven wrong. Trying to get your combo hits in a row as high as possible with a lot of fun. The armor changes serve a purpose other than just defense; it was a nice little touch and surprised me. There were so many small things in Wonder Blade that you may find in games of this genre. I was happy and excited to see that many of them were found in this one. It made it feel like more of a solid game. At $14.99, it's certainly worth the price.

Wonder Blade is to Castle Crashers what Fighter's History is to Street Fighter, a highly "inspired" game. Beyond the moral issue of this situation, Wonder Blade offers us a brawler with RPG elements and some levels with different mechanics that bring variety to the whole. A punk game, as the title from which it is "inspired", that beyond some mismatches in the difficulty, and the poor presentation of the current versions, offers a quite safisfactory experience, especially if we have not played Castle Crashers.

Wonder Blade is far from a bad game. In fact, it was a very enjoyable experience for about an hour. The overall lack of polish in the games finer designs undermine its smooth gameplay and gorgeous visuals, whilst the absence of multiplayer hamstrings its longevity. With a bit more spit and polish, and a couple of mates brandishing Joy-Cons, this could have been quite the hidden gem. Alas, it was not to be.

So, is Wonder Blade worth picking up for fans of beat-em-ups or Castle Crashers? Well I would say yes and no. It’s a solid game with quite a bit to do in it and it looks great the whole time. However, with it being single-player only it could get a bit stale playing by yourself. I really feel like Castle Crashers was as popular as it was because you could play it with up to four people and Wonder Blade just doesn’t offer that. There has also been no shortage of other beat-em-up games this year alone that also offer co-op play. If playing this alone doesn’t bother you then you’ll likely really enjoy it but those who are seeking a new multiplayer game resembling Castle Crashers will want to look elsewhere.

While originality is an important aspect, Wonder Blade is so adorable that it is virtually impossible not to like it. Everything works especially well, even though it is strange to have to go back to the initial menu to evolve some aspects of the character. The artistic style, animations and gameplay flow and the narrative and progression simplicity attest positively to the work.

Here is the challenge with Wonder Blade. It's fun, easy to play, has a decent length, and enough going on to easily see value in it. However, it's so closely inspired by Castle Crashers, which honestly does several things better despite being over a decade older. If I were, to be honest, unless you absolutely want new content, this is a game that doesn't invoke that feeling you want to progress and see what is next, as much as reflect back on how awesome another game was. In more ways I wanted to play Castle Crashers Remastered over this, making it a hard sell. Yeah, it's fun, cute, and a lot of great things, but it is also basically copying a proven model. For some, that is fine, especially if you just want more Castle Crashers, but for anyone else, it brings very little to the table.