DAIMON BLADES early access impressions — Rusty blades

Betrayed by their mentor, the mysterious cult of warrior monks known as Secreta begins plotting their revenge. Sworn to beat back the demonic incursions threatening the realm, the Secreta must follow the traces of the Hermit down into the depths of chaos, lest he complete an ungodly ritual to devour the souls of the innocent. With a living weapon known as the daimon in hand, you dive into the pit to put an end to his blasphemous ways.

DAIMON BLADES is essentially a blend between an RPG and a roguelike, with more emphasis on the latter. The RPG elements come from your ability to build your character out through meta progression, but most of the gameplay takes the form of a roguelike as you delve deep into the demon world of chaos. 

Each expedition begins by selecting a biome, which will be a randomized level each time you play. This mostly just changes the scenery as the enemies you encounter will remain largely the same. You’ll also be assigned an objective to be able to clear the level, ranging anywhere from defeating a handful of mini bosses to collecting and depositing resources. There are also smaller objectives to find that will offer smaller boosts, like human sacrifices that will refill your healing items but increase your corruption. Gain too much corruption, though, whether through dying and being revived or greedily taking it from objectives, and it’s game over.

After completing an area, you’ll be able to select upgrades in typical roguelike fashion while also earning a small amount of resources that can be used in the hub area to upgrade your character or weapons. You’ll also occasionally encounter the Hermit himself, who will place a curse upon you for the run, but you will also be able to choose a blessing to counteract some of the downside, which I thought was neat.

Most of the levels I explored didn’t feel like they had much identity to them outside of just being themed around a color. The ice levels are blue and white, the sewer levels are green and brown. I’m sure you get the idea. One type of level I absolutely despised was the rising lava levels, where if you missed a jump and touched the lava, you would immediately lose your run. This felt absolutely terrible, and while they were generally easy enough to complete after playing through them enough times, this type of level just felt really out of place in a game like this.

Combat in DAIMON BLADES feels hard to describe. On one hand, it can be very satisfying to slash through entire hordes of chaff and spill gallons of blood in your wake, but other times it feels extremely clunky and difficult to engage with. This is partly due to how awkward it feels to maneuver through the environment, with your jumps and dashes just not feeling polished. The basic sword swings, heavy attacks and projectiles were thankfully usable enough, but blocking and dash attacks definitely need more work. Most of the enemies also just sort of run up to you and try to attack, or will pelt you from a distance with ranged attacks. There isn’t much else in terms of combat dynamics, as even though enemies had different models, they all sort of felt like they did the same things.

Boss fights were definitely the highlight of the experience, as they provided some of that dynamic combat experience that I was looking for. These foes will demand you pay more attention to their attacks, and will also have different phases that you’ll need to contend with. One of the early game bosses, for example, will summon sacrifices, and you can interrupt the ritual by slaying them before they can grant the boss power. Sure, it might not be groundbreaking, but these sections were at least more engaging than the levels in between.

DAIMON BLADES feels like a true early access product, as I feel like the game has a good foundation of what it wants to be, but is far off from realizing its full potential. There is just a lot of jank in both the art style and the actual gameplay. Something I feel the need to disclose is that this game also features AI-generated content in the Daimon portraits and icon art, along with the voices being cloned and toned around. This might be enough to turn off some people entirely, and I honestly can’t blame them, despite this being an early access build. If you’re intrigued by the blend of RPG and roguelike elements and want a peek at an early state of the game, it might be worth taking a look if you don’t mind the rough edges. If you’re someone who enjoys a more refined experience, however, you may want to wait for the game to bake in the oven just a bit longer.