Today we are taking a look at Blade Chimera, a sci-fi Metroidvania developed by the legendary Team Ladybug, known for their work on the Touhou Luna Nights and Record of Lodoss War games.
Featuring highly detailed pixel art, lots of demons to fight, and many abilities to unlock, Blade Chimera is a bite-sized experience for those looking for something simple, promising exciting occult action in a cyberpunk setting.
Can Blade Chimera differentiate itself from the deluge of Metroidvanias that released recently? Did Team Ladybug manage to outdo their work in Luna Nights with this game? What even is a Blade Chimera? Read our full review and find out!
Blade Chimera
Developer: Team Ladybug, WSS Playground
Publisher: WSS Playground, Playism
Platforms: Nintendo Switch and Microsoft Windows (Reviewed)
Release Date: January 16, 2025
Players: 1
Price: $19.99
Blade Chimera‘s protagonist is Shin, a hunter who works for a religious group established after demons invaded the world. The demons that Shin encounters take on the form of various yokai, supernatural entities popularized in Japan’s Edo period.
Something we have to highlight is that a lot of titles that feature yokai generally try to play it safe by using the most well-known ones, like the kappa, nekomata, tengu, and others you might be familiar with, but Blade Chimera goes far with its representation, featuring some deep cuts like the jinmenju and hitotsume-kozo, balancing both the popular and obscure in equal measure.
The attention to detail that was put into designing each yokai to make sure they don’t clash with the setting is definitely appreciated, as there’s a very fun dichotomy that comes with seeing these folklore legends being put in a futuristic cyberpunk world, pushing the boundaries between ancient and modern to create a unique aesthetic.
As far as its exploration goes, Blade Chimera is quite smooth. The game provides an outline of the rooms you’ll have to travel through to reach your destination during the tutorial, which is replaced by a simple marker afterwards, removing the “training wheels” but not necessarily leaving the player completely lost.
Blade Chimera focuses on platforming challenges, puzzles, and tough combat encounters, dropping the wall-sniffing part of Metroidvanias entirely and showing a lot of respect for the player’s time. This is best exemplified by the Warp upgrade, which lets the player teleport to any room in the map freely, making backtracking and secret-finding painless.
The movement and platforming in the game are especially fun, as the player can climb on every wall by using their sword as a temporary makeshift platform. Shin starts with a satisfying amount of skills unlocked by default, with the rest being easily accessible through a skill tree that is unlocked in whatever order the player sees fit.
Most of the game’s mechanics revolve around Lux, a demon sword that bonds with Shin after he takes down a massive dragon. Lux has a simple but versatile moveset, acting as a makeshift platform when stabbed into walls, forming a protective barrier when pierced into the ground, and healing the player by dealing damage.
Lux spends most of the game disguised as a sword, but she is a visually unique character, and her constant evolution makes her an increasingly useful ally throughout the game both mechanically and narratively. Without spoiling too much, her backstory also plays a large role in the game’s true ending.
Blade Chimera‘s story and characters are all reasonably straightforward, so there aren’t many interesting conversations with Lux that don’t pertain to the plot. It would be nice to see Shin bonding with his trusty companion, since they spend the entire game together, but he’s quick to accept her help and doesn’t seem to think much of her somewhat obsessive personality.
In all areas, Blade Chimera is on par with Team Ladybug’s past works, especially when it comes to its art and gameplay, but the game is missing one core aspect that their titles are known for: the difficulty.
Shin is somewhat frail and can get quickly overwhelmed by enemies, but there are a lot of ways to heal, both by using the devil sword’s attacks and through consumables. Even as the kind of player who entirely avoids healing items, beating the game wasn’t much of a struggle, only ramping up in difficulty when doing the true ending content.
That doesn’t mean Blade Chimera is an entirely mindless experience, since there are definitely challenging boss fights and tough enemy encounters, as well as tight platforming challenges, but it’s worth noting that this is a much more “accessible” title difficulty-wise than the rest of Team Ladybug’s catalog.
2024 was a year packed with Metroidvanias, and reviewing most of them left me burnt out on the genre, but I realize now that my initial uneasiness towards Blade Chimera was unwarranted. Team Ladybug and WSS built a solid title atop a foundation of smart game design and deep knowledge of the Metroidvania genre, making for a refreshing experience.
The game does suffer from a couple of issues, like half of the side quests only serving to pad the game out, as well as the last area giving up on enemy placement and just cramming a bunch of demons into a series of hallways, but those are relatively minor blemishes on an otherwise very competent game.
Blade Chimera is a solid title if you want a short game that goes down easy. The exploration is incredibly smooth, the visuals are fantastic, and the plot is surprisingly gripping. If you are a fan of Metroidvanias or just want to try a game that does most things right, give Blade Chimera a shot.
Blade Chimera was reviewed on Microsoft Windows using a game code provided by Playism. You can find additional information about Niche Gamer’s review/ethics policy here. Blade Chimera is available on Nintendo Switch and Microsoft Windows (through Steam).
