Blue Fire Review (Steam)

by Jim Smale · March 4, 2021

Journey through the desolated kingdom of Penumbra and discover the hidden secrets of this long-forgotten land. Explore mystical temples, where you’ll need to master the art of movement to survive increasingly difficult 3D platforming challenges. During your adventure, you’ll slash your way through daunting adversaries, encounter survivors, and take on strange quests to collect valuable items.

Pros:

Beautiful cartoon graphics.
Download size.
Steam achievements.
Controller support.
Graphics-fullscreen, fps limit (off/30/60/120), resolution, screen mode, anti-aliasing, post-processing, shadow quality, and texture quality.
Invert axis and sensitivity sliders.
12 save slots.
Two difficulties-newcomer or recommended.
3D action-adventure gameplay.
Tutorial markers.
Zelda like quality to it with the combat and interactions.
Jaw-dropping vistas.
Puzzle elements.
Emotes-find new ones from statues hidden around.
Rest Statues-save, equip spirits, and Mana management. Acts as a respawn point.
Voids act like self-contained levels, you collect everything and death resets you to the level start.
The main hub where you open doors and new voids as you play.
Tight controls.
Fast loading times.
Combat is very hack and slash, you have a lock-on feature and when using the screen zooms in and you get a border.
Take powers from bosses, find and equip new items for your character.

Blue Fire Review (Steam)

Cons:

Can’t skip cutscenes.
Difficulty choice doesn’t show what changes.
Combat takes getting used to.
A lot of damage-inducing obstacles everywhere.
Not always clear what to do.
Really hard to judge jumps and air dashes.

Blue Fire Review (Steam)

9/10

Graphics - 9/10
8/10

Sound - 8/10
7/10

Accessibility - 7/10
8/10

Length - 8/10
8/10

Fun Factor - 8/10

8/10

Summary

Blue Fire is a curious beast, it has the initial look and feel of a Zelda game, it borrows the combat from said game but it soon changes direction. For all the opening combat, the game is more focused on hardcore platforming with combat sprinkled in. The game is split into voids which act as a self-contained level and require pinpoint platforming whilst getting all the Collectibles. Thankfully the controls are really tight making all the jumping and dashing a lot easier or more palatable I should say. Any death will put you at the void entrance so there is an element of pattern recognition, with no game over and fast respawn it takes the sting out of a cheap death. Combat will get more common as you approach a boss and for the most part, it’s fine, I mean early on its straight-up hack and slash, later with upgrades it becomes a bit more sophisticated. For me I liked the game in small doses, I am not particularly good at 3D platforming, and being unable to judge distances means I struggled a lot, with how the game splits the combat and platforming it did feel a bit disconnected in what the game is meant to be. If you like a challenge then it’s all good but looking for an adventure game or Zelda like is a big no-no. Overall Blue Fire is a solid hardcore platformer with mild combat but it never feels like a cohesive experience.