In the gory and hyper-violent world of Daimon Blades, you hack and slash through hundreds of enemies to turn them into pools of blood. Daimon Blades is a first-person action roguelite in which you must fight your way through hordes of enemies in randomly selectable zones and strengthen your character. These zones and the very world itself invoke a hostile emotion as you traverse through various locations, such as sewers, ice caverns, prisons, and more. The game is sporting a dark fantasy aesthetic in both location and character designs.
Gameplay
As I mentioned before, Daimon Blades is a first-person action game. From the start, you have the choice of selecting a specific weapon and your player character’s appearance (Note: The appearance does not have any significant gameplay differences among them. They are just cosmetic). The weapons have different properties, but you only get one till you find another one in a run. Starting out, you have access to a standard melee attack and a projectile that you can charge for more damage. There’s a block button that if you time it at the right moment you can parry and stun enemies. Throughout a run, you’ll be able to add abilities to your arsenal, but those will not stay afterwards. What you do end up keeping after runs are Celestial Stones and Daimonic Orbs. These items are important as they are used to increase your stats and upgrade your weapon abilities, respectfully.
Although you would want to prioritize those items, you may end up dying A LOT in your first few runs. Daimon Blades is very brutal when it comes to its enemies and bosses. You are constantly encouraged to keep moving as enemies can come at you from all sides and angles. Thankfully, you’re not totally helpless as this game gives you very generous movement options. Double jumps, dashes, and a grappling hook: all of which go a fair distance. Still, you will have to be on high alert for most enemy encounters. Projectiles will be constantly shot towards the ground or flying enemies. Not to mention that you’ll be getting swarmed by the basic foot soldier enemies and an elite. Elites tend to have shields that you will have to break through. Although they are some of the more interesting enemy types in the game for the fact that if you time a parry right, they will be stunned for a brief window of time that will allow you to hit them around their shield.
One of the last few things that I wanted to touch on about the gameplay that I found interesting was the Corruption Gauge. Starting out, the Corruption Gauge’s limit goes to 100. Every time you would die in a run, you would be revived and the Corruption Gauge would fill by 20 points. Once you reach 100, it’s game over and you’re back to the main hub area. What I find interesting about this system is how there are ways of increasing and lowering the gauge without dying. If you were to increase the Corruption Gauge, usually it would mean that you’re risking your run ending, but you would normally receive some semblance of a buff or aid. Similar can be said about lowering the Corruption Gauge, but these are harder to come by and are more dangerous areas of the zone.
Early Access Woes
For what I’ve enjoyed about Daimon Blades, a majority of that enjoyment was from the gameplay (as it should). The real problems of the game creep up when you least expect it. On several instances, the game has crashed on me. Sometimes it would be during a run, other times I would be interacting with NPCs in the main hub area. It’s not uncommon for Unreal Engine games, especially ones in early access, to have crashing problems, but they are still annoying none the less. Another complaint I have about the game are its settings. When you start the game for the first time, you are granted the option to alter the game brightness. I tuned mine on the brighter side just by a little bit just to fully see how the game looked. When I found some areas to be too dark, I tried to find the brightness setting and it was nowhere in options. I even relaunched the game to check the options on the title screen and they still weren’t there.
Conclusion
Despite some of the flaws of this game, I enjoyed my time with Daimon Blades. The combat felt great and fast-paced and I enjoyed the progress system. Much of my complaints about this game are things that I hope will get fixed on future updates to the early access version or the full game release. The is currently listed at $34.99 USD on Steam, so I’d understand if most would want to hold off on it till full release or sale. Regardless, if what I described sounded like it was up your alley, then show the devs some support and give this game a shot. If you’ve got a friend you could convince to get this game, it has multiplayer. All-in-all, I hope that this game continues to polish a lot of its rough edges till full release.
