Sometimes you’re just a little Gloomling creature in a dark and uncaring world and then you stumble upon a sentient sword that gives you unbelievable power, so you use that power to decimate the dictatorial leaders in charge of the world. It’s a rather classic tale as old as time. Which of us have never attained the power of a dark and potentially evil sword to then use it to gain an upper hand against those who have wronged our kind? Well, if this isn’t an ordinary narrative to you that has happened at least once in your life, then DOOMBLADE will be brand new to you.

DOOMBLADE is the second game by Muro Studio and in it, you play as Gloom Girl. This little creature is seemingly the last of her kind, a race that was eradicated by the evil Dread Lords, and upon pulling your way out of isolation, you start on your quest to exact revenge. The game properly starts once you find the eponymous DOOMBLADE. This is a weapon that, within the game’s narrative, holds special power and capabilities. It is able to deal true damage to the new leaders of the world, so they fear it. This is why you need to use it to battle your way through the world.

The game itself is a 2D metroidvania in general design, and upon checking out some videos, you may assume that it plays like Have a Nice Death or Hollow Knight. The aesthetic is certainly in the same realm as something like Hollow Knight, but the gameplay is actually very different. While the game’s general world is arranged like a metroidvania, being structured around a map you explore as you attain new abilities to reach new parts of the map, the gameplay is nothing like the majority of metroidvania games and is instead something quite unique.

DOOMBLADE is essentially a movement-based game, and the combat forms part of the movement itself. In most 2D hack-n-slash games of any description, you are usually placed in the role of a character who starts out weak and then attains new combat abilities that allow them to deal higher damage in numerous ways to your enemies, but that isn’t how it works here. There are damage upgrades, but there aren’t a variety of weapons and special abilities to help you fight. Instead, the general combat is roughly similar throughout the game.

It's difficult to describe the combat directly. Let’s give it a go though! DOOMBLADE is a game in which you do not run up to an enemy and hit them by pushing a button. Instead, you aim at them with the aiming reticle that is always on screen and click on your enemies to shoot between them to deal damage and to move across the room. When you click on an enemy, you zip across the screen. So, by attacking, you are also moving and you’re dodging. The main combat system is one in which movement and combat are essentially one and the same.

In some ways, the movement could be likened to something like Carrion in how slick and satisfying it is to simply move around in the game. The enemies you face off against are also unlike many other types of games in general because not every “enemy” is necessarily an enemy. Sometimes you will face off against enemies that come directly for you, but there are various creatures that can be targeted to allow you to move through the world, such as by shooting to the top of a screen by dashing towards one bug creature after another, and those bug creatures do not die.

If some of these creatures died, then you would not be able to traverse the world, as attacking is part of your movement. This means that there are relatively few creatures that can be killed in DOOMBLADE. It’s a strange thing at first, but once you grow accustomed to how it’s set up, it becomes a lot easier to manage, and once you attain certain abilities, the traversal becomes even more satisfying. And it is immensely satisfying. What makes it even more satisfying is that most “enemies” have predetermined routes that they follow, classic Mario style, and they will not actively chase you. So, as you become accustomed to the movement system, you’ll be entering a room and then zipping your way through it in a speedy blitz of sword strikes until you’ve made your way to the next room.

Most metroidvanias nowadays have taken many notes from soulslike games. Take more recent iterations of the genre, like Tarnishing of Juxtia, Moonscars, and Curse of the Sea Rats (all of which were released in the last year at the time of writing), and you’ll find that there is soulslike influence within them. They often have systems for retrieving points upon death and having death itself forming part of the gameplay. The same is not the case here. When you die, you return to the last save point and start over.

In addition, as most “enemies” don’t die, there’s no real incentive to have a tough hack-n-slash style like a soulslike. This doesn’t mean that the game isn’t challenging, but the challenge is simply not in what would ordinarily be labeled as “combat.” For instance, some of the platforming challenges are quite difficult and precise. In addition, in more Dark Souls style, the game does sometimes leave you a few hints in the form of actual messages.

These messages occasionally tell you a few things about what you’re going to face up ahead, such as enemies appearing fast but actually needing patience to fight. This is actually something very important to learn in DOOMBLADE. The game, when you first start, seems very fast-paced, but once you grow accustomed to how it presents itself, it simply isn’t as fast as you’d initially thought it was.  An outside observer watching you play may think you’re playing like a badass when you get used to it though, so maybe don’t tell anyone that it isn’t as quick as it appears.

In typical fashion for games of this nature though, DOOMBLADE is a boss-based experience. The standard enemies form part of the central gameplay’s traversal mechanics, but the boss fights are more like movement puzzles. You need to learn their patterns and see when it’s best to strike. This also means that beating most bosses on the first try is not a particularly easy feat, but to compensate for this, the game likes to give you save points right before difficult boss fights or ambush encounters. So, that’s another factor that makes DOOMBLADE quite different from your old-school soulslike experience that forces you to trek back across the world every time a boss kills you.

All of this is to say that DOOMBLADE is a game that requires some getting used to. The central movement and combat, or movement-combat, system is very unusual. However, once you grow accustomed to it, it is immensely satisfying to play. It does take a while to get used to it. And then, in the traditional metroidvania style, you gain new abilities that allow you to make your way through the world at an even greater pace, such as gaining a dash or the break-through-certain-walls ability.

Exploration is also integral to DOOMBLADE, as it is a metroidvania, and there are certain upgrade items to find that are focused on upping your damage for the boss fights or increasing your health. There are also various collectibles you can find that can be traded for some cash. Plus, you can find new save points, shortcuts, and shops along the way. The shops are also a limited store kind of shop. Each shop has a certain number of items that it will sell you, and once those items have been purchased, the shop closes down forever. This gives a good sense of progression to the map as you gain more and more upgrades as you go.

However, it is now necessary to mention the fast travel system. The fast travel system is also not all that fast. You cannot simply fast travel whenever but must instead go to a specific fast travel destination and that fast travel destination can only take you to other fast travel destinations. Those locations must also be unlocked before you can travel to them. However, unlocking a fast travel point does not mean you can now go to any other fast travel point. Certain fast travel points connect to other fast travel points. So, you need to unlock fast travel points within fast travel points.

In the beginning, this can be tedious as you may enter a fast travel point only to discover that you cannot use it to get where you want to go, but as you unlock more of these fast travel routes within the fast travel system, it becomes better. It is something rather annoying though, and one of the areas that makes traversal more tedious. It also doesn’t help that your character’s basic run is rather slow. So, you may think that using the fast travel system can help you get around to new places, but you’ll probably just wind up backtracking on foot.

It also doesn’t help that DOOMBLADE does have the usual metroidvania problem when it comes to showing where to go next. The world is big and open, so once you gain a new ability, you may not remember all the places on the map that were blocked off without that ability. The map gives no indications of blocked-off areas, and you’ll likely just have to trod along and try to find the right place to go. This is not an issue isolated to DOOMBLADE though and is a common issue. Where to go next in a big and complex open world is one that has plagued metroidvanias for a long time, but some games of this genre have found ways to do it, such as by using map indicators. Even a hint towards what you should be doing next on a save menu would help with this.

This is the only real gameplay issue that DOOMBLADE has. When you know where to go, the game is a blast to simply control. Few games make their actual movement so enjoyable, and DOOMBLADE is one such game. This also means that it’s one of the very few games that does make the simple act of traversing its world a delight to control. Most need the combat to give you that enjoyment, but because of the movement-combat system baked into the central design, this game makes itself a cut above the rest.

What about the central narrative though? Well, DOOMBLADE takes a note from games like Hollow Knight in this regard as the game does not present itself in an overly narrative way. Instead, lore and ambiguous background narrative elements are occasionally explored rather than there being the kind of direct storytelling one may expect of traditionally told narratives. However, this does make the game quite similar to games in the same genre in terms of its narrative presentation. All you really need to know is that you have a sentient sword, the world was overtaken by the Dread Lords, and those Dread Lords are bad. That is the story, and you will not get many updates until much later in the game. So, if you want a story-heavy game, DOOMBLADE is not for you. The environmental storytelling and tidbits you attain along the way are great instances of worldbuilding, but they may not be enough to tide certain players over.

The narrative presentation is similar to games like Hollow Knight, but so is the general art direction. It has that similar blend of dark and sickly with cutesy and cartoonish elements. For instance, the Gloom Girl herself is a rather adorable little creature despite being a dark blob with spider-like legs. The combination of darkness with cartoony elements works well, and it makes the more horrifying aspects of the game all the more horrifying.

To complement this, the music is on point. It is a fantastic soundtrack, especially when it goes into more industrial beats in certain areas of the game. Each region gets to have its own background music, and the music is the perfect accompaniment to the journey you find yourself on as you traverse the world.

However, let’s finally get to the few technical issues with the game. There are certain performance problems at the time of writing, so these issues may be sorted out in time, there are certain performance problems. On occasion, the game will be hit with a frame rate dip that forces you to stop and wait it out because playing with the frame rate in the single digits is somewhat impossible, and the loading times are also longer than you’d expect from a game with this level of visual fidelity. The game is gorgeous, but the art style is not the sort that would usually cause slowdowns like this. However, as has been stated, these issues could be smoothed out after release, and they do not happen enough to be a real detriment to the experience. They’re more a very occasional irritation than a persistent problem.

There is one last thing to note though. This is not actually a criticism but rather something to keep in mind. DOOMBLADE is a metroidvania so you would be correct in assuming that a controller is the best way to play. These games are often awful to control with a mouse and keyboard, but upon starting DOOMBLADE with a controller, you may soon realize that the game controls terribly. You need to have full control to better get around the screen, and analog sticks are terrible at doing that.

When you switch over to the mouse and keyboard controls, you discover that your cursor forms an integral part of the gameplay as it is used to traverse. When you click the left mouse button on an enemy, you shoot toward them. With a controller, you have to aim the right analog stick in their general direction. The controller lacks the kind of precision that the mouse can give you. In fact, when you’re in the midst of a fight, you basically only play with the mouse as you zip from one enemy to the next without touching the floor.

So, if you start playing DOOMBLADE with a controller and then think the controls are terrible, they kind of are. This game is definitely best with a mouse and keyboard, which goes against the standards of metroidvania games so it’s likely that many players may start off by trying out the controller. This is a bit of a problem, especially if a game like this, which would ordinarily be great for consoles, actually made it to those platforms. At present, DOOMBLADE is only available on PC, and that may be best for it.
 

However, if you can handle it with a controller, go for it. You will be missing a lot of the precision you would have with a mouse though, and it would be better if the game told you that it’s best experienced with a mouse and keyboard. Many games that are better with a controller will flat-out tell you upon loading up the game that they’re best with a controller, so why not do the same here?

Ultimately, DOOMBLADE is a fantastic metroidvania game with a unique and deceptively fast-paced movement-combat system. It may take some getting used to, and getting used to it will be even harder with a controller, but once you do get used to it, the game is an absolute blast. For fans of the genre, this game is a definite gem and well worth the time.

In terms of time, it’s also worth noting that the game can take about twelve to sixteen hours to complete based on how you play it. Additionally, once more of the abilities and fast travel points have been unlocked, the traversal issues stop being a problem. This means that there’s really only one disappointing thing about this game once you get used to it: it eventually comes to an end. However, it's got some great endings. No spoilers though! So, check out DOOMBLADE!
 

Justin van Huyssteen (@LC_Lupus)
Senior Editor, NoobFeed