Blade Chimera (and a bit of Deedlit)

I recently finished Team Ladybug’s newest metroidvania Blade Chimera and I really enjoyed it! I tend to enjoy metroidvanias for their snappy controls, fun exploration, cool enemies, and fun combat, and for the most part Blade Chimera checked off most of those boxes. I’ve actually played I think to this point every Team Ladybug game (including Drainus which wasn’t a metroidvania but still fun), and honestly speaking, I think it’s hard for me to say which one was my favourite.

Though, I actually wasn’t as big of a fan of Deedlit in Wonder Labyrinth, for reasons that I felt they actually mostly fixed in this one. My primary complaint was that I felt the element system actually made things a bit… too easy. You basically always had at least one maxed out, and with one maxed out you were constantly regenerating health. It also felt some bosses were designed around you getting hit with some moves being very very very fast, and while I think there was a nice balance with the mana health regen, it felt a little boring at times with some boss fights where I basically knew I could just facetank and just switch to heal and not really learn attack patterns. I also didn’t like the boss rush near the end, it felt a little unnecessary, though I did like story told.

As for Blade Chimera, I think the combat was improved and while it wasn’t very difficult, the health regen mechanics felt a little more balanced and fair. Where it really stood out for me though was the different weapon types (expanded on from Deedlit) and abilities. The different weapons having different movesets and different guns having different properties made it pretty fun to play around with. Lux’s abilities were also interesting, though I wish they did more with those. Specifically her specials, I think her normal abilities were fun but I rarely found myself using the specials. The boss fights were all really fun and the unique encounters were quite cool too.

The story and areas were also pretty cool. I liked the different environments and while the story was nothing unheard of, I think it was fine and suited a metroidvania. The sidequests had some fun moments as well, and some more interesting encounters too which I enjoyed.

Now, there are a few things that I thought weren’t very well done, and it actually almost makes me question if it’s fair to call Blade Chimera a metriodvania.

The first and biggest complaint I have is that there were waaaaay too many straight corridors with enemies. It felt boring and it removed one of the strong points of a metroidvania to me which was having interesting rooms with varied enemy placements, forcing you to think about how you navigate through a room. It also removes an element of environmental story telling that I think other metroidvanias (like the Ender series) do really well. The combat is fun enough that this is “fine”, but I think it’s something that I’d like to see improved in future releases.

The other big thing that made me question whether it’s right to call this game a metriodvania is how progression works. In other metroidvanias, you typically encounter roadblocks that you overcome by obtaining abilities by either progressing through areas and/or defeating bosses. You unlock things like double jump, slide, etc. In Blade Chimera however, you unlock these abilities through levels and experience points you get from defeating enemies. Bosses of course give a lot of experience points, but ultimately it makes defeating bosses feel… not as rewarding. Now I will say, it’s an interesting design choice in some ways because I’m fairly certain this does mean you can go through the entire game without upgrading your abilities at all. The core gameplay mechanics are enough to traverse everywhere, barring some story progression blockers. One on hand, I think this is an interesting concept, but I wish there was more of a reward to beating bosses in the form of some sort of ability. For example, I think gating some of Lux’s abilities behind bosses would’ve been a good idea or even the movement abilities, and then the other abilities could’ve been unlocked with exp.

Speaking of abilities, there was one ability that I thought was crazily insanely strong. The warp ability.

Again, in most metroidvanias, warping is usually a pretty limited function. Whether it be only having specific warp rooms you can warp to/from, or gating it for very late, it’s usually quite limited and a very welcome upgrade to have. In Blade Chimera, it goes from being welcome to being an almost overpowered tool in my opinion.

To clarify, there are some limitations with warping. Namely there are some areas you cannot warp in or out of, and there are story moments where you cannot warp. But beyond that, you can warp to virtually every TILE in the game, from ANY tile in the game.

This makes backtracking virtually non existent. Remember that thing gated behind double jump and you just unlocked it? Just warp there. Need to quickly save/heal before progressing? Just warp back to a save room, then warp back to the second last room you were in (you cannot warp to the very last room you were in, not entirely sure why that was the case).

It is an incredibly useful tool, and one that I think borders on being way too useful in fact. It’s nice though in the sense that some of the boring or more painful rooms you can often just skip over them, but again, it feels almost too good. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t use it a lot though, especially when clearing out the map or doing side quests that require you to travel to a bunch of different locations, but I feel even just limiting the warp ability to being able to warp to just save rooms would’ve already been a good enough tool. This is also something you can unlock very very early.

The other incredibly powerful use of this tool is that, well… you can actually use it to not necessarily sequence break, but to get to areas you shouldn’t. For example, there’s a location in the game that is pretty much a vertical wall that I’m “pretty” sure you were supposed to either activate some terminal to blow you up or something like that. However, with the power of warping (and having unexplored rooms), you can warp to the highest point you unlocked, double jump, hit the next tile, go to another unexplored room so it makes the highest point warpable, and repeat until you reach the top.

There are other use cases too, such as if you found yourself surrounded, you can just warp out temporarily.

At times it feels like there is no difficulty because if you ever found yourself low on resources, just warp out! Of course, this is something you can disable and it is a player tool, but I do think that it’s still overtuned.

However even with all those negatives, I still really enjoyed my time with Blade Chimera. I think it was a very fun game, and the base of the game was extremely solid and it makes me look forward to Team Ladybug’s next metroidvania. I hope they improve on the map design especially, because the foundation of what they have is really fun!