Blade Strangers, the indie crossover fighting game, featuring a lot of cool characters from Nicalis games and other popular indie titles, has officially launched for the PS4, Steam, and for the Nintendo Switch.
Nicalis’ Blade Strangers is a one-on-one fighting game, sports an offline story mode, an arcade mode, a versus mode, and a survival mode. There’s also an online multiplayer mode for one-on-one fights against other players.
The game features a bevy of characters from recognized indie and mid-tier titles, such as Quote and Curly Brace from Cave Story+, Shovel Knight from Shovel Knight, Liongate, Master T, Ali and the super-hottie Solange from Code of Princess EX, and Kawase, Noko and Emiko from Umihara Kawase.
There are 14 playable characters in total.
According to Boomstick Gaming’s review – the YouTuber that a former IGN reviewer ripped off of – gave it a 6 out of 10. Unlike mainstream gaming channels this means that it’s actually “Ok” and not “OMG stay away it’s a fire dump!”.
The main issue that Boomstick points out is that it only has a few game modes, and there is no really robust story mode present in the game, so don’t go in expecting Injustice 2 or Mortal Kombat X. It’s basically like the old-school story modes from back in the 1990s, so if you’re okay with that then you probably won’t be disappointed.
Even still the game features a lot of basic fighting, simple mechanics, and a deep learning curve based on the basic control layout.
One of the highlights of Blade Strangers is that Studio Saizensen took 3D renders of the characters and then animated them, using frame-by-frame rasterization to give the impression that the 3D characters were animated in 2D. This is kind of a best-of-both-worlds scenario, given that it has the response timing and playability of a hand-drawn 2D fighter, but was made in a cost-effective manner that’s benefited from being made in 3D.
You can pick up a digital copy of Blade Strangers right now for $39.99 for the Nintendo Switch, PS4, or on Steam for PC.