Blades and Bullets Reviews

[b]Updated this review as of 3/17/24. I am officially done game testing Blades and Bullets on a consistent basis, so this will probably be my final review. Honestly, I dread loading the game up only to bash on the developers over glaring issues. I’m sure they’ll be glad I stopped. Lol If I test the game again some day, I will update this review.[/b] Full transparency before I begin. I am a friend of one of the devs, however, I have purchased this product of my own volition and with my own money. I have also tested this game multiple times and provided feedback directly to the devs multiple times free of charge, and of my own volition. I did not get far in this game before I stopped. With multiple issues still present in the very beginning of the game, much of the game under performs and is a constant struggle to play mentally; specifically due to the script. Performance: My Rig: Nvidia RTX 4080 Intel i-7 11700KF 32gigs of RAM at 3600mbps (4 DIMMS of 8gigs) SSD used for fast load times. I used MSI Afterburner/Rivia Tuner Statistics to track the majority of my usage. I have also used the Xbox Game Bar and Task Manager to check for inconsistencies, there were none. I also used the same program(XBGB) the devs use when they are testing the game themselves for accuracy. If you cap your FPS at 60 before playing the game, it should smooth out the performance quite a bit. However, I have a 1440p monitor and a 141fps cap(of 144) set in my Nvidia Control Panel to keep my frames consistent. On the lowest graphic settings my average FPS was 118 in game. I noticed the menu seems to use my hardware more than the actual game-play itself. In the menu I was at my cap, but my GPU usage goes up and skyrockets at higher presets. Optimization is definitely needed, but the game seems playable as it is now. CPU and RAM usage seemed fine throughout each preset. The "Shadow Quality" setting, if put on “Near”(Low) the entire game becomes extremely bright and does not seem to have shadows at all anymore. Textures do not load properly. I sat and counted after loading into the game on “Medium” graphics and got to one minute and the textures did not load. I have seen them load previously, so I know they can, but I will not sit here and count for more than a minute when it should be instant to begin with. GPU usage is all over the place no matter what graphic preset I use. Just sitting in place at the start point I will see my GPU spike and drop anywhere from 1% to 50% over time even after giving it a few seconds to load any textures or models. In other words, it’s never stable. Dialog: The writing in this game is terrible, though I did see some minor fixes after the first patch. I didn't get far enough to judge the story so this is strictly based on the first few moments of reading. I don't expect perfection from an indie title, however, reading is so important for the player. Especially because the game lacks voice acting so the players have to read to understand. The text should be similar to a book. It should be clean, clear, and precise. Characters can use slang, speak improperly, or even use incorrect grammar when speaking if it fits them. However, the author of the script still needs to write it correctly. Capitalization, proper use of homophones, and punctuation are all misused or missing. All of the writing feels like the first rough draft. However, in a previous build found on YouTube, the game had much better writing. I'm very confused by this change as the writing has had a significant downgrade. Gameplay: Movement feels fine. I got a "Field Knife" that looks like a fictional short sword and was able to equip it easily. There are tool tips offered to help you understand how to equip and wield it. Lock on works better than my previous review, however the lack of a free camera that the user can manipulate makes it feel a little stiff. Not a big problem, but something to consider. Summary: This game does not feel like there was much effort put into it. The text in game is such a glaring problem that anyone could still look at it and say, "Yeah, they didn't even bother to put their dialog through a spell checker." It is abhorrent, I have shown the opening script to multiple people now and the general consensus is, "This is painful to read.” I have offered my feedback directly to the developers more than once for almost every patch up until “Patch V0.04” and now with this review after “Patch V.5” I am just discovering the inconsistency of patch names as I type this. This game is not worth the $5 price point that is asked because the entire game offers this level of consistency. Even the text, as bad as it is, has its own consistency problems at being consistently bad! I compared the game to Cyberpunk 2077 when I started these reviews as a comparison for, “Usage on Hardware” VS “Quality Delivered.” My comparison when given to a dev was not looked at for the obvious problems of a high quality, visually stunning, and massively open world game needing less hardware performance than their own indie title even while at nearly max settings. Instead, it was assumed I expected that level of detail in their game. I expect a lower detail game such as this to require less hardware performance, which was my point in the comparison.