From the first trailer for Blue Fire, I was intrigued, here was a game that seemed to combine the best of The Legend of Zelda, with a little Dark Souls and a dash of Titanfall. Now having played it, I did experience all those elements, but did they come together to create an inferno, or was it more of a tiny spark?

You are you, a small fellow that is woken up from a slumber and it is soon after that you hear a call towards a shrine in a temple and as you approach it, you start to learn more of this world. Ancient gods all lived in harmony, until one decided they wanted more power and slowly they begun to corrupt the world and this caused the remain gods, to lose their powers, until they were all but gone. While the five gods who remained pure are the light, the sixth god became the darkness and the reason why you are special, is because are filled with both. As you explore the world and meet more and more people that are attempting to carve out a life here, you will learn more about yourself, and your fate, so I won’t say much more, needless to say, this is not an in-depth story, but there is enough to keep you moving forward.

The issue with that though, is that there is very little direction to your goal, there is no map that fills out, so when someone tells you to go somewhere, unless you remember where it is, you are going to spend a while just aimlessly hoping you discover the right location. This also plays into the characters that you meet; some are recurring and have some no personality to engage with and while they are not meant to be the focus, given some are full of life, finding those without any life seems like an odd direction to go in.

In terms of going, you start out with very few abilities and much like Zelda games or perhaps a little more accurately, Metroid games, you will unlock new skills that will allow you to revisit and explore previous locations. Even from the earliest locations, there are doors that you either can’t access, because of gates in the way, or you can go through and you find yourself standing on a narrow ledge, wondering how did you get there. As you enter the first temple, you will find an item that lets you wall run, up til that point, you are only able to jump and dash and while that is helpful, there are some gaps that are slightly to wide to clear with it. The wall run, opens things up in ways you can’t begin to imagine and this isn’t because you can now get extra clearance on a gap, no, it now allows you to wall jump as well, meaning you can get vertical and that is a big deal.

Each of the locations, be a temple, graveyard, sewer system or something else, are not that big in terms of room length or width, but instead play a lot with height. Once you can wall run or wall jump, mixing that up with dashing and jump and then double jumping, will in turn allow you a lot more freedom of movement. Sadly though, movement can be irksome a lot of the time, as the game can struggle with letting you leap in the right direction, even the slightest touch of the control stick can have you launch from your wall run, into the wrong place. Thankfully, those same movement options also help play in part with combat, which is great, because it needs it, combat otherwise is a little dull. For most encounters, you can simply lock onto the enemy, attack a few times, dodge out of the way of the attacks and repeat as needed, but some enemies spend their time hanging about, higher than you can get to with just a jump, so a double jump is perfect for attacking them, but even then, you will still find some that are just not reachable and that is where your Blue Fire comes in.

Early on in the game, you obtain the ability to cloak yourself in magic, but you can also shoot little balls of fire at enemies, but each time you do, you use up your mana and you can’t just find potions lying around for it. Instead you recover health and mana by using fire shards that you can occasionally find lying around the place, this system means you need to monitor your health and mana at all times. When you save at fire statues, both are replenished, but sometimes, finding a statue can be a task, so being cautious is important, because some enemies can deal significant damage and if you can’t heal, then a game over is approaching your way.

Thankfully, you can upgrade your health by entering the voids, these are challenges that can be a simple as just following a path, to as complex as following a path, while double jumping and dashing across spike filled pits. These are laid out all over the place, though some of them are inaccessible until you get some upgrades, which highlights the Metroid-ness of the game, finding them and clearing them will give you a heart upgrade, something that can come in easy very early. For the mana upgrades, those are a little more challenging, because you need to defeat enemies and collect the orbs they drop and then offer them up at the shrine, but with each level you go up, the more orbs you need. With the more challenging an enemy, the more orbs you can collect, assuming they don’t fall off the edge of a platform and into water. There are also upgrades for your weapons, mostly in the form of more powerful weapons to find and equip, but if you really want to break out from the drab colours, you can also make colourful cloaks.

That ties nicely into presentation, the game has a very unique look, which combines a somewhat cel shaded look, with a dark world and while you might think they wouldn’t blend together, they actually do. The unique style that the game has, also benefits from the design of the world, yes there are a number of locations, but they are not overflowing with detail, which allows you to focus on the action and has the extra benefit of not complicating the performance. While the world design is interesting, the character design looks half-done in comparison, now clearly the developers went for a look and the characters are striking at times, but because they are mostly black coloured blobs in human-ish forms, they look out of place. Enemies tend to fair better, with some cool sword foes and plenty of others to take on, while the bosses tend to fall into unremarkable, they still have their moments. The voids are also blessed with strong design, given their large expanse of almost nothing, it could have easily fallen into being bland, but the background highlights

Sound is perhaps a little more important, as the score is haunting at times and that is only when you hear it, as more often than not, you are left with just the sounds of the world. Much like the world design, the sound design is spectacular, from the clanging of sewer pipes to the wind rushing threw a void, there is a lot to enjoy about it. The characters though, they tend to speak in broken gibberish, which again feels a little out of place, the gods though, when you hear them speak, they have a cadence that evokes power, but at a tone that shows restraint for it, a delicate balance. A lot of the enemy audio falls into the weaker side of things, but can still be earie, especially when there is very little noise elsewhere.

Blue Fire is not going to be a game for everyone, while it clearly wears its inspirations proudly, it does enough differently, to stand apart from them, the problem is that while each element on its own does well, it never quite comes together correctly. Motion is very important in the game and it is all to easy to launch yourself off in a different direction, than planned, which can result in death or having to reclimb that impressive structure. Combat is fast and can easily whoop your butt, if you don’t pay attention, but after a few encounters with each enemy, it can be pretty easy to work out patterns. There is a lot to enjoy here, I just wish I could engage with the game more, it has a wonderful look, and interesting movement and combat, but a story that is hard to follow, characters that are not that engaging and very little direction, hurts it more than anything.