X-Blades: Liar Liar, No Pants to Set on Fire
It’s a humid, sticky, and slightly stanky evening in my city today, the kind where even my controller is starting to sweat and mud up a little, because the AC has finally given up and my repair guy is on vacation in the mountains, but it’s fine, because I’ve got a bowl of cold noodles on one side, a can of half-drunk white Monster on the other, and no good reason for spending the next hour on X-Blades. I was first attracted to its moodier-looking and more positively received sequel, Blades of Time, but this game’s art style got to my judgment before it could even get a word in. The reviews on the Steam page also said:
“Spectacular fights seasoned up with tactics and a breath of RPG. This title has the ingredients of an instant success!”
“As a fan of the Devil May Cry series, you will love X-Blades.”
“X-Blades is an absolutely solid hack 'n slay game that can compete with major titles of the genre.”
So, here we are.
The game starts with some crazy rock music and is followed by a cutscene that shows up dressed to the nines. Warm orangey sunset, a bold cel-shaded style, and camerawork that actually feels cool - it feels tailor-made for my heart. It introduces Ayumi, a cocky treasure hunter who talks like a Sonic OC but for Lara Croft, not that it matters though because she’s cool, she's my friend, and I wish I could be half as confident as her when walking around in beachwear, thigh armour, with a massive stomach tat and two sword-gun somethings on the waist.
The whole thing is genuinely handsome, screaming big money from the get-go, but then the cutscene ends, the controller wakes up in my hands, and the game nuts away all its confidence right in front of me as the bold cel-shading becomes muddy, the orange-hued and warm ruins become cold and dark, and Ayumi starts skating over the ground with unbelievable weightlessness but jumping like the Hulk for some reason. I reach the first combat bit, and she flails her swords around like she’s using them for the first time while shooting like she’s Dante from DMC 2. That one review makes more sense now.
To be honest, this should have been the moment I deleted this game right away and asked for a refund, but I didn’t. You see, X-Blades tells one lie extremely well - not that it’s a good game, oh no. The game is aware enough to not bother with that, but it keeps saying that the flash of goodness I watched was actually the rule, while the swamp I’m currently drowning in is the exception. Those flashes will keep coming, so I need to keep playing.
It actually makes good on this too… kinda. I trigger one of Ayumi’s abilities, the camera dips low and slow, all cinematic, and then everything in my vicinity goes boom-pow-wham! Ten minutes in, I'm standing against a white anthropomorphous lion the size of a tree. Mane like Solgaleo, gold bangles on both arms and both wrists, and a voice pitched perfectly for tragedy. He informs Ayumi that she’s doomed every creature on the planet by touching an artefact and that he must now kill her for it. Ayumi replies by calling him an oversized cat and a furball. It’s perfect. But then I’m thrown back to plinking pistols into twenty-something lizard-dinosaur thingies as they completely gank me, struggling to find how lock-on works while the lion dude-god keeps throwing massive fire orbs at me all Dragon Ball-style.
But then, again, X-Blades gets scared of me being bored and decides to throw me a good fucking bone.
The glare, man. How I miss this in games these days.
I’d forgotten how much a few late 2000s games loved their bloom, but even amongst them, this is something else. The sun feels like a nuke going off in the frame, the ruins are overexposed to a bright yellow, every piece of surface is throwing back enough light to warrant sunglasses, and Ayumi is shining like a damn diamond for some reason. My already-hot room feels hotter just from this scenery. It’s absurd, and I love it because there’s something very heartwarming about a game that answers “how bright should this game get?” with an unblinking and completely sincere “Yes.” Clearly, restraint wasn’t a design virtue yet, and nobody during this game’s development was aware of their limits. It’s the same recklessness that gives a treasure hunter such an immensely edgy attitude, dresses her up for a beach resort, goes insane with the cutscenes, and is then left scrambling on the gameplay side. If nothing else, it’s commitment that borders on embarrassing, and I absolutely trust the devs for it.
I catch glimpses of the game somebody at the studio, TopWare, actually pitched in a meeting once, swagger intact, budget presumably to match too. It isn't really a different game that’s before me now. It's the same one, just in the small things that come every now and then, the way concept art wants a game to be seen. It also feels like nobody wanted to cut that pitch meeting short so the devs kept asking themselves - wouldn't it be cool if the swords were also half-guns, wouldn’t it be cool if we drop Ayumi into a wave-based combat zone for thirty minutes right during the third stage, wouldn’t it be cool if the desert had some insane bloom effect, wouldn’t it be cool if Ayumi was also attacked by a purple gloop that took over her every now and then - those types of questions, and nobody seemingly said no either.
If I were to answer what made me want to keep playing, I’d say it’s similar to what keeps a person glued to a slot machine - the near miss, the cherry-cherry-lemon basically. X-Blades keeps showing me just enough that quitting feels premature every time, and the lie also lies in how I keep telling myself “the good part is going to come any second now!” Liar liar, no pants to set on fire, literally for Ayumi. The game doesn’t hide that it’s selling me a version of itself that it absolutely is not, but it somehow trusts a janky-games-eater like me to have a good time anyway. And I’m having a good time, which is why I want to keep playing this sloppy mess, and why I also suggest you give it a try too. Might just be your jam, who knows.
Before proceeding, though, I'll finish my noodles and Monster first.
...
Thanks for reading!