Die by the Blade Review (Steam)

by Jim Smale · Published May 16, 2024 · Updated May 13, 2024

Die by the Blade Review, Vanquish your foes with a single strike in 1v1 weapon-based fighter Die by the Blade. Dive into a samurai punk world and wield a range of traditional Japanese weapons to determine your moveset. Outwit your opponent in intense, tactical battles and master the art of the one-hit kill!

Die by the Blade Review Pros:

Decent graphics.
11.31GB Download size.
Steam achievements.
Full controller support.
Graphics settings – resolution, display mode, v-sync, resolution scale slider, and gamma correction.
Advanced graphic settings – quality preset, textures, anti-aliasing, effects, shadows, foliage, post-processing, view distance, motion blur, lens flares screen space reflections, bloom, ambient occlusion, Nvidia DLSS, and Nvidia DLAA.
Offers an optimization button to sort the graphics out for you.
Colorblind support and severity slider.
Fighter gameplay.
You can turn the gore off.
Three ways to play – offline, online, and single-player.
Seven characters to unlock and play each with unique stats for – attack speed, speed, resolve, and willpower.
Buy new costumes for each character.
Single-player has a tutorial, practice mode, and challenges.
Online modes have – host duel, host tournament, ranked duel, ranked tournament, and leaderboards.
Offline modes – versus mode, and tournaments.
Invite friend code generator.
Local play support.
Resolve is very important and you use this to perform actions in a fight. Resolve generates slowly but you can speed it up with parrying.
Running out of resolve is game changing as you cannot auto block anymore and your attacks will be really slow.
Dots show on your health bar and the bar gets smaller as you lose lives.
Three stances in the game and they are low, mid, and high stance. You need to keep an eye on your stance it it makes your attacks, linking attacks, and guarding better.
Linked attacks are a triplet in that you do 3 actions in sequence – movement direction, stance, and attack.
Full 3D battle arena and the walls disappear as you go near them so you can see your characters.
Four Ai difficulties.
The controller can be set to Xbox or Playstation button icons and you can remap controls.
The whole thing is you die by just one hit and you kill with one hit so dodging, blocking, and parrying is just as important as it is to plan your stance and attack.
Full dismemberment sequences and hits.
You earn coins and exp from playing any mode even against Ai.
Tournaments support up to 8 players.
You can see your opponent’s stance marker.
It feels like a spin on the Nidhogg formula but in an arena.
Customise character has other options from clothes, you can buy and equip different weapons, banners, and taunts.
Fast-paced action matched with hardly any loading times.
Very satisfying when you nail a kill or link a load of moves together.
A thinking man’s fighter.
Ten arenas to fight in – robot factory, garden, office, village, downtown, prototype, dojo, winter ruins, ancient forest, and street.
Banners let you change the icon, color, style, and material.
You can trigger cool slow-mode kills called finishers.
Games can last mere seconds.
It’s a game that will be interesting to see how top-tier players go at the game.
Fundamentally simple but has a deep undercurrent of combos and skills to learn.

Die by the Blade Review Cons:

Only has 13 achievements.
Many modes have to be unlocked before you can play them.
Only a handful of clothing choices for each player.
Small text in places and you can hardly read it when on the big screen.
Spelling mistakes in places.
Learning sequences is really hard initially and the tutorial doesn’t do a good job of breaking you in or helping you through it.
The menus are all over the place, I mean you adjust controller settings in the duel setup screen.
Shame the weapon unlocks are just cosmetic.
You cannot customize your character for ages due to needing credits but also to level up enough to unlock the ability to even look at options.
Can feel like a grind at times to get unlocks and the game to get going.
Levelling up has no fanfare and it’s only if you happen to glimpse at the bar that you even know you levelled up.
You cannot pause the game even in offline single-player.
The camera can go a bit weird and zoom in at the wrong time or pan around.
EXP earned is always the same no matter the life count in single player modes.

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