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Blades

Optimus Prime character skin in Elden Ring Nightreign.

Elden Ring Nightreign modders are already going ham with custom skins, including Optimus Prime, Stellar Blade’s Eve, and my #1 most-wanted outfit from Dark Souls

by admin June 23, 2025

User Orange on YouTube caught my eye with a 12-minute showcase of some of the most impressive modded skins players have cranked out for Elden Ring Nightreign, which include characters from other franchises, as well as yet more Dark Souls throwbacks.

Unfortunately, at the time of writing, they’re effectively inaccessible. All the skin replacement mods I’ve seen are dependent on a tool called the UXM Selective Unpacker, and UXM’s page has been set to hidden with the following message: “The mod has (possible) permission issues that the author is working to address.”

But we can still admire the work modder KRDCD has put out, even if we can’t use them. The real attention grabber is Nightreign Custom Model Replacers. This is the meme one: Eve from Stellar Blade, Optimus Prime, Yorha Unit 2B, all the stars are here. The only notable omission is CJ from San Andreas, but surely he is an inevitability.

Dark Souls Armor Sets is more my speed, importing even more Dark Souls models into Nightreign, similar to the skins we already got in the game. It even includes my personal most-wanted candidate for a future DLC skin: Sir Alonne from Dark Souls 2 as Executor.

This masked samurai is basically proto-Executor anyway, and I was honestly shocked he didn’t make it into the base game already. I particularly appreciate how KRDCD’s skin version uses Alonne’s comically long-hilted nagamaki (bring this design back, FromSoft!), the Bewitched Alonne Sword, in place of Executor’s usual cursed blade.

Once UXM is back up and these mods can be installed again, you’ll want to use them with Yui’s Seamless Co-op in order to avoid the Easy Anticheat Eye of Sauron⁠—Yui’s mod has users connect to unofficial servers, opening up the door for consequence-free modding.

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(Image credit: FromSoftware, KRDCD)(Image credit: FromSoftware, KRDCD)(Image credit: FromSoftware, KRDCD)(Image credit: FromSoftware, KRDCD)

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June 23, 2025 0 comments

Game Reviews

Blades of Fire Review – Arduous Adventure

by admin May 24, 2025

Blades of Fire developer MercurySteam has a fascinating trajectory. Amidst excellent releases in the Castlevania and Metroid franchises, MercurySteam interrupted its strong run with a few disappointing releases. All of that is to say, its output has been inconsistent. Blades of Fire, sadly, falls on the lower end of the spectrum of its games, but it is not completely without merit. Excellent art direction, technical proficiency, impressive animation, and a unique combat system are all in its favor, but so many design decisions and ideas drove me absolutely crazy over the course of the game that I lived in a perpetual state of frustration while playing. A positive first impression and desire to get to know its protagonists eventually fell aside for an experience that is entirely too long, full of unearned twists, and needlessly challenging.

Among the positives, Blades of Fire’s world and setup invite exploration. Protagonist Aran is a soft-spoken, but imposing hermit who works with steel and seems to only want to do good. He saves a young monk named Adso and is given one of the seven hammers used to create the world. It means he (and the player) can create his own weapons, and he decides to use this new power to say flatly, “I am going to kill the queen,” inviting his new ward Adso to join him. I liked that opening moment and wanted to see why he was so resolute in his quest, but the resulting revelations mostly fall flat. It’s also a narrative that frequently puts you inches from the queen, only to inexplicably introduce a new supervillain that takes hours and hours to defeat. I constantly felt like I was gearing up for the final confrontation, only to be pushed further away.

Combat is different than most sword action games and takes some getting used to. The four face buttons dictate which direction Aran swings his weapon. Enemies display their weak points, meaning encounters are often a matter of figuring out which direction to attack. For example, if their head is the weak point, you attack from above. It never gets much deeper than that, though, and by the end of the game, the weapon I was using was a stronger factor than how I was attacking enemies. But the way weapons and progress work, there is little incentive to engage in combat.

Aran makes his weapons, which involves collecting materials and playing a smithing minigame. If you are enamored with a particular blade and successfully built it once before, you can thankfully skip the minigame. I quickly found the process of creating or rebuilding weapons annoying, especially early on, when I would go through myriad weapons when stuck on bosses. Since the only incentive to kill enemies is more materials to make more gear, and engaging enemies only brings your weapons closer to destruction, I often ran from objective to objective without fighting in order to save my favorite swords.

The running between objectives is where the game most frustrated me. Navigating nearly every location in the game is a nightmare. There is a map and a menu option to show your next objective, but it helps only about half the time. I spent the other half running around avoiding enemies, just trying to find a door I missed, or a secret entrance – anything. And to make matters worse, extended sections hamper you even further. One area involves carrying a small skeletal child who can fall off and be kidnapped if you get attacked. I spent hours trying to ensure the child stayed on my back while searching for the exit and dodging enemies. In another area, a slow-witted ghost follows you, and in order to progress, you have to wait for them to remember where a switch used to be, or something comparable. I found these sections baffling, but the other, more straightforward locations were equally confusing. I rarely felt the reward of figuring something out. More often, I just angrily shouted at the TV, “How was I supposed to find that?” after stumbling across a climbing rope or an elevator hidden behind a statue.

Finally figuring out where to go or what to do is the bad kind of surprise Blades of Fire is so adept at delivering, but there are good surprises, too. The larger narrative didn’t grab me, but I like the dynamic of Aran and Adso. I also like that it is very easy to send Adso away if he gets annoying, which is a smart way to mirror the narrative nature of their relationship through gameplay. Blades of Fire also delivers big, epic moments that showcase its dense fantasy world and character and creature design well. Giant monsters and impressive vistas live up to the high standard MercurySteam has set for itself with its past games. I liked looking at Blades of Fire, even if playing it was arduous.

I consider myself a MercurySteam fan, and even after gleefully closing the game when I saw credits (and deciding the lengthy, extended final quest for the true ending was not for me), I remain a fan. Blades of Fire feels a bit like the developer’s attempt at bringing something new to what has now become the overpopulated Souls-inspired genre. It was unsuccessful in this instance, but some of its ideas around combat and the world it created are exciting. They just couldn’t overcome the parts that made me want to give up on the game.

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May 24, 2025 0 comments

Product Reviews

Blades of Fire review: Forging a path with mid-budget retro charm

by admin May 20, 2025

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Having toiled away on critically-acclaimed titles in the Metroid series and reviving Konami’s Castlevania series, developer MercurySteam has taken the risk of co-financing their latest project. Blades of Fire is its chance to prove their development skills at crafting their own original idea, and there’s a lot to love about this game’s blend of dark fantasy and mythology.

Review info

Platform reviewed: PS5
Available on: PS5, Xbox Series X|S, PC
Release date: May 22, 2025

That being said, it’s hard not to feel the weight of legacy and industry trends, rather than instilling this world with bold new ideas, holding this game back from greatness.

Rather than focusing on the negatives, there’s much to appreciate in this new game, particularly the father-son-esque bond at the heart of this story. While the game builds up a story about an ancient race of giants known as Forgers, instilling the knowledge to craft weapons from steel into humanity, with this power being seized by the anointed Queen Nerea to curse those who oppose her and turn steel to stone, the plot is simple. Aran de Lira possesses one of the ancient hammers necessary to forge his own steel, and alongside Asdo, the son of his deceased friend, embarks on a quest to kill the queen.

Classic is queen

There’s an almost-quaint retro simplicity to which the world of Blades of Fire is introduced: Aran is a lonely figure with an unspoken past that fuels his desire for a solitary existence, yet he’s more than willing to go and save an old friend he hears in danger nearby. The child desires revenge for his father’s death and, thanks to his knowledge of the Forgers, goes on this adventure with Aran to take down the queen.

The contrast of scholarly child and mysterious scarred older man soon warms to you, and not solely due to the similarities between their bond and that of Kratos and Atreus in the recent God of War titles. Asdo is far from an annoying sidekick, balancing wisdom with genuinely funny quips that are enough to make you laugh without grating (and you can always send him away, if you do wish for him to be quiet). I felt a warmth for Aran and a desire to learn more of his past, especially the guarded secrets of his past relationship to the Queen before her descent to despotic control.

Having first expected a practical but minimal story, I was surprised to find myself attached and with a desire to learn more of the rich lore the devs instilled into this world.

There’s an unabashed videogame-y nature to this world and cast, imbued with a quirkiness reminiscent of mid-budget adventure games abundant in the Xbox 360 and PS3 era

This is balanced with an engaging combat system that, though its quirks and intricacies will take time to learn, thanks to an at-first clunky and uncomfortable control scheme, you soon come to appreciate. Victory requires players to learn enemy attack patterns and the best weapons to counter each of them.

All four face buttons are each mapped to their direction of attack: on a PlayStation controller, this means Triangle will strike from above, X from below, and Square and Circle from each side. Depending on an opponent’s armor, it’s required to consider where you strike in order to deal maximum damage, or at times, inflict any damage at all.

The need to be aware of not just when but where you strike is most important in boss fights. One early sub-boss, a troll, requires you to whittle down its health, then slice off a part of the enemy’s body in order to drain it further before it can regenerate. Whether fighting big bosses – one boss at the end of the Crimson Fort is particularly interesting in how it forces you to learn both attack patterns and strike direction to defeat it most effectively – or small-fry enemies, it rarely tires even after dozens of hours have passed.

It may take time to get used to the stamina system that is required to inflict stronger, quicker attacks, and your hands will strain getting used to the unusual grip of having both block and dodging mapped to the left bumper and trigger, but you soon adjust to the fascinating tension it instils to high-stakes conflict.

(Image credit: MercurySteam)

Nerves of steel

Embodying the blacksmith skills key to the game’s identity, you must collect materials around the world to forge new weapons. You have complete control over the type of steel you use, which determines weight, speed, strength, blocking, and more, and once you’ve refined this selection, you must then physically hammer the weapon into shape. The closer to the real shape, the more refined the weapon, and therefore the more you can repair it before it’s unusable.

It’s fun, at first. After a while, it becomes repetitive and time-consuming. If you craft a good enough weapon, you can automatically recraft it to this level without replaying the minigame, but if you wish to improve this stat or build a new weapon, you must spend upwards of five minutes forging, grinding the momentum to a shuddering halt.

It’s one of a few issues holding the game back, many tied to the long legacy leading into this game’s development and the weight of adjusting the game’s design to chase industry trends. Many senior developers on Blades of Fire worked on the mostly forgotten 2001 action title named Severance: Blade of Darkness, which, beyond visual similarities, is often regarded as a precursor to the Dark Souls genre in its careful use of stamina and deliberate action.

Best bit

While it takes some time to get used to it, getting to grips with this unusual control scheme and observing a difficult boss’ attack patterns to correctly slice, dodge, and weave your way to victory brings about a primal joy that wills you forward towards the next area on your adventure.

While this makes it perhaps unfair to compare a game refining these 2001 ideas to Dark Souls, it’s hard not to see their implementation, and many other mechanics not found in Severance but introduced to this game are clearly inspired by the industry’s wholesale embrace of the beloved FromSoftware title. Players have limited flasks of health potions that can only be restored by resting at anvils, this game’s thematically fitting equivalent to bonfires, and upon death, players must return to the location they were felled in order to rescue their weapon.

Even if we were to credit these ideas to Severance and not an attempt to create a Soulslike adventure, Blades of Fire’s level design and enemies feel best suited to a style of action opposite to the plodding action and unstoppable attack animations of both titles. In battles against undead hordes, you can at times be facing close to a dozen enemies at once, and even your fastest weapons are useless with the rate at which your attacks are interrupted.

As this game lacks the punishment of lost resources or the risk of losing your weapon forever if you die before reclaiming it, recovering your weapon feels more like a chore and an obligatory feature to adhere to the formula than a design suited to the pace of this adventure.

(Image credit: MercurySteam)

A search for souls

It contributed to an overwhelming feeling that the embrace of so many Souls-isms only served to hinder the natural flow of the game, rather than enhance it.

This is before we discuss the game’s cumbersome map, which, through its lack of dimension, can become nearly useless when navigating more complex, multi-level terrain for the next objective.

This is only compounded by the fact that there’s no clear indication in the environment on where to go next, and even the optional objective markers activated by navigating menus and automatically disabled upon clearing that specific objective, unless reactivated, are often useless in more complex multi-level areas. If you’re navigating a multi-floor fortress and miss an inconspicuous door you must unlock with a newly-obtained key, even a marker won’t stop you wandering in circles for 20 minutes or longer, lost and frustrated.

Yet despite my complaints, I felt just enough charm to find myself soldiering forward. There’s an unabashed gamey nature to this world and cast, imbued with a quirkiness reminiscent of mid-budget adventure games abundant in the Xbox 360 and PS3 era, like Enslaved: Odyssey to the West, but non-existent in this modern era of spiraling budgets.

(Image credit: MercurySteam)

For all I can complain about Soulslike inspirations that these days induce more groans than excitement, there’s a simplicity to this quest to go and kill the queen while offering just enough mechanical depth without bogging you down in an overwhelming number of unnecessary systems.

You craft weapons, you fight enemies, you move forward. Simple, but the sense of a human hand touching every asset rather than some overcautious executive or an overzealous focus group drew me even to its flaws.

Blades of Fire is charming, even if its soulslike eccentricities were more of a hindrance to the characters and adventure housed within. This blend of retro simplicity and modern flair won’t be the best game you play in 2025, but it’s likely going to be one of the more charming (and as such memorable), and isn’t that just as good?

Should you play Blades of Fire?

Play it if…

Don’t play it if…

Accessibility features

Accessibility features in Blades of Fire are limited. Camera shake and motion blur can be adjusted, alongside the size and color of subtitles but otherwise, the default text is small, and it lacks many commonplace accessibility features such as colorblind modes.

How I reviewed Blades of Fire

I played just over 30 hours of the game on a base PS5 model using a standard DualSense controller on standard difficulty, getting all the way through the game to the latter stages of the main story.

I utilized an ASUS VG27AQL1A gaming monitor, while for audio, a mix of Denon speakers and a wireless audio adapter, and AirPods Max were used.

First reviewed May 2025

Blades of Fire: Price Comparison

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May 20, 2025 0 comments