Blue Fire is a wonderful blend of action, platforming and contemporary influences, and at the end of it all, it manages to be something truly special. I have yet to uncover every secret Penumbra has in store, but I know I’ll have a good time doing so.
Blue Fire does a grand job combining fun 3D platforming with a Metroidvania-esque adventure whilst injecting other elements we’ve seen in a number of other franchises before it. While it might not stick the landed with everything it tries – the combat for one – the amount it does get right is enough to make venturing through Penumbra worth your time.
No glitches (must have been all sorted by now). Rare 3D Metroidvania. Zelda-Skyward Sword and Hollow Knight vibes throughout. Great platforming and challenges. Small but dense world with plenty to do. Ambience is melancholic, with great presentation.
Beat the game with 99%. Got every health upgrade, every cloak, every sword, every spirit, and every spirit slot, and finished every quest before I even attempted the final boss. That’s how much I enjoyed playing this game. I rarely ever complete games on this level. The last one I put this much time into was Hollow Knight and I gave that one a 10 out of 10 too. Robi Studios knocked this one out of the park. The simple yet deep controls and strategies in this game harken back to Zelda gameplay. No reading tutorials or dialogue for hours on end just to get a hang of things. It’s fun from minute one. The value you get for the price of this game makes the AAA studios look like they’re digging their games out of a dumpster. Games like these are why I never sleep on indie titles anymore. They are the games we grew up with in the late 90s/early 2000s. It’s challenging as hell. But that challenge reaps its weight in rewards if you persevere. I can’t stress the level of content and passion present here. You will collect swords and cloaks faster and in such a large quantity that you won’t even have time to try out you’re new gear before you’re given a new/awesome set that will taunt you from the inventory screen. No gatcha mechanics or rnJesus BS here. All equipment is pre-staged and it’s up to you to discover and claim for yourself. It’s very possible to find the most powerful swords before the final boss so exploration is encouraged. And don’t even get me started on the atmosphere. Maybe I’m a **** for once thriving now desolate magnificent kingdoms to explore. Or maybe I just hate how over populated our world is and these games provide a tranquil escape. Either way I will be looking forward to anymore content released in the world of blue fire should Robi Studios decide to revisit this true work of art.
A pleasant surprise in the form of a 3D platformer, clearly inspired by games like Hollow Knight and The Legend of Zelda. Taking so many ideas from other games make it feel a little uninspired, but that doesn't make Blue Fire any less recommended.
By blowing on the dormant flames of Souls iconography, Blue Fire brings an experience with an authentic and challenging character to the panorama of independent development, evoking an almost melancholy scent. The inspiration from names such as The Legend of Zelda and Super Mario does not betray any lack of personality, on the contrary it reveals the attention of a team - that of ROBI Studios - which has been able to combine all the influences sought elsewhere with great coherence and playful effectiveness. The result is a 3D metroidvania that makes good platforming its stylistic code, net of the frustration inherent in some phases, on which, however, the goodness of the proposed challenge and the charisma of its atmospheres allow you to easily fly over.
Blue Fire is an enjoyable experience when solely focusing on its platforming sections, but can otherwise be a slog. Combat is serviceable if not stale, and its upgrading system is more often than not a hassle. I can’t help but wonder that if Blue Fire leaned more heavily into its platforming gameplay, would it be a more enjoyable experience? Right now, Blue Fire attempts to be a game that it’s not and it shows. The Void challenge rooms are fun and are easily the best part of the game, but everything else is just decent at best.
There are glimpses of brilliance in Blue Fire when completing Voids and making one's way through dungeons, but it's all overshadowed by technical issues and some frustrating design choices. Blue Fire lifts a lot from Dark Souls and Zelda, but is unlikely to appeal to diehard fans of either franchise.
If you think you can handle the most hard and particularly specific platforming with mediocre combat, and no map or indicator of where you need to go, then this game is for you. I’m a huge platforming fan and had high hopes for this game, but it’s way too difficult and there’s no map. I looked up what I was supposed to do online and even with knowing what to do and how to do it, I still had trouble getting to where I needed to go. It’s not a horrible game but be ready for frustrations and be sure to have a YouTube walkthrough pulled up so that you know what to do and where to go next.
I just finished it 100%, it took me 16 hours to complete, good game, although the developers confused the entertainment with the difficulty, it has quite frustrating challenges, quite entertaining enemies and bosses, characters with little narrative, however it keeps you entertained. I do not know why they resemble games like Zelda, if it is a different platform and adventure game, although I must say that the plot of the Gods has a small similarity.
I was so incredibly disappointed when i finally played this... The Combat is clunky and irritating, Enemys are mind numbingly generic, platforming is mediocre at best and to top it off you have to deal with all the bugs and typos. The game has a very unfinished feel to it.
The game itself is in my opinion below average.
- Gameplay
In terms of movement, the gameplay is very uncomfortable. The controls feel slippery and inconsistent, and also quite unoriginal. The platforming sections (void levels) are ok, with the exception that some of their designs are downright bad, and the fact that whenever you take damage you return to the beginning. A similar problem occurs in normal gameplay with checkpoints, which are spaced really badly throughout the world. Bad game design is generally a recurring issue in the game- the bosses are pretty bad, some enemies are designed horribly in the sense that they are just there to annoy you and take away from the game, most of the areas are extremely repetitive etc.
Tl;dr- gameplay is mediocre at most, and the game is badly designed.
-Plot
It's really bad lol. The game basically tries to be Hollow Knight and Zelda at the same time, and this resulted in having a really bad, uninteresting, kind of funny (because of how bad it is) story. At first it seems like the game is a dungeon-based zelda-like game, with a pretty boring plot to drive it. Then the game pulls a 180 and tries to pull a Hollow Knight and have the player defeat 3 bosses in order to stop the bad stuff in the world (which is an obvious Calamity Gannon malice ripoff), and the reason for this doesn't even make sense. The main character doesn't have a motivation to do what he does, other characters who seem more capable than him are purely useless and are a bad excuse to give irrelevant and boring plot details. The name of the game- Blue Fire (which is a thing in the game) isn't even relevant to the main plot, and sometimes I wasn't even sure what the main plot was.
In general- average at most gameplay and game design, bad , weird, and boring plot. Go play Hollow Knight or Zelda instead lmao.
SummaryA Dark World Awaits – Travel through the perished world of Penumbra to explore unique areas filled with diverse enemies, sharp 3D platforming challenges, quests, collectibles, and more. Embark on an extraordinary journey through the desolated kingdom of Penumbra and discover the hidden secrets of this long-forgotten land. Explore mystica...