Just a couple of months after the release of Blades of Fire, the action RPG is now getting ready to get more eyes on it thanks to a promotion through Xbox Free Play Days. From today until July 20, players can try out Blades of Fire on Xbox Series X/S for up to 10 hours for free. Along with this, the title is also available at a 20 percent discount on Xbox Series X/S, PS5, and PC (via Epic Games Store).
If you try out Blades of Fire through the Xbox Free Play Days program, you will get full access to the entirety of Blades of Fire for 10 hours. If you then decide to pick up a copy of the game for yourself on Xbox Series X/S, you will also be able to carry over all the progress you made in the free trial into the full game.
It is worth noting that this free trial is separate from the demo that was released a week before Blades of Fire came out. The demo, available on all platforms, only includes the first few hours of the game, rather than giving you full access to the title for ten hours. However, the demo also allows you to carry over your progress into the full game.
Blades of Fire was released on PC and consoles back in May, alongside a new trailer that gave us a look at the general story setup, while also showing off its characters and the various challenges that players will have to face.
What sets Blades of Fire apart from other Souls-inspired action RPGs out there is the emphasis placed on weapon crafting through its Forge system. Lead game designer Joan Amat had spoken about how it would work back in March, confirming that the game’s progression systems don’t revolve around allowing players to become magical gods by the end of the game.
“You definitely can’t turn [protagonist] Aran into a magic god at the end of Blades of Fire, right? There are lots of spectacular things that you could do, have your weapon shoot fireballs or other things that are really spectacular,” said Amat. “This is not our aim! Our aim is to make everything really important.”
Amat also spoke about how the weapon forging system in Blades of Fire takes real-world attributes of weapons into account rather than game attributes like strength or agility. Because of this, the studio instead focused on allowing players to choose their weapon parts of choice to make “almost infinite” combinations of weapons.
“[Historical YouTubers] are talking about edges; they’re talking about balance, the center of mass, grips and handling, and edge alignment. They’re not talking about agility, strength, stamina, intelligence, and dexterity, right? Those are not the stats,” explained Amat.
“When we moved from the stats combo into a challenge mentality, balance became so much easier. We only really need to make sure that the enemy is strong against some things and weak against some other things. There are all these other great RPGs that are about power complexity. That’s not what this game is about.”
For more details about Blades of Fire, check out our review.
