Bladesong (PC) - Preview | Phenixx Gaming

There are times when I genuinely want to hold the knowledge of a craft. Not making cards like a little old woman, but the ability to make something so everlasting that 300-400+ years later, people don’t know the name but love the work. A good quality sword, a sword used in a battle to defend the land you walk on now, it is breathtaking to look at. Then there is what I make in SUN AND SERPENT creations and Mythwright’s Bladesong, which can sometimes be best described as a good try for a first timer.

Bladesong is the latest entry into early access and possibly the first in early access swordsmithing (to my knowledge). You play as a disheveled and broken swordsmith/bladesmith who wakes on the brink of death, but your only way of living is to forge some blades for the encroaching blackness that surrounds you everywhere you go. In essence, there is a hint of blight and war hanging around Bladesong’s story, drenched in long-winded RPG-ish descriptions and hints of fantasy elements hanging overhead. I’d say they were cliche’d, but that comes with a negative connotation.

Set on the edge of a town called Eren Keep, the feudal King (the Masked King) has closed the gates and won’t let anyone in without paperwork, some lotion, and medieval Kleenex. All you can do is ply your trade, earn money, and try to explore the surrounding areas around the camp you find yourself in, a refugee camp full of people like you, seeking the safe walls of Eren Keep and the ability to live. At the current release, Bladesong features a prologue setting up your dazed and confused smith in the camp, and a first chapter of the story in the town.

The dev team says the full release in “2027” will have five chapters. Despite all the “fluff” – for lack of a better term – around the story to Bladesong, it is as simple as can be. Both in terms of plot in this first proper chapter and in terms of gameplay. Most importantly to me, Bladesong does something I truly love in gaming: You are just a person doing a job. That’s not a defense if you’re cosplaying Germans in the early to middle of the 20th century, but it is a brilliant plot device if you’re a simple swordsmith, a Witcher, or a tailor on a star base.

Each day is marked by two events: You wake up and decide what work to do with the available action points, and before you go to bed, you decide whether or not to explore the camp, surrounding areas, and/or Eren Keep. Importantly, doing jobs gets you not only experience but also useful materials. Some jobs will offer some metal to work on with your next job alongside pitiful coin, other jobs might offer scraps of other things like old armor, a wheel from a wagon, or old tools. The latter three can be broken down to get your main resources: Metal, wood, and leather.

Of course, metal is the most important. You are a swordsmith, swords are made with metal, you need metal for your trade. That doesn’t mean wood and leather are unimportant; a sword is no use unless you can handle it. The hilt and pommel (Anglo-Norman for “little apple”) use all three for various designs as set out by customers.

Each customer comes to you with varied requirements, but as long as you meet those, there isn’t really much difference between Hollow Ground, Fuller, Double Fuller, and Lenticular swords. That’s enough Oakeshott typology for one article – and just like me, you’ve recently learned something new. My point is, you don’t need to be the type of person to hang swords above your headboard to play and enjoy Bladesong. For the most part, it is a medieval PC Building Simulator.

You start out fulfilling basic orders in camp, growing skills through a tech tree, buying books to make more advanced hilts, and eventually, into the nitty-gritty bits. For the most part, you are hitting metal with a hammer to make a bar look happy (the customer requirements), and you get paid. Ultimately, you’ll earn the trust of named characters with accompanying art and plot lines to make more advanced, more detailed, more interesting swords.

The majority of people want a sword to stab and/or slash at someone with. “It is a nice blade, but the engraving gives you no tactical advantage whatsoever, unless you were planning to auction it off as a collector’s item,” ya know? Nonetheless, you can eventually make a flamberge (probably), kalis, Ikakalaka, or karabela, if the occasion calls for it. Though broadly speaking, the majority of what you’ll end up making are claymores and sabres. Which is all to say, large pointy stabby things – it is that simple.

Yes, there is slightly more detail than smack a thing with a hammer and make stabby things, but if you want to be that broad in descriptions and how you play, you can. One of the options in the meager settings menu is about hammer timing, one of only two options in reference to gameplay, if you discount interface scaling. If you manage to time your hammer hits well, you’ll have fewer hits to make when lengthening, cutting down the thickness, or increasing the width.

To make a rather blunt point, the only times you’re really focused on hitting specific parts of the sword are the point, curvature, and, if you’re doing detailed cross-section work. Even the engraving is a click-and-drag from a menu on the left. Broadly speaking, there isn’t an excessive amount of detail to put in unless you really want to do it; even then, I imagine the swordsmithing isn’t hyper-detailed for those who are involved in the trade. All of this sounds like a negative, possibly due to the matter-of-fact phrasing, but it’s really not.

In a week of being really sick, I’ve put more hours and care into Bladesong than anything else. I’ve enjoyed this prologue and first chapter, despite sometimes reading like a George RR Martin book, because it is simple to the point of drowning out everything. The DS9 and Witcher references were very much on purpose; You just want to mind your business and do work, so be it, but if you’re nosey and want to go on some medieval adventure quests (like getting a guy out of slavery), that’s also there.

If there is one problem I have, and it is something that I had to go digging for, it is the quests themselves. As you talk and get yourself into more bother with the guards, with business owners, and with basically everyone, you get a “New Quest Objective” or whatever notification, and for the most part, you’ll not see that again until you do the quest. Now, here is the kicker. When you end your day and decide where to go, certain spots on the map will light up, showing where a quest is. That’s fine.

While in the forge, either at camp or in Eren Keep, the UI very much focuses on the top of your screen for your resources, top left is your level, and top right is where buffs and debuffs sit. Along the bottom, you’ll see an anvil, a chest, a sun icon, and maybe a couple of others. These are all interactable. Sure enough, you can interact with the questionmark tab and the three lines tab, the former a tutorial reminder and the latter your Esc menu. What is hidden just well enough is the book under your level count: A journal to track quests.

It took about 8 hours to properly find it. It is just a basic “language training” thing; I talk about it occasionally with my dad, it is the language of gaming. If you’ve trained me as a player to view only the bottom of the screen as where all my useful tools and interaction points are, then I’m almost only going to look there. Maybe others got it quicker, but it is a simple UI thing: It is dark on a dark background, it is small, and it is not in the place I’m trained to look, so I’m going to miss it.

That’s really it in terms of complaints. Performance at this state has been stable for me, even on all the highest settings, though that’s not saying much. The only time you might see performance dips in the event you are below the system requirements is while making the swords themselves, which is a good portion of gameplay, yes. Everything else is static painted backgrounds with a bit of camera movement to mimic sway; there isn’t anything too intensive going on.

Bladesong is a great example of early access launches done well. Performance is there; there is plenty to do as is before adding on to it, and on top of that, you have a unique creative idea with a creative mode for those who don’t want to get involved with the story. There aren’t endless parts and skills in your arsenal, but what is there offers the ability to be as creative and interesting as you like. You want to make Geralts’ blades or maybe Cloud’s Buster Sword and Sephiroth’s Masamune; you can get close enough to those, too.

A PC review copy of Bladesong was provided by Mythwright for this preview.