Blood Will Be Spilled recently released on the Switch. Is it worth your time? Check out this quick review to find out one gamer’s thoughts on this narrative-driven 2D turn-based platformer.
The Good
The game’s strengths hit you first. It has a great art style, engaging story, and developed characters. The seemingly hand-drawn art is pleasing to look at, with bold colors and intricate details. It feels like an old Western movie, in the “Spaghetti Western” vein. The story follows a familiar outcast bounty hunter on a path of revenge or redemption. While the characters are definitely tropes of the genre they are well-realized with a full voice cast adding to the immersion. The beginning option to “Choose Jack’s Path” offers a nice replayability feature, since you choose how you will fight for the rest of the game with its corresponding abilities. If you play the game for the art, story, paths and characters alone you will have a nice, albeit short (about 7 hours) romp.
The Bad
However, once you get past the story that’s where the kinks begin to show themselves. For the most part, the turn-based gameplay decisions are solid. The turn-based abilities are interesting and fun to upgrade and use. It’s just the execution of the turn-based combat that is fiddly at best. For example, if you want to throw some explosive dynamite it gives your pathing and potential explosion circle. Once you actually throw it the dynamite goes way past your intended target, whether it’s the ground or an enemy. On top of that, the dynamite needs a turn to “cook” so you have to predict where enemies will be when it explodes. I always wanted to use equipment like the dynamite for AoE (Area of Effect = damaging multiple enemies) but ended up just sticking with my six-shooters and the accompanying abilities.
The Ugly
Unfortunately, things really begin to fall apart in the platforming sections. While it’s nice to bounce around the nicely-drawn platforms, having to reload a section 3 times due to jerky movements and control issues is not. In addition, you lose health for not completing the section correctly the first time, so it feels like a punishment to use your last health tonic to heal up and try again. I think the game would have been fine without the platforming. They should have stuck with just the turn-based combat and worked out the kinks there.
The Skinny
All told, Blood Will Be Spilled is not a long game and that’s fine. It has a nice story to tell and tells it well, but it needs more polish to tell it effectively. I really wanted to like this game more than I did. 2D turn-based games like this and Steamworld Heist are rare. Alas, in its current state, at least on PC, I can only give it a barely DECENT recommendation.