Stray Blade
Top Critic Average
Critics Recommend
Critic Reviews for Stray Blade
Stray Blade tries and fails to free the Soulslike from gloomy settings and opaque storytelling, falling short of both its own ambitions and the genre’s standards.
Stray Blade attempts to revamp the soulslike formula by focusing on a polished narrative, a close-knit pair of protagonists, a colourful and light game world and a potentially excellent combat-system. Not everything, however, worked as planned.
Review in Italian | Read full review
Stray Blade is an enjoyable entry-level Souls-like RPG with a beautifully built world to explore. Its intriguing narrative and comical companion, Boji, will keep you entertained for its full 20-plus hour duration. Although bugs and frame rate issues are present, we would recommend Stray Blade to those looking to get a foot in the door of the Souls-like genre.
It’s a shame when a game is built around a mechanic, only to have that element not live up to its potential. Stray Blade is all about dodges, parries and rolls, but they’re sluggish and imprecise and just don’t work very well. Aside from that frustration, Stray Blade has attractive art and level design, familiar action RPG mechanics, and maybe even some potential, if the combat can be patched into better shape.
I’m sorry, I am just so frustrated by this game’s decisions. On the one hand I am all for a gaming studio taking a big swing at trying to shake up a formula; it just sucks when it turns out poorly because it just means that other developers will stick with the status quo to find success. The combat in Stray Blade for instance is trying something new but due to the overall clunkiness of the controls and the timing of the enemies’ attacks it makes it all but impossible to find success with the system in place. Stray Blade has its ups with the colorful graphics and likeable protagonist but it’s a combat heavy game where the combat just isn’t fun which makes this one hard to recommend.
While Stray Blade occasionally shows glimpses of the care and effort Point Blank obviously put into it, the end result winds up not too convincing, mostly due to a general lack of polish and balance.
Review in Italian | Read full review
With its colorful fantasy setting, and decent lore, characters, and story, Stray Blade could have been an enjoyable action role-playing game, but having plenty of heart is not enough to make a game one that is universally worthy of playing. The clunkiness of combat, the bad level design, and the general lack of polish make the journey to the Valley of Acrea a frustrating one that only die-hard action role-playing game fans will have the stomach to complete.
Stray Blade finds its ideal size among the soulslike for novices.
Review in Italian | Read full review
