Blades of Fire comes across as an incredibly confident action game judging by my time playing through the first three hours.

A world where all steel has been turned into stone. An evil queen intent on claiming the kingdom as her own. One weary but resourceful forger willing to stop her. These are the stakes immediately set at the start of Blades of Fire, a surprisingly ambitious new action RPG from MercurySteam, the Madrid-based developer most recently known for Metroid: Samus Returns and in partnership with . It’s been a minute since the studio has firmly dipped its toe into the realm of dark fantasy, not that you’d know it due to how confident and epic this brand-new universe it’s created already comes across. Does Blades of Fire owe a debt to the likes of and, yes, even in some regards? Certainly. But after three hours of playing, it’s clear that a unique approach to weapon crafting and customisation gives its combat a refreshing edge.

You play as Aran de Lira, the aforementioned forger and warrior who, after suffering a personal tragedy, finds himself in possession of a magic hammer that lets him enter the forge of the gods to create the only weapons able to defeat Queen Nerea’s forces. Such a setup I found to be incredibly compelling in the opening hours, especially since the style of weapon crafting Blades of Fires presents isn’t just some gimmick or throwaway mechanic, but rather the beating heart of the entire game. It’s an intricate system that allows Aran to construct any one of seven different weapon types – spanning twin axes to polearms – using resources out in the world, which then can be hammered into good shape and quality to last longer and deal more damage when out exploring.

You’d think that knowing your weapons will eventually wear down and break would be a cumbersome mechanic to deal with. Blades of Fire (quite literally) gives you the tools to ensure this is less likely to happen, however, by knowing how best to shape and manoeuvre the metal when in the gods’ forge. The higher the star rating you get when forging the weapon, the more times you’ll be able to repair it before needing to construct one entirely from scratch again. This, combined with MercurySteam’s generosity to let Aran swap between four weapons on the fly at any time, prevents battling enemies such as trolls, skeletons, or dwarves bouncing on swords, from ever becoming a chore.

In no other recent action game have I felt such a personal connection to the weapons I’m wielding. I know this because, whenever my beloved spear did eventually snap, I was genuinely gutted and left determined to find the closest nearby anvil, so I could get to work forging another one. I got to try roughly four of the seven different weapon types in my preview: a sword, spear, polearm, and giant axe. All handle uniquely, as expected, but have added depth in combat by offering multiple stances (which you can switch between with just one button tap), as well as the fact that different enemy types are more susceptible to different weapons, relative to different parts of their body. Choosing to perform an overhead swing on a goblin with a helmet, for instance, will see it bounce off. Luckily, Blades of Fire’s handy, colour-coded system shows you where best to hit – and how.

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Outside of combat, I spent most of my time soaking in the atmosphere of this fantasy universe MercurySteam has clearly spent a lot of time creating. The best example of this is, surprisingly, Aran himself, which we're introduced to as a reluctant hero, initially living a simple life in his home in the woods before tragedy strikes. Aran's mission to take down the queen appears to be taking the shape of a relatively diverse road trip of sorts, where he’s joined by a young scribe called Adso that did a pretty good job in offering some levity. Having companions join you in video games is nothing new, of course, but it’s a minor miracle that I didn’t find him to be a pestering nuisance once over the course of my three-hour preview. In fact, his dialogue with Aran offered plenty of appreciated context for the state of these lands.

The only real concern I have about Blades of Fire right now is that it doesn’t always explain itself fully. Because while there are tutorials aplenty, there were a few instances where I wondered whether I was heading in the right direction, since there’s no real map marker present; and I didn’t realise what the use of items I had just picked up were for until I dipped into the game’s menus for more details. Much like Dark Souls, for instance, you have a certain number of health flasks that can be expanded should you choose the right upgrade path using what’s called a Life Codex. I'd actually discovered this Codex in a chest an hour or so earlier, but had no idea what it was for, despite Adso calling it out previously, purely because the game didn’t explain its purpose.

Then there’s the difficulty, which even in just three hours, I would say spiked up and down a whole lot. Blades of Fire isn’t afraid to chuck various enemy types at you at once – with different strengths and weaknesses – in a rather confined space. In order to get out of this, there were a couple times I was forced to spoil my weapon’s quality to the point of bluntness, which would have been worth it were enemies not able to respawn whenever I rested at an anvil. I can see how easy it’d be to repeatedly bash yourself against a brick wall in such ways, hence why it’s important to always ensure you have Aran equipped with a good variety of weapons to help overcome a plethora of combat scenarios.

Overall, though, I came away from my Blades of Fire preview incredibly impressed with how distinct an action experience MercurySteam has created. It’s most definitely a little rough around the edges, and certain combat sections can ask a lot of you. That said, for the most part, the emphasis on weapon crafting and creating specific loadouts feels like such a breath of fresh air compared to the loot-driven, ‘set and forget’ approach adopted by most other modern action games. In Blades of Fire, your success in battle is totally determined by the weapons you have crafted yourself, making it always crucial to forge them well.

Blades of Fire is set to release on , , and on May 22, 2025.