Blades of Fire just showed off its first five minutes of gameplay, and I think it might be channelling God of War too heavily

Earlier this month, MercurySteam announced Blades of Fire, an action RPG the Spanish studio recently confirmed is a spiritual successor to Severance: Blade of Darkness. As someone who fondly remembers Blade of Darkness, developed by MercurySteam’s precursor Rebel Act Studios, I was excited to see this grungy old hack ‘n’ slash get the God of War treatment. Yet having watched Blades of Fire’s debut gameplay showcase, I’m now concerned Blades of Fire may be too God of War for its own good.

The showcase offers an unedited, five-minute clip of Blades of Fire in action. We see protagonist Aran de Lira wandering through some floral woodland, before getting into a scrap with some goblin-like creatures and shambling undead. When the fight is over, Aran then solves a simple environmental riddle involving the corpse of a ‘Cursed Paladin of Aurora’, whatever that is.

All of this looks capably put together. The combat seems weighty and purposeful, and there’s an interesting moment when Aran’s blade suddenly shatters, leaving him fighting with the broken hilt until he switches to a hammer. Forging new weapons will apparently play a major role in Blades of Fire, and while we don’t see that in action here, we do see Aran unlock a transportation node to his forge by smashing a hammer into an anvil covered in stone, which looks very satisfying too.

That said, everything on show here seems to borrow from God of War in some way. The similarities in the combat are obvious enough, but the aesthetic, colour palette, pacing and environment design are all highly reminiscent of Sony Santa Monica’s games too. Toward the end of the video, Aran and his companion Adso approach a round stone door that could’ve been ripped straight from Midgard, while a magical bird perched on a banner immediately made me think of Odin’s green ravens that Kratos can destroy with his axe (though admittedly, Aran doesn’t partake in any avian slaughter).

It all seems a bit too derivative, and doesn’t resemble Blade of Darkness much at all, at least in this sequence. Rebel Act’s game was closer in atmosphere to Dark Souls than the God of War reboots, with a dark and eerie tone inspired by Robert E. Howard’s Conan stories. But so far, I don’t see anything especially dark or eerie about Blades of Fire.

To be clear, I totally understand why MercurySteam would adopt this approach. Far more people are going to be familiar with Sony Santa Monica’s reboots than with an obscure, PC exclusive hack ‘n’ slash from twenty-five years ago. I never expected the game to lead with that foot. Nonetheless, I had hoped for a bit more of Severance’s personality to shine through, whereas the footage shown here just looks like a slightly less good God of War.

Ultimately though, this is only a tiny snippet. Hopefully the full game will be able to stamp a more specific personality onto Sony Santa Monica’s template, whether inspired by Blade of Darkness or not. We won’t have that long to find out either way, Blades of Fire is due to launch on May 22.