Die by the Blade Review

The late 90s were a great time for video games as a whole. Instead of focusing on certain franchises that were sure to sell well, developers worldwide were constantly attempting to innovate established genres. Squaresoft, now Square Enix, was among the Japanese developers more willing to experiment, dipping their toes in many different genres, including the fighting games genre, with series like Tobal and Bushido Blade. The latter, despite only being comprised of two entries, is still well-regarded today for having managed to create an experience centered around 1-hit-kill mechanics that worked surprisingly well, and very few games managed to replicate properly.

Die by the Blade by Grindstone is only the latest fighting game that attempts to become a modern-day Bushido Blade. Unfortunately, the long development time wasn’t enough to make it a game worth playing for fans of the series, as its decent core mechanics are marred by the subpar execution of everything that surrounds them.

Unlike most modern fighting games that attempt to draw the player in with elaborate story modes, Die by the Blade doesn’t even feature a semblance of one. There’s little to no information on the bland roster of characters, and what little there is, found in the Characters menu, doesn’t say much about the samurai punk world they inhabit. From what can be gleaned from the brief descriptions available, a mega-corporation called Praxis is about doing all sorts of shady business which involves the main characters, whose names like Yoshi, Daisuke, Ronin, and Butterfly are as appealing as their design, but this is not elaborated in any way in the game.

While this is usually not a major issue for a fighting game, it most definitely is Die by the Blade. Getting players invested in the characters and their stories is what brought fans into Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat, Tekken, Soul Calibur, Guilty Gear, and even Bushido Blade itself, whose story was among the highlights of the experience. The lack of such, in conjunction with the aforementioned bland character design, doesn’t really work in the game’s favor. There’s simply no reason to care about these individuals, and this hurts the experience immensely.

The fact that the characters essentially all play the same doesn’t help either. In Die by the Blade, the weapon dictates the moveset, as the characters only have some light differences in stats. Yoshi, for example, is the most balanced character, while Butterfly sacrifices Resolve, a stat that indicates stamina, for Speed. The combination of the seven characters and five weapons (Katana, Chokuto, Nodachi, Wakizashi, and Naginata) should provide players with plenty of options, but in reality, the differences between characters are minimal, and they do not matter as much as the weapons of choice do.

No matter the selected character and weapon, Die by the Blade plays unlike most fighting games on the market. Inside smallish 3D arenas, two players confront one another using their weapons, and the first one to get hit dies. Matches do not have a timer in most modes outside Challenges, so rounds could last very long if none of the players make any mistakes.

Being a 1-hit-kill experience, offense and defense work differently from most modern fighting games, centered on a stance system controlled with the right stick. Depending on the stance, it is possible to block the opponent’s attack automatically if the stances match and unleash different vertical and horizontal attacks as well as Sequences, combo strings that can pressure the opponent heavily. Defensive options also include a parry, which allows the character to block any attack in a short time window after activation, regardless of the chosen stance, rolling, and sidestepping. Each of these techniques is effective in avoiding certain types of attacks, so mastering all of them is extremely important to win matches. Each must also be used judiciously, as it is not only dangerous due to this rock-paper-scissor system but also impossible due to the aforementioned Resolve system. This stamina gauge gets depleted by performing any combat action, and once depleted, attacks become slow, and it is impossible to auto-parry attacks. Hence, keeping it up is just as important as keeping an eye on the opponent.

While the clunky movement, animations, and slight input delay are difficult not to notice, I must admit that the Die by the Blade core mechanics hold decent potential. With some choice tweaking, they could easily become noteworthy. Once a round gets going, the tense exchange of attacks is definitely exhilarating, especially after the Stance mechanics are fully understood, and the gruesome Finishers unleashed after certain Sequences are performed contribute to making the game feel like a true duel to the death.

Unfortunately, as mentioned, these core mechanics are marred by the subpar execution of everything surrounding them. The biggest offender, in my opinion, is the camera. Not only is the angle not very good for proper positioning, but it rotates for no reason every time an attack is parried. There are plenty of good reasons why the camera is consistent in fighting games, but Grindstone went for a cinematic approach that doesn’t work well. The game also lacks visual clarity due to the sparks produced by parrying and blocking, so, in conjunction with the camera, it sometimes is difficult to understand what is going on, a critical issue in a 1-hit-kill game. Clarity issues are further compounded by certain arenas, like the dojo, which have some visibility and lighting issues.

Die by the Blade also leaves a lot to be desired when it comes to content. Alongside the extremely limited number of characters and movesets, the game features only a few play modes that do not even cover the essentials. Offline modes include a Versus and Tournament Mode, and single-player modes are limited to a Tutorial Mode, a Practice Mode that lacks important features like the ability to pin Sequences input on screen to practice them, and a Challenges mode, a basic survival mode that pits the player against a sequence of generic grunts for no reward other than Player Experience and Coins. These two currencies are part of the atrocious system used by Die by the Blade to unlock additional content, such as characters, weapons, customization options, and even play modes.

What makes this system horrible, besides the fact that it locks essential content like characters and weapons behind an arbitrary progression system reminiscent of free-to-play games, is the small amount of XP handed out – 50 points per victory, 5 per defeat. As such, it can take well over two hours to unlock everything, which is a very long time for a game without compelling play mode. The system seems to have been thought out to pad the game out and attempt to hide the fact that it offers very little.

Online modes in Die by the Blade don’t fare much better. Unfortunately, I couldn’t test out the netcode due to the low online population during the review period, and I will update this part of the review accordingly once the game is out. Still, even if it was the best implementation of rollback netcode around, it wouldn’t really change the fact that the mode selection is just as limited as the offline one. Besides Ranked Matches and Ranked Tournaments, the game only offers a friendly match mode that requires the host player to invite another player. The lack of casual matchmaking feels like a major oversight, although I feel it may have been a conscious choice from the developer not to disperse its player base among different matchmaking pools. Even after it launches on consoles later this year, I feel Die by the Blade will become one of those niche Discord fighting games that only get to be played by a small community.

Die by the Blade also disappoints in regards to visuals and performance. Simply put, the character models look undetailed, are stiffly animated, and have no visual flair that distinguishes them. Same for the environments. They are the blandest take on the “samurai punk” theme that powers the experience, and they have nothing remarkable going on for them. They are empty and feel completely lifeless. With such underwhelming visuals, seeing how even performance wasn’t good was baffling. On the machine used for the test (i7-13700F, RTX 4080 GPU, 32 GB RAM), the game ran at an average of 116 FPS during a benchmark session in the Challenges mode with DLSS Quality and maximum settings. While the average framerate was high, frame times were all over the place, with evident stuttering before the match began and during Finishers. The 32 1% low recorded during the benchmark session tells everything there is to say regarding the smoothness of the experience.

Despite some decent core mechanics, Die by the Blade seems to lack a solid vision, featuring design choices suggesting both competitive and casual, single-player approaches that are not realized in the slightest. As such, it is very difficult to recommend the game to anyone in its current state, especially to the Bushido Blade fans who have waited so long for a spiritual successor worthy of its name.

Review code provided by the publisher.

Die by the Blade

Solid core mechanics are not enough to make Die by the Blade the compelling spiritual sequel of the Bushido Blade series fans have been waiting for a long time. Bland character design, clunky animations, horrendously slow progression system, extreme lack of content and mediocre visuals are only some of the issues that mar an experience that is very difficult to recommend to anyone in its current state.