What drew me to more8Bit’s Bleak Sword DX was part style and part nostalgia. The style part was restricting players to a tiny map where they chaotically take on enemies and quickly progress. Getting quick, brief experiences pushed towards immediate progression is a style of game I enjoy. It means there isn’t much of a commitment to the gameplay, and the rewards are much faster when you consistently win, which is nice because it creates motivation to keep going.
The nostalgia portion was more about the graphical presentation. It reminded me of an old Intellivision D&D game that I adored as an 80s kid. It had some simple style to the knight/hero and more imaginative enemies that were pixelated in the best horrific style possible. That pixel 2D flat dragon back in the day was frightening as hell. Or at least I imagined it was.
more8Bit’s choice to dabble in the 80s style character and its very wise choice of making a hack-and-slash style backbone to it made the gameplay quick to play and easy to understand. It’s a come-as-you-please sort of game that works more than not.
So, let this hack tell you how the game is in this review.
Restrictive gameplay that works
The main story behind Bleak Sword DX is simple. You play as a hero/knight that is tasked with clearing a bevy of lands from the evil that enveloped them. This evil comes in various forms and each with its own set of attack patterns. The task isn’t easy and with each land comes multiple tiny lands that make up the whole (kind of like Mario Bros. but with death and destruction). While the rhyme and reason for the knight’s plight are mostly unspoken, the desire to help rid the world of baddies in Bleak Sword DX creates a healthy amount of motivation, even before the gameplay elements come into play.
The way the game works is equally as simple as its story. You are a knight armed with a blade, armor, and a mighty need to roll away from danger when ghastly enemies become too much. This is a classic, yet beautiful hack-and-slash at its finest. Like a cuter Dark Souls with less cursing. In all seriousness, the mechanics of this game are spelled out in that first sentence – you use your sword to take down enemies, do your best not to get hurt, though armor is there in case you do, and you roll away from danger when you need to reset the moment. There’s nothing new about these mechanics. In what strategic capacity those mechanics work is what creates a fair amount of intrigue.
Now, the tricky part of using those mechanics is how the map is positioned and how 3D mixes with 2D. Your characters and enemies are 2D, thus the nostalgia part of my rambling up top. When you’re running a 2D character in a 3D world, you’re dealing with angles of attack rather than just a dead-on 1:1 attack. Moving up into an enemy’s vicinity and then attacking them is the best choice for offensive success, especially with this type of 2D and 3D mix. Sometimes misjudging that 2D character placement is tricky, but easily understood. It’s akin to trying to attack folks in Paper Mario. It feels just like that, but less turn-based. That’s a good portion of the challenge in this game, as you’re restricted to a 3D map that is also somewhat angular – slightly isometric and forces you to angle your fighter in the right way to get the most successful hit. It’s not an easy attack on anything in this game, but getting the angles right made it easier to deal with an impending build of frustration in the game. I knew coming in that this game was made with a 2D and 3D combination. I welcomed the challenge, and it certainly gave me one. Weirdly, this type of 2D/3D mixture worked. Again, it was a challenge that made the game more complicated in its simplistic design.
Related to that challenge, the enemies they throw at you during gameplay are both creative as they are creepy. While the style is still that Intellivision “Use your imagination to see terror” type of gameplay, the enemies are beautifully woven together to make for a consistently interesting time. From bats that hang around swamps to giant sword-wielding deer people that are as quick as they are powerful, there is a variety of good enemies that keep you guessing on style and execution. For the girth of this game, which is about 12 total maps with 8-10 levels within each map, there is plenty of variety to go around. As progression might be your number one reason to keep going, and it should be because everyone wants to beat the game they’re playing, the second reason is wanting to see what type of enemies you encounter in the next level. It was certainly one of my top three enjoyments of this game.
Staying with enemies and maps, I was incredibly impressed with how the enemies were built around the maps. For swampy areas, you get gross bats, things that lurk in the water (like giant tentacles), and various other nasties that relate to swamps. One map that featured a burning village introduced sword-wielding bad guys with spiders on their crew and giant shielded monsters that stalked the village unleashing destruction everywhere. For every map, you had characters that fit the need, which made making it to a new map more enjoyable, as you got to see more8Bit’s next set of monsters. The variety, while it was occasionally repeated at times, was bigger than I expected. I enjoyed every moment of the enemies, as well as the variety of maps that brought just as many obstacles as they did new enemies. None of the maps ever got boring. What they did get, and this came in waves, was frustrating.
Frustrating yet manageable
Bleak Sword DX can get incredibly frustrating. While this is certainly not as difficult as a Dark Souls game, where the game will purposely hide enemies that will kill the shit out of you, Bleak Sword DX’s backend design and the consequences that come with death make it challenging. Real tough.
The backend progression system in Bleak Sword DX is simple in design. You defeat enemies and are rewarded with XP that eventually leads to leveling your character up. With every new level achieved, you have the choice to upgrade your stamina, offense, defense, or heart capacity. Occasionally, the game will also throw an item your way that can temporarily buff you up in some way; sometimes it can be a balancing act with items where you are given a buff with a +2 in offense and a -1 in defense, or you’re simply given a health replenishing item. It’s all random but there is some decision-making involved with it depending on where you are in the game. Regardless, the more success you have in the game, the better things become when fighting enemies and progressing.
While that side of the coin is shiny and new, just like the love boat, should you lose in battle, then you will lose unspent XP on the battlefield. The only way to spend XP is by leveling the character up. Losing that XP in mid-collection is emotionally something else. It creates stress, frustration, and potentially emotional devastation. Now, the game will give you one shot to recover any XP that your dead body has left behind. Should you go into that battle and fail again, you completely lose the unspent XP and whatever item you may have been carrying. It’s a fair structure of reward and loss, especially since you retain your current level, regardless of the number of deaths that might transpire during your journey.
The challenge of retaining the unspent XP to level up means having to be perfect in your fights and take down enemies without losing too much energy. By the third set of maps, you will feel this dilemma often. Sometimes enemies seem unfair when you mix the need to be aggressive with desperation to retain lost unspent XP. And the enemies are incredibly unforgiving of your mistakes, so they will do you no favors. For the most part, the AI is smart and knows what you should be doing, though it is flexible enough to allow you your moments of triumph.
Now, you’re not simply fighting for survival with this game, that’s a secondary element to the gameplay. The gameplay forces you to plan strategic movements and balance out stamina loss and recovery while you fight to avoid losing an XP or item. It should be noted that stamina runs everything in this game. From dodging enemy attacks to constant hacking and slashing, stamina is involved with every ounce of mechanics. You can’t hack or slash when you run out of stamina, and your defense is poor. Keeping up with stamina and mechanics while going head-to-head with monsters while not trying to die and lose XP or items is difficult most of the time. It can be a frustrating balance that will get to you more times than not, especially in the later stages of the game, but ends up more of a challenge than a dealbreaker with Bleak Sword DX. I walked away from this game multiple times to catch my breath and put my head back on my shoulders because of the game’s unforgiving brutality as the journey progressed. There will be times when you hate this game but continue out of the pure need to progress and see what is next. I believe that is what more8Bit wants you to go through as you hit the difficulty arc in the game. A large amount of frustration produces a healthy amount of motivation to keep pushing forward. Even when you’re cursing up a storm, you will still manage to push forward. It’s weird. This must be what Alex Tudor and Eric Layman feel like when they play the Dark Souls series. Those crazy bastards are beautiful in that series.
Anyway, there’s frustration that comes with Bleak Sword DX. It makes the game longer, and more rewarding, but the game is so simple that you won’t stay angry long enough to fully throw some meaningful hate at the gameplay. It’s certainly an intentional design that works.
Now, before I wrap up this review, I would like to note that if you get frustrated, you can return to earlier levels and grind out leveling your character up. You still retain your current level if you decide to revisit earlier ones, and you’ll tear through them but gain XP. As it properly should, Bleak Sword DX considers your current level with what XP rewards it gives you. Expect smaller rewards in the process, but also still expect leveling. This is a great and clever way to level up your character to get a bit more buff before returning to later levels. It’s not cheaty. It’s a parachute. It certainly tames some of the frustration the gameplay can bring.
On that sweet note, let’s wrap this up.
Conclusion
Bleak Sword DX is a gorgeous, nostalgic, and clever game for something built in a simplified structural way. More8Bit did a superb job of creating a fast gameplay environment while also maintaining creativity with its enemies and maps. While it may not seem like much, it has some moxie to it. Be forewarned, though, it also contains a heavy amount of frustration.
