Blade Strangers (Nintendo Switch) Review

Blade Strangers has only two original characters; Helen, a towering, Greek Amazonian warrior, and Lina, a Hyperdimension Neptunia reject. The rest of the cast actually consists of characters from Shovel Knight, Binding of Isaac, Cave Story+, Code of Princess, Umihara Kawase, and Azure Striker Gunvolt, yet while that sounds impressive, the actual number of characters is relatively small, and not as diverse as one would expect it to be… and not just in terms of looks.

Oh, sure, after playing it for a bit, you are bound to find the one that suits you the most, but the roster is not really that great - they are just adequate, something that can also be said about their design, and the visuals in general, with the cel-shaded characters looking the part, and having very good animation, but nothing that will impress genre veterans, who, in all honesty, are some of the most spoiled bunch of gamers, due to the many - visually - fantastic titles.

Gameplay-wise, this doesn't really try to do something different - like, at all! It's your basic fighter, with no additional bells and whistles, although that alone doesn't mean that's it's a bad game, just a bit of a let-down, really. On the other hand, however, this succeeds in providing something for everyone, meaning that it's built around controls that are very easy to get the hang of, yet leave enough space for the experienced to have some fun, although this won't really make any of those leave their favourite fighter any time soon.

Rather than relying on intricate, multi-button presses, this follows the more accessible route of simple combinations, with heavy/light attacks and directional inputs, and with combo moves rarely being so long that they can challenge newbies - although this is a part that needs some polishing, as certain moves tend to not register when they are supposed to. The difficulty settings are very helpful too, since they are what they supposed to, unlike some titles where 'Normal' is basically 'Pretty Tough... but not so much.'

However, it's the content where Blade Strangers suffers the most. Apart from the basic Arcade (which is devoid of any score system), Training, Versus, Survival, and Online (where it can be hard to find anyone to fight), there's not much else to do. Oh, sure, there's Story, but it's basically the Arcade mode all over again, with a little bit of - highly-skippable - text between each battle, which tells one of the most boring tales in the genre, something that's undoubtedly impressive.