I do feel as though I was born in the wrong era. For all that there was no medicine, that you brushed your teeth with twigs, and pillaging was a daily possibility, the simple, arable life that existed in medieval England still sounds like a lot less pressure than the modern day. Working the fields or raising livestock would be popular choices, but blacksmithing must have been the top pick at medieval careers day. Particularly for the less sporty kids who couldn’t swing a sword.
For all those ideas, Bladesong’s opening is somewhat more high-pressure than I was expecting. You awake on your deathbed. The elderly woman who’s nursing you pours water down your throat, and you find yourself selecting your own backstory, telling her where you’ve come from, what you carry with you, and what drives you to stay alive. Is it ambition, continuity or compassion that you believe in?
Bladesong’s narrative plays out as an old-school text adventure would, giving you prompts to choose from as you awaken, remembering your past and setting forth on a new beginning. It definitely tickled away at my gaming memory, selecting the option to ‘Get your bearings’ and being told, “You’re in a tent. There’s no sign of your caretaker, apart from a half-empty water pail and a damp cloth on your brow.” This is absolutely what games were like when I first discovered them, and that literary edge is put to good use in Bladesong’s opening, forming a clear vision of its fantasy medieval world and your place within it.
You are a blacksmith. A half-dead one, but a blacksmith, nonetheless. Each day, you’re offered a selection of commissions, and you’re able to choose which of these you take on, with new ones coming in the next morning. Each commission uses up resources, including Action Points, Steel, Leather and Wood, depending on the task set out in front of you. Alongside the cost, commissions also make specific requests about the type of blade you forge, and you have to try to make something that matches their specification.
The first customer that approaches you wants a sword that’s two-handed, asking for something, “Good and long. I don’t like my enemies to be in hugging distance.” There’s no other requirements here, but later commissions might ask for a sword that hits hard, or one that’s viciously sharp. You then select abilities to start shaping the blade.
You start each sword with a billet, a chunk of steel, that you then have to physically hammer and mould into shape. You select the right ability, and then hammer away with repeated clicks of the mouse to bash it into the correct form, with clicks at the top of the hammer’s apex resulting in harder blows. One after another, you hammer out the length, then flatten it to the right thickness and width, before shaping the end into a point and working on the blade’s cross section.
Once you’ve got the blade into the correct shape, you need to add a hilt, a grip and a pommel, because, well, a sword without those things looks silly. That, and it’s much harder to hold. There’s various options within each of these additions, so you can tailor your wickedly sharp creations to both the owner and your own tastes as well.
Each commission has its own narrative context, and you begin to build a picture of this mud-strewn, dangerous place that you start the game in. As a new blacksmith, you slowly build up your position within the encampment, attempting to make your way into the city beyond, though your business model may cause the odd moral quandary when your customers are definitely going to shove your creations into another person’s gut.
Each time you complete a commission, you earn a portion of XP, and as with all good RPGs, once you’ve got enough you’ll level up. This then grants you skill points, which you can plough into the smithing skill tree, giving you access to advanced smithing, the ability to engrave your creations, or even start to work with curved blades. You can see all of these options from the off, so if there’s a particular creation you have in mind, you can choose to work your way along that branch before testing the others.
If you want to see the kind of things you’ll eventually be able to create, the Creative mode immediately gives you every single one of Bladesong’s tools and attachments to play with. There’s three pre-built examples for you to lovingly spin around in 3D which you can dismantle as well, swapping out parts and making changes as you see fit, before embarking on your own design project. If you attempt this at an early point in the Campaign’s narrative there’s a daunting array of options, but as you become more proficient, you’ll soon learn how to construct your perfect sword. The UI mostly does a good job of supporting you in that effort, though there’s a few rough edges to polish up through Early Access, like being able to easily apply different materials to your blade.
The painterly artwork for each location really helps set the scene, and they shift in front of you ever so slightly to make it feel as though you’re actually looking at them. It’s surprisingly effective, and a clever way for a smaller team to manifest a bigger, living world. The swordmaking display is similarly straightforward: an anvil, hammer and blade existing within a black void. I’d love to see this develop through Early Access into specific places, viewing your commissions in situ within your tent, or possibly founding your own smithy as you progress, but it definitely works well as it is.
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There’s something very compelling at work in Bladesong. The sense of desperation, danger and destitution run through the opening hours of the Campaign with alarming force, and in some ways the smithing and swordmaking is simply the means to explore and experience more of this world. I love the writing, and the classic adventure threads that run through each moment really help to pull you onwards.
Of course, it’s the smithing sections that let you truly embody a medieval craftsman, and Bladesong gives you the physical and narrative tools to decide exactly who that craftsman is. You learn to balance your own creativity with what your customers want, and as you become more proficient with a hammer, you forge your own place in Bladesong’s world. It makes for a unique, thoughtful and utterly engaging experience that’s bound to find a legion of fans.
