Good stealth games are hard to come by. Good 2D stealth games are even harder.
Within The Blade on Nintendo Switch, by Ametist Studio and published by Ratalaika Games, is a 2D stealth platformer centered around a ninja. The player needs to take advantage of terrain, equipment, and various skills to assassinate enemies that threaten their village.
The game has distinctly difficult mechanics with a massive skill ceiling. It starts off simple, with being able to stealthily backstab enemies that have yet to spot you. You can hide in the grass and crawl up to them or jump at them from various angles. But then new abilities and weapons get into the mix. You can dash, wall jump, dash attack, use a grappling hook, grappling hook enemies, change the direction of your sword slash, switch to a weapon that uses a chain, block, throw grenades, hide with smoke bombs, attack enemies while hanging like Spiderman, and even a series of Tekken-like button combos to unleash unique attacks. The wide array of inputs lets the player tackle problems from so many different angles. It’s up to the player to make good use of their toolkit in order to safely progress. I found this design to be, at first, daunting. But as I got used to each tool individually, it became rewarding to reach into my toolset and pull out an effective means of assassination for each situation.
While you do have many tools to tackle a situation, Within The Blade doesn’t make it easy for you. Once an enemy has spotted you out of your hiding spot, each encounter becomes anybody’s game. Your advantage drops significantly, with enemies having varied attacks. Some of them will block your swings, kite back to shoot you with their bow, or attack upwards when you jump. It becomes important to maintain stealth and make effective use of your tools, otherwise you’ll be stuck in a hack and slash situation that’s far from preferable. This combination of stealth mechanics and combos with dynamic enemies makes for incredibly layered gameplay with tons of room for the player to grow. There’s even a “Permadeath” mode for the players that like to challenge themselves even further.
Unfortunately, I find that Within The Blade’s control scheme is incredibly obtuse for what the player wants to do. Many things are not intuitive. Jumping, for example, is on the Nintendo Switch’s ‘B’ button instead of the commonly used ‘Up’ button. The dash mechanic also has different buttons for a left-facing dash or a right-facing dash instead of a single button press. And there are some inputs that will work for both the Switch’s arrow keys and analog sticks, but some that are arrow key exclusive. It feels like these design decisions were made to accommodate the game’s combo-like inputs after porting, but on a controller, there are certain expectations the player will have. What’s worse is that, for some of these problems, there doesn’t appear to be a clear solution. One instance of this is the re-mapped jumping. You need to be able to hold the up key to direct the input of your combo without jumping, so it makes sense that you would have to use a button for it rather than your directional keys. When needing to learn a wide array of combos, being able to intuitively use the basic movement would be ideal, but for Within The Blade, you’ll have to acclimate to the irregular layout. This makes for added difficulty without any of the satisfaction for overcoming it. By choosing to play Within The Blade on Nintendo Switch, you’ll have to opt into these unnatural difficulties.
Within The Blade is a hardcore experience. Players that enjoy high-ceiling stealth mechanics or combo like controls will assuredly enjoy this game, but it’s not for everyone.
8.5/10
Check Out Within The Blade Launch Trailer Here: https://youtu.be/-AqXJi3GmA8
For more information, visit: http://www.ratalaikagames.com/
Nintendo Switch Review
My name is Devon Huge. I'm passionate about writing, art, games, and lists that are one item too long.
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