Blades of Fire reminds me of an era when games took more creative risks, making it a perfect fit in a year filled with throwback RPGs.

2025 has been the year of the throwback RPG.

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered refurbishes a classic, retaining all the charm of a beloved RPG while modernizing the presentation and some mechanics for modern audiences. Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 proved there is still demand for games like Final Fantasy X, ambitious turn-based RPGs that take bold narrative swings and have an iconic cast of characters. Connections can even be drawn between Gothic and Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 or The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and Avowed.

Blades of Fire, a new Soulslike RPG from Metroid Dread developer MercurySteam, also feels like a throwback RPG, albeit for more esoteric reasons. Blades of Fire isn’t a throwback RPG because Demon’s Souls inspired it; it’s a throwback RPG because of a design ambition you don’t find in many modern RPGs. The bold swings this game takes don’t always work out, but they hearken back to an era when games weren’t locked into design cliches just yet.

Blades of Fire takes place in a world where an evil queen has turned steel into stone, preventing people from making weapons to fight her. A warrior named Aran is brought out of hiding by an inquisitive student named Adso, who brings him a magical hammer that can forge steel weapons and help him take on the queen’s forces. From there, Aran and Adso set out on an adventure, forging weapons to help them along the way. It’s not the most original fantasy story out there, and admittedly, writing is not one of Blades of Fire‘s strong suits.

Blades of Fire takes its boldest swings in how weapon crafting and combat work. First, there’s the forging mechanic that’s central to the game. As you explore and fight enemies, you’ll gather resources and unlock new weapon designs. You can then travel to a magical forge, craft a weapon via a minigame, name it, and bring it back to the world. If you die, you drop the weapon you were using and have to venture back to its location to retrieve it. The number of times you repair a weapon is directly related to how well you do in the crafting minigame, emphasizing the importance of proper weapon forging.

Combat itself also eschews typical action-RPG designs. Rather than using just one or two buttons to attack, each face button represents a different part of the enemy’s body. Pressing A on an Xbox controller attacks low, pressing X attacks the enemy’s left side, pressing B attacks the enemy’s right side, and pressing Y will go straight for their head. Weapons also deal different kinds of damage, so each fight becomes a dance of swapping weapons and damage types.

These mechanics are the most distinct aspects of Blades of Fire and the best things about it. I cared more about the weapons I used here than I ever have in an RPG before. I was sad when I could no longer repair a weapon or lost it far away from my destination. Blades of Fire‘s fights felt more intimate and intense than most other Soulslikes I’ve played because I had to be intentional about where and how I was striking the enemy. I’ve never played anything quite like this before.

Blades of Fire‘s innovation on the weapon crafting and design fronts is appreciated because it’s flawed otherwise. The story never goes anywhere that thematically interesting, as Aran is the kind of boring male video game protagonist that I’m not nostalgic for. Blades of Fire’s interconnected world sometimes becomes a little too obtuse and cryptic to explore for its own good. One particularly frustrating area hid the path forward behind a pile of books I had to destroy with my weapon, never indicating that I could do this. I’m always down for an entertaining puzzle, but obstacles like that aren’t rewarding to overcome, just frustrating.

Then again, those flaws weirdly also make Blades of Fire feel like a throwback because it’s reminiscent of an era when developers understood they should take swings, even if they don’t always work. As any creative industry matures, best practices emerge and general standardizations happen. Games like Batman: Arkham Asylum and Demon’s Souls established combat mechanics that have been iterated and refined upon since to establish your standard action-RPG mechanics. That generally raises the quality of all games in the genre, as they have a solid North Star to follow. 

But there’s nostalgia to be had from a game reminding us of an era when those tenets weren’t in place. One that is clearly flawed in several ways, but takes enough risks that you can appreciate what it’s doing. That’s the era of gaming that resulted in the likes of Final Fantasy X, Oblivion, and Demon’s Souls, and it’s a time period people are now nostalgic for. Thankfully, games like Blades of Fire, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered, and Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 are here to satiate those nostalgic appetites. 

This article was based on an Xbox code provided by the publisher.