Die by the Blade – Review

For Honor-style gameplay, Fortnite-inspired graphics and an acute need for improvement.

About two years ago, Kwalee released the trailer for a samurai duelling game called Die By The Blade. Everyone was impressed by the gameplay on show and even called it the spiritual successor to Bushido Blade, a series with a similar concept that Square Enix released on the original PlayStation. Meanwhile, the game has changed publisher to Grindstone, which is also one of the studios developing it alongside Triple Hill Interactive and Toko Midori Games. Honestly, Kwalee dodged a bullet by letting it go – you'll see why in a moment.

At best, unpleasant. At worst, disappointing

The idea behind the game couldn't be simpler. You face a computer-controlled opponent or another player in a samurai duel, and every cut means game over for one of you. Land a hit and your opponent's character dies, costing them one of their two lives. The first to beat their opponent twice wins. You can make vertical or horizontal cuts, depending on which buttons you press on the controller or mouse. You can also roll, step back or parry attacks, which adds a layer of complexity and realism. Every one of these actions drains stamina – if you flail about like a rabbit on a litre of coffee and two litres of cola, you risk running out of stamina and getting a beating from your opponent. The game also introduces a set of Stances your character can adopt: one where you stand more upright, one closer to the ground, and one leaning towards the enemy, depending on the position of the mouse or the controller's right stick. You can also switch stances with dedicated buttons on the controller and keyboard, but that usually takes longer.

You pick your fighter from seven characters, each with different stats for attack speed, movement speed, Resolve and Willpower. If you can't work out what effect Resolve and Willpower have on a fighter's performance… don't worry, neither could I. As for attack and movement speed, I didn't notice any major difference when switching fighters – they all felt the same. At the end of the day, you can pick whichever character catches your eye, because their attributes shape your style far less than you'd expect.

What does make a difference in play is the weapon you equip, because it affects your reach, speed and the attack sequences you can pull off. You can choose from five traditional Japanese weapons: the katana, the chokuto (a straight-bladed sword similar to what we're used to in Europe), the nodachi (essentially a bigger katana), the wakizashi (a shorter blade used mainly defensively) and the naginata (a spear with a slightly curved tip). Technically, I've just said these weapons affect your reach and attack speed, but in practice you can throw both of those ideas, and the attack sequences, out of the window. Why? Because you can beat your opponents with a simple roll towards them followed by a hit – this attack can't be avoided and works every time. I found it absurd that you can do this endlessly, without any penalty whatsoever.

The game also has a tutorial section where you can learn about attacks, defence and how to perform different attack sequences and executions, as well as getting to know the weapon types you can use. As you can see in the image above, it can easily become confusing what you need to press to execute an attack sequence. Do you press X and the right stick in the required direction, then RB? Do you press either X or the right stick in the required direction? On top of that, the combos are inconsistent to perform: either there's too long a delay between the command you give and the moment it's executed, or the character simply doesn't register the command. What's more, if you do the combo too slowly, it won't count. And if you try to do it faster, you risk the game not registering your inputs. Frankly, pressing the buttons at a moderate speed should be enough, because the combo plays out at a realistic speed even when it isn't counted – and that's coming from someone who ought to know, having watched his martial arts master perform such moves in real life.

Switching stances is far harder on a controller than with mouse and keyboard. I find that funny, considering Steam pops up a notification telling you you'll have a nicer experience with a controller.

You can duel either AI-controlled opponents or other players. Sadly, I doubt you'll get to cross swords with real opponents, as the servers look deserted just over a month after launch. I waited about 10 minutes to find an opponent before giving up and going back to bullying the bots on the highest difficulty with the roll-and-hit strategy I mentioned earlier.

At least I appreciate that there's a rather well put-together Practice Mode. Just have a look at the image below to see how many options you can switch on to help you get better at the game.

Are the graphics and sound worthy of a 2024 game?

You earn experience and coins by beating opponents, or by losing to them, whether they're real players or computer-controlled. You can spend these resources on cosmetics for your character, including new outfits and reactions, as well as cosmetics for your weapons. The weapon cosmetics look interesting, but the character ones are simply ugly – the default outfits and the ones you can unlock make the characters look like plastic dolls from Fortnite, only with more pixelated textures. Speaking of cosmetics, the reactions you can unlock have a similar childish Fortnite flavour – I get the impression the developer doesn't quite understand the audience for this kind of game. I'd have expected gestures that evoke honourable conduct or a thirst for revenge and blood, not a samurai doing the penguin dance – there are a few of the former, but not many.

Graphically, the game looks very blurry and short on detail. And that's not because I played on low settings or have a potato of a PC – what you've seen so far of the characters and arenas in my screenshots is what you'll get on the best graphics settings. Even when you hit an opponent and they lose a limb or get decapitated… it looks like it popped off their body like a LEGO piece rather than being cut.

It does at least redeem some of its sins on the audio side. I was lucky that one of my audio designer friends was on the stream when I played Die By The Blade live, and he helped me judge this aspect better. The clashes sound very clean, though they sometimes burst your eardrums (as if you were striking your opponent's weapon with the almighty lightning of Zeus), and the sounds of cutting an opponent are realistically done. The voice lines for some of the reactions are very weak, as if the character is confused about which emotion they're supposed to be feeling.

Is the game optimised enough?

The short answer is “No”. There's a lot of lag, frame drops and moments where the game freezes, on top of the fact that it doesn't register your inputs if you're too slow or too fast. It also takes ages to load every time you start it. And I'd say playing it in summer is a terrible idea unless you want to die from your PC overheating – Die By The Blade will turn your system into a May Day barbecue for no good reason, because the graphics don't look extraordinary even on the highest settings, and performance doesn't improve when you turn them down. But hey, it's worth remembering the game for when winter comes.

Final Verdict

Die By The Blade gives me the impression of a game released in an Alpha state with very little testing beforehand. It really doesn't have much to make the case that it's worth playing: the movement and combos are clunky, it has performance and input-registration problems, and the character models and cosmetics look like Barbie dolls. The only good thing is the audio design during fights.

It gets a 1/10 from me. It's an unfinished game released at the price of a finished one ($20). It's still encouraging to see that the developers haven't simply abandoned it and that patches and updates are arriving twice a week. It may be worth keeping an eye on once the problems are fixed, but for now I can't recommend throwing your money at it.

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Played on: PC
Release date: 16 May 2024
Developer: Grindstone, Triple Hill Interactive, Toko Midori
Publisher: Grindstone