Seemingly a pretty barebones system that unfolds beautifully as you play any mode other than the default 1v1 duels. These alternate modes take the little dance of one-hit-kill ducking, dodging, and shoving and ask that you apply all of them to create situations where you "fight fairly" as infrequently as possible - pushing enemies into one another, ducking under an enemy's attack that then hits their ally, deliberately whiffing an attack so that the blood on your sword flies into their face, blinding them. You pick up the basics during the 60-second tutorial, and everything afterward is about feeling out your playstyle and refining the execution: learning when you can punish a greedy attack with a similar greedy defensive option, learning to bait out and punish a charge attack, etc. There's a large list of games that could leave you with deja vu (people have mentioned Bushido Blade, Nidhogg, Hotline Miami, Sclash) but I'm not here to dock points for a familiar premise when the game delivers on its promise like this.

Reviewed on May 26, 2024


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