Blade Chimera (Switch)

Blade Chimera is the newest title from Team Ladybug, previously seen with 2022’s Drainus, Touhou Luna Nights and Record of Lodoss War: Deedlit in Wonder Labyrinth. Blade Chimera is a 2d action adventure game, akin to other metroidvania styled titles. With previous experience in both licensed and original IP, how does Blade Chimera do against others in the genre, out now for Switch and Windows. Let’s have a scope.

Set in a dystopian Osaka, we pick up as Shin a holy warrior aligned with the Union, who’s job it is to purge demons and ghosts after a demon war had ravaged most of the world. Early in our journey we meet a demon that transforms into a sword, who we find ourselves working with. We go through a journey with the Union and other group the Peacekeepers in a story full of Japanese folklore inspired enemies in a cyberpunk styled Osaka.

I didn’t feel any personal connection with the characters but the story was decent enough to keep me going, with a few things going on at once, Shin as a main character was decent and a strong side cast backing him but. Each main mission continues through the story, there’s also some extra side quests available, however these are a bit vague, with an object being placed but not really explained, some will be done accidentally too.

As per Team Ladybug’s prior efforts, visually Blade is an aesthetically pleasing romp, each area if a little makes up for in personality, whilst we’re traversing through bleak back streets, warehouses and underground labs, each of these is packed full of items, backgrounds and weather effects to help the world feel more realistic, lived in and broken. Each character model feels unique with no real re-use of assets, I couldn’t see any typical palette swapped enemies or NPC’s bar a few unimportant background characters. Each of the main NPC’s are animated well and enemies each have unique move sets which all give them a purpose and a personality. Some of the boss fights look great here too, with screen filling fish, birds, dragons, human controlled machinery and even Jack the Ripper, these look strong, and give a nice bit of visual variety, which fits with the variety of standard enemies you’ll come across.

The game has 3 main combat traits, with 2 forms of melee and a projectile, Shin has 2 weapon slots at any time, and a third weapon is Lux as her sword which will help in combat, and further more help with traversal through levels and some brief puzzle sections, as well as a few little extras, but it’s worth noting Lux can cost you some of your MP. You can style how you want, but it’s always advisable to have one of each weapon type as some of the foes you’ll come across will be immune to certain weapons. Giving the combat an extra layer of depth, obviously there’s many weapons you can unlock in the game through finding in secret areas and trying to fully explore each map you come across. There’s a skill tree here too so the more levelled you become, the additional powers Shin and Lux can unlock too, with most of these being combat and traversal techniques, it’s worth fully fleshing these out, but personally I feel there’s a few things missing from this.

The map is decent in comparison to over metroidvanias, though it doesn’t feel there’s much variety in the visual style. Each area can be travelled to in relative speed and there’s a central hub helps you get around a bit easier. Luckily the map is broken into sections, so unlike other games where you can get lost pretty easily, there’s handy ways of getting about and a map marker to help you find your next objective. Though experts of the genre would probably not really require this. There’s also a number of areas locked behind jigsaw pieces, these act as collectables and usually hide additional items behind the door, finding these can be a bit difficult, as some will be hidden in especially hard to reach areas.

Audio was pretty nice, with some mostly upbeat beats keeping you going through the game, boss fights have some especially intense music, composed by Team Ladybugs fail safe Peposoft, the electric cyberpunk score adds to the strong atmosphere set by the visuals, making you feel like you’re in one of them pixel art cyberpunk wallpapers.

Performance on Switch was decent, with no major drops in performance whilst both docked and undocked it’s good for on the go play as well as home play. My only gripe with playing with a controller was that I had a bug where my control didn’t stop vibrating which I expect to be patched out further down the line.

Blade Chimera fits well into a very crowded genre, with Ender Magnolia recently hitting shelves to positive reviews and a few other similar titles upcoming, Blade Chimera is a good stop gap for anyone interested in the genre, it’s strong visual set up and layers combat gives it an edge over lesser titles, though some meaty puzzles and extra difficulty layers would have been good to see. It’s a strong enough title to hold its own.