Bloody Spell is an indie action game from Chinese studio Yi Long that’s similar in spirit to Bayonetta, Devil May Cry, and Ninja Gaiden. Set within a fantasy-based Ancient China, Bloody Spell’s world is packed with demons, clan rivalries, puzzle-platforming, and brutal weapons. There are various game modes aside from the story campaign, including cooperative and competitive multiplayer modes that greatly extend the game’s lifespan. The $19.99 Steam Early Access title features thrilling gameplay, but it has a few balance issues and a downright terrible English translation. Nonetheless, the PC game contains a substantial amount of flashy, entertaining action.
A Tale of Rescue and Revenge
Bloody Spell’s English translation is currently on-par with Google Translate’s capabilities, so the story minutiae is hard to follow. The basic gist is this: You play as a young member of an assassin clan hidden deep within a forest citadel. A priestess and her demonic clan have fought their way into your sanctuary and kidnapped your sister, who is integral to their plans for unleashing evil for reasons unknown. So, you must brawl your way through dungeons, tombs, and ruins to rescue your sister and put an end to the priestess’ evil plans.
Melee Beat Down
Action is where Bloody Spell shines brightest. It offers numerous weapons, including sword, dual-blade, spear, great sword, and reinforced knuckle move sets, each of which utilizes a branching two-button combo system very much like those in Bayonetta and Ninja Gaiden. You earn ability points by using weapons, and you can use them to unlock new combos and abilities for said weapons. The weapons feel great, with knuckles being satisfyingly punchy and swift, and great swords being weighty and impactful. In addition, all armaments can stun and control the many grunts you encounter throughout the game. As a result, you can play through the entire game with your preferred weapon without issue—once you’ve mastered it.
Good defense can make or break an action game. Thankfully, Bloody Spell offers several abilities that can easily counter the aggressive foes that lurk around every corner. You can dodge simply with the touch of a button, and even cancel out of any attack with said dodge, giving you complete control over avoiding an incoming attack. As you earn abilities you can unlock a Bayonetta-style slow-down effect to further boost the effectiveness of your evasion.
You also have a dedicated weapon-parry button that serves as more aggressive form of defense. The timing can be difficult to nail as enemies attack fast and often, and parrying has a slight recovery window that can easily get you hit. The rewards are well worth the risk, as a successful parry forces your assailant into a brief recoil that you can capitalize on with a riposte. Boss enemies and tougher foes demand effective use of evasion and parrying, and the difficulty ramps up as the campaign moves forward, with some later areas throwing several mini-boss tier enemies at you to contend with at once.
That said, some weapons handle defense better than others. With either the sword or spear in hand, you can enter a dedicated block stance while holding the parry button. This forgoes the counter/riposte function, but offers a safer, more reliable defense. This trade-off is fine, though I wish all weapons could do this and not just the sword and spear.
To unbalance things further, the sword has two unique counter/riposte skills that can be used in block stance, entirely negating the trade-off that comes with the block stance. As a result, the sword is the best defensive weapon in the game. This function should be adjusted so that either all weapons can counter/riposte or none can, as it is far too valuable of an ability to overlook. The sword is simply too potent to play without, which is a shame because other weapons have excellent kits that are completely overshadowed by the sword’s utility.
Magic Spells
Besides melee weapons, you have magical attacks that let you control adversaries. As you play through the game’s story, you’ll come across monoliths that serve as save points and shops. These have randomized inventory with gear and spells you can purchase to unlock key magical abilities.
One such spell enhances your parry ability by offering an HP-regenerating auto-counter, while another buffs your dodge with time-slowing properties. Some spells are more directly offensive, like the meteor ability, which smashes a magical orb onto your target and deals area-of-effect (AOE) damage to surrounding enemies. The randomness is an odd design choice, and is perhaps a holdover from when the game was originally designed as a randomly generated dungeon crawler. A streamlined acquisition structure would be more welcome at this point, since Bloody Spell has a better developed chapter structure now than it did upon its inception.
Bloody Spell is well-paced, marrying its action to short puzzle sections, exploration, or platforming portions that break up the combat, so that nothing feels tedious or monotonous. Jumping is snappy and responsive; you have a double jump from the start, as well as an aerial dodge that can be used to extend and maneuver over platforms with ease. Puzzles generally involve looking for key items or using enemies to break down the destructible structures in the environment to access keys.
Aesthetically, the enemies are a mixed bag, but they’re fun to fight. Basic grunts are misshaped humanoids and black-clad warriors, but often times they are backed by larger bruisers, such as armored trolls, giant assassin soldiers, living armor, and even boss-size ogres. Enemies generally have a rounded move set that includes various melee swings and a mid-range or long-range attack to engage you from a distance. All foes are aggressive, but they’re easily dispatched when you familiarize yourself with their tells.
The story isn’t quite finished yet, so once you get to the campaign’s current end, you can dive into Bloody Spell’s many other game modes. There is a trial arena that pits you against a NPC warrior armed with each of the game’s weapon types, as well as a Devil May Cry-style Bloody Palace that delivers an 80 level gauntlet run that ends with a surprisingly challenging super boss. You can also play co-op with others in a 20-stage, horde survival mode, or compete in a battle royale against a dozen other players where you rack up the most kills within the time limit for bonus costume rewards. There’s a surprising amount of post-game content, making Bloody Spell a game you’ll want to return to often.
Can Your PC Run Bloody Spell?
Bloody Spell performs well and looks good, though some of its textures are a bit muddy. The game supports 4K resolution and 120 frames-per-second display rates, which is a nice touch. To run the game, your gaming PC needs at least an Intel i3 CPU, a Nvidia GeForce GTX 560 GPU, 4GB of RAM, and the Windows 7 operating system. For an optimal experience you should bump those specs up to an Intel i7 Processor, a Nvidia GeForce GTX 770 GPU, and 8GB of RAM.
My gaming desktop—a PC equipped with an AMD Ryzen 5 3600 CPU, a Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 GPU, and 16GB of RAM—ran Bloody Spell without issue. In fact, the game fluctuated between 100 and 120fps at 1080p resolution. Bloody Spell also supports controllers, Steam Trading Cards, Steam Achievements, and an extensive list of Steam Workshop mods for weapon and character skins created by the community.
Surprisingly Good
Despite its unfinished state, Bloody Spell is a surprisingly fun action game with plenty going for it beyond the story mode and fantasy aesthetic. It features many game modes, unlockable content, and multiplayer aspects that mainstream action games should adopt. Bloody Spell may be a Steam Early Access title, but it has a lot to offer in its current form. If you dig high-octane action titles, keep this one on your radar.
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