Bleak Sword DX Review – PC

Keep it simple, stupid. As cliche as it is, it’s an adage that stands the test of time in a world where everything is overly complicated. Video games are no exception to the times. Filled with intricate menus and systems constantly in communication with one another, battle passes, day one updates, and developer roadmaps, it’s easy to see how players can come away from a game overwhelmed. No wonder many games end up collecting dust in the depths of many Steam libraries. Bleak Sword DX takes much of its inspiration from a series of games I consider complicated. Yet, to my surprise, More8Bit’s updated version of their Apple Arcade game for PC keeps it simple.

Bleak Sword DX is a Souls-lite, with an emphasis on the lite. Its drab and bleak atmosphere matches those you come to expect from the likes of Lordran and The Lands Between. Instead of a large open world, players navigate multiple levels in a top down isometric view. These levels look great, and really paint some life into each scene, from the murky swamps with rickety bridges to the shadowy mines with runaway mine carts. There is always something to look at in these levels. The player character and the enemies are not much to look at, especially when compared to the levels, but they’re at least easy to tell apart. Enemy variety is also wide here.

Nothing is simpler than the game’s mechanics. Aside from movement, there are three actions. Attack, parry, and roll. Your main focus in fights will be timing your parry with an enemy’s attack, countering, and keeping an eye on your stamina. There is some inventory management in the form of two items you can carry into any level. These provide permanent or temporary buffs to your attack, defense, or health. Consumables can be taken in the heat of battle, but you also have the option to pause and use them without worry of being attacked. Completing levels in the campaign grants you XP to eventually level you up. Each level up comes with a stat increase of your choice.

Just like in Souls, if you die in one of Bleak Sword DX’s levels, you drop all your XP and items. You have one chance to gain those back through completing the level you previously failed. Dying again results in a permanent loss of those items and XP. It hurts to lose that XP, especially when the XP bar is inches away from being filled, but I never felt like I was losing progress or was not leveling up enough to keep up with the enemies. I felt like I was constantly being challenged, but was never being overpowered.

There are multiple modes, and multiple versions of the campaign to play. The original campaign is a carry over from the Apple Arcade release. Featuring 12 worlds, each with 10 levels, and each ending with a boss. The variety of the worlds keeps things interesting. There’s the aforementioned swamp, a ransacked village, and my personal favorite, a world of nothing but on-horse combat. The bosses are all unique from a visual perspective. I did want to see a little more variety from the design side. A handful of the bipedal bosses attack in the same manner (ie swipe, swipe, ground pound). That said, boss fights still presented a challenge that while not on the same levels as Souls, did force me to try again multiple times.

Other campaign options include a randomizer that spits the levels out in different orders and the DX Campaign, which adds some additional levels to each world and throws in more enemies. Both options offer up more challenges and give you a reason to revisit the campaign. There are also four difficulties to pick from. The largest difference I saw between the lowest and highest difficulties was the amount of damage enemies dealt out, with two to three hits bringing death in the hardest. Blending the harder difficulties with the DX mode requires players to find their comfort zone in parrying and countering much earlier in the campaign. Bigger enemies have attacks that cannot be parried and must be dodged before dealing a massive hit to your health.

After completing one of the campaigns, players unlock the Boss Rush mode and Arena mode. Boss Rush is all or nothing. You get one health bar to run through the game’s 12 bosses in one go. I do think this mode would benefit from a clock or some kind of scale to track your progress between runs.  Arena mode is an endless run through encounters until you die. These levels are a mix of enemies you saw through the campaign, including the bosses who randomly appear, sometimes alongside waves of enemies. Arena mode keeps track of your best run, which left me wanting for a leaderboard to compare my results to others. Shortcomings aside, both modes are fun, and offer a quick in and out run for someone not wanting to mess with the full campaign again.

Bleak Sword DX delivers the base game to a new audience, while adding a bunch of new modes with new challenges. With challenging combat, easy to learn mechanics, and a creepy atmosphere that makes the most of the game’s minimalist art style, Bleak Sword DX is a full package for a low price.

Author: Nick Coffman
Nick is a Chicago Comedy writer whose first gaming memory is the "drowning imminent" music from Sonic 2. He was able to recover from that traumatic experience and now writes game reviews. He recently built his first PC and now uses it exclusively to play small indie titles.

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