Far Blade Early Access Impressions
There’s something to be said about delving down rabbit holes just to find yourself having wasted hours of your life. But imagine this, one day you’re scrolling through Twitter watching cute videos of chubby raccoons and the next thing you know you’re watching a trailer of a 3D pixel knight duking it out with a giant squid. That was the first time I laid eyes on B-Cubed Labs’ Far Blade, and it was love at first sight. Ever since then I have been meticulously following the developers’ every post – hoping to see any new gameplay or character designs. Finally, last week, my diligent Twitter stalking paid off with B-Cubed announcing that Far Blade would be released in early access on Itch.io. After a small payment of $4.99 and almost an hour messing with WinZip I was finally in – and boy was it something.
I’m currently very underwhelmed with what Far Blade Presents, which is only one of the seven planned bosses. Amazing pixel art and great character designs can only take you so far and at this very moment that’s all Far Blade has going for it. Since this is a boss rush game, it means that its combat and world building should be the things that players latch on to. But with very minimal dialogue and its one-note combat system, I’ve found that there’s nothing really grabbing hold of me.
Combat is relegated to a few simple commands – slash, block, and roll. This would normally be fine in a game where figuring out boss patterns is a real puzzle, but in the one boss showcased you can just slash wildly until the boss attacks with a tentacle which you can block with ease. Not to mention the fact that the dodge roll is far to slow to matter at all, I often found myself dying as a result of it. Luckily death isn’t really an obstacle since you respawn almost instantly right before the boss.
Outside of combat the only way to interact with the world so far is with the camera, which can move in a full three hundred and sixty degrees. This, if used in puzzles and boss fights, could be a really awesome feature. Sadly, at the moment, it’s just a gimmick.
Far Blade’s real saving grace so far is its amazing art style. Combat can be fine-tuned and puzzles can always be improved on, but if your art sucks you’re dead in the water. That’ll never be an issue here.
My impressions of such a small snippet of the game might sound overly negative, but that’s only because I want this game to become amazing. At this very moment, Far Blade shows some promise but has many things to improve on. So would I recommend spending the $4.99 on it? Yes, I actually would. This is an incredibly small price to pay to experience Far Blade as it improves and most assuredly becomes something to write home about.
