Stray Blade | PC Review

This is a story of two games, really. First, a fantastic, new birth that would breathe a different air of life into what is becoming an overpopulated genre. The second, an example of how developers face the pressure of paving a successful path for their art, and the drastic measures that doing so can present.

While I’ve dabbled a bit in souls-likes with games like Elden Ring and such, the genre has never been a favorite of mine. The action is always fun, once I finally figure out timing, but the dark and dreary worlds usually involved always feel like they’re draining the life out of me even more than the enemies I was facing. Bashing my head against a wall over and over again until I perfect timing on dodges and evades to survive just doesn’t appeal to me, either. 

When I laid my eyes on Stray Blade, however, something seemed colorfully… different. Could this be the soulslike that I would finally wholeheartedly embrace and enjoy?

A Mysterious Dilemma

You play the role of Farren, an adventurer who finds their demise while exploring a land as yet undiscovered by others, or so it would seem. Yet, after what you believe to have been your death, you are awakened in this strange land with a foreign object lodged in your chest and shoulder area, with no explanation as to how or why you are alive. Shortly, with guidance from an unusual new friend, you learn that this land holds wild secrets, and to escape and return to your own world, you must unravel them with his help. Along your journey to do so, you will uncover artifacts and relics from ancient civilizations, and how they are mysteriously connected to your fate. Will you be able to discern their legacy while surviving the land’s mystifying threats?

The story told as you adventure through the ancient valley of Acrea is one of bold wonder and beauty. Throughout my entire playthrough, I felt myself being drawn more and more to the characters and the turmoil they were pushing through. Mystery and intrigue follow you like a haunting ghost around every bend and obstacle. Unfortunately, to experience the story as a whole, you have to interact with your companion at certain spots throughout the land, and missing them is often quite easy to do. While I understand that this is quite the way to eliminate having to wait through cutscenes every so often, I would have liked to not have had to actually interact with something to be told the story. A simple narration as I jaunted along would have been great, to keep me up to snuff on what was going on. I have no idea how many story beats I missed because I was busy fighting or exploring, and simply missed the cue to speak with my companion.

An Adventurer’s Experience 

The adventuring experience in Stray Blade is quite fun, and handled rather well. As Farren gains experience by defeating enemies, he gains ability points. These ability points can then be spent on skills and ability upgrades, but there’s an interesting catch. You first must unlock the skills and upgrades by gaining experience with different weapons. Each weapon (there’s quite a few of them) is tied to a handful of upgrades. Using a weapon to defeat enemies grants you experience with that weapon, and when certain levels are reached, an upgrade is unlocked, allowing you to spend an ability point to acquire that upgrade. Once an upgrade is acquired, it is permanent, regardless of what weapon you are using. This presents a fun challenge of using weapons that might not be your first choice to experience the game in a different way, preventing the playstyle from getting stagnant.

And Then There Were Two

This is where my experience with Stray Blade diverges into two different paths. My first experience with combat in Stray Blade was one of intrigue. It was a soulslike at heart, however it had a different flavor that shone through in colors. Like other soulslikes, your skill set consists of a light attack, a strong attack, the ability to dodge, and the ability to parry. You will also learn special abilities that will help tip the scales of combat in your favor, but more on that later. What made Stray Blade stand apart from every other soulslike I’ve played was the color-coded dodge and parry system. The enemies you encounter during your adventure would have varying attacks, but they were all signaled by either a flash of red or a flash of blue. The color that would flash would tell you how to handle the upcoming attack. A red flash would tell you that the attack could only be dodged, and that parrying would be impossible. A flash of blue, however, would mean that the attack that was about to be unleashed upon you was prime for parrying, which would then leave the enemy open for a counterattack of your own. It would be important to know that the flashes never informed you of the timing needed, only of the action. Hence, the soulslike challenge of learning the enemies’ timing was still present.

Then patch 1.7 arrived. The experience that was Stray Blade changed entirely.

Point Blank Games had re-tooled the entire combat system from the ground up, removing the color-coding and defensive maneuver regulation system from the game entirely. The reason given was feedback from the community, and their wanting “a more soulslike combat system that allows for more freedom in how to engage in combat.” While I applaud and admire Point Blank Games for listening to their players, this development all but killed my experience with Stray Blade. Combat that I once found engaging and entertaining had now become a chore. While previously I had sought out every enemy possible, exploring every nook and cranny of the world out of pure enjoyment for the experience, I now found myself not even wanting to explore, as any combat situations that I risked initiating were no different from any other soulslike game that I had played before.

A Wonderful and Deadly World

As stated before, the world of Acrea is vast and beautiful. Vegetation can be just as deadly as the beastly enemies you come across, and exploration is most often well rewarded. As you defeat bosses, you gain special abilities that are influential in both combat and traversal, giving you the ability to reach places previously unreachable. This creates a decent amount of going back to places you’ve already visited, satisfying the palette of fans of the gear-gated genre. Exploring the world of Stray Blade was a wonderful experience until the aforementioned patch.

Final Verdict

Stray Blade has done something that no other game has ever done, to the best of my knowledge. Completely changing the core mechanic of a game after release is something I’ve never seen before. Sure, games have updates after launch, but those are always minor in comparison. And while, like I stated earlier, I applaud and adore Point Blank Games’ decision to do so after listening to players, I think this is actually an example of why that might not be the best idea. As I played through Stray Blade, I couldn’t help but think that what Point Blank Games was listening to as feedback just happened to be only the people with negative feedback. I absolutely loved this game for the first half of my playthrough, and I felt robbed when patch 1.7 was released. I very highly doubt I’m the only one.

To hear me talk more about Stray Blade, be sure to listen to the May 10, 2023 episode of The Gaming Outsider podcast around the 1:09:52 time stamp.

This review is based on a PC copy of Stray Blade provided by Stride PR for coverage purposes. It is also available on PlayStation and Xbox.