Merciful Protagonist, Merciless Enemies
HIGH Soulslike combat with a minimalist art style and a pacifist narrative.
LOW Tedious waves of the same enemy types and harsh penalties for missteps.
WTF Why have different buttons to talk, pick up and read instead of one ‘interact’ button?
Recently, publisher 3D Realms released developer Point N’ Sheep’s Bloodless — an intense isometric action-RPG in which the player must have impeccable timing as they block, disarm and pacify rather than attack their enemies.
The player controls Tomoe, a ronin formerly known as “The Slasher” who has, for reasons yet to be seen, forsaken her murderous ways in pursuit of a peaceful life. She wanders in a land known as Bakugawa seeking to make amends, but inevitably finds more enemies and fewer friends as she travels.
Between its female protagonist, nonviolent combat, and themes of mercy and redemption, Bloodless presents a welcome change from other titles in a similar vein, such as action-heavy soulslikes and metroidvanias.
As she makes her way through Bakugawa (a fictional substitute for feudal Japan) Tomoe must deflect attacks after seeing either a red or white ‘tell’ from enemies. A white reticle indicates that an incoming attack can be parried, and the player must press into the enemy to disarm them. Red reticles cannot be parried, so the player would be wise to back off. While this combat is fairly simple, appropriate response times and speed are crucial, as is management of stamina.
Besides parrying, another strategy that can be deployed to repel an opponent is a ki “attack.” These can be used whenever a pink spot appears during a red attack, and these ki abilities allow the player to gradually wear an enemy’s stamina down until they simply give up and run away.
As examples, the first ki ability the player acquires allows them to release a wide pink arc that chips away at an enemy’s stamina, but it costs a lot of ki. A ‘cheaper’ but less powerful ki ability allows the player to sprint repeatedly at an enemy while engulfed by pink flame. As much as I appreciated the layer of complexity provided by ki abilities, I found the glacial speed at which the ki bar recharges to be so frustrating that I eventually gave up on using ki at all.
While this ‘pacifist’ combat setup seems like an interesting divergence from traditional fare, one aspect of Bloodless that I found annoying was the inefficient design of the controls. For example, the player must use different buttons for doing essentially the same thing: one button for reading signs, one for talking to a person, and a third for picking up items. All of this could easily have been accomplished with just one ‘interact’ button, and there’s no option to remap the controls.
While that was a bother, a more serious issue is that Bloodless requires near-perfect reflexes for success.
For example, one huge, tanky enemy can drop boulders from the sky. This would be a standard sort of ‘tough guy’ encounter in most games, but here it was nearly unbearable — boulders were not only falling out of the sky but also hurtling toward me as he hit more boulders with his massive spiked club in an arc wide enough to hit me at the same time.
As for the bosses, they don’t have HP in the traditional sense, just a certain amount of hits they can take before they’re defeated. Players can’t level up or upgrade to do more damage, they just have to learn how to time their parries perfectly and in fast enough succession to defeat them.
Even after learning how to navigate this, I struggled to time every movement exactly right to make it through all of their various phases, or risk starting from the beginning. When I finally brought one of the later bosses down, I was overcome by such a wave of relief that I knew I needed to stop playing for the sake of my own sanity.
While the demanding gameplay is a bit much, artistically, there are many bright spots. The music suited each area well and dialogue was well-written. The top-down, pixel art presentation opts for minimalism — the landscapes tend to have muted colors, and character models are rendered in stark black and white, similar to how they might have looked running on a GameBoy. This relatively simple look is effective, using color sparingly as a way to distinguish between enemy types or to accentuate the atmosphere of dimly-lit castle grounds littered with corpses of enemies , or eerie green forests teeming with bandits.
Bloodless is a great game for players who enjoy high intensity, well-timed, precision-based combat, but it is definitely not for everyone.
As much as I like a good challenge in games — including soulslikes — I have little patience for tedium. The world was engaging and the graphics stunning, but the dearth of ways to try different ideas in combat dampened my resolve to see Tomoe’s redemption arc through to the end.
Rating: 7 out of 10
Disclosures: This game was developed by Point N’ Sheep and published by 3D Realms. It is currently available on PC and Switch. Code for this review was obtained from the publisher and reviewed on Switch. Approximately 10 hours were devoted to the campaign mode. The game was not finished. There is no multiplayer mode.
Parents: This game is rated T by the ESRB for Blood and Violence. There are pixelated splashes representing blood as Tomoe is slashed by enemies and there are some disturbing images like the remnants of a battle including corpses left to decay in the city streets and so on.
Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes available.
Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: This game features voiced NPC dialogue accompanied by text. Due to the isometric presentation, all incoming threats can be observed from far away and the different types of attacks (whether or not they can be parried) are always indicated by color which makes it fully accessible.
Remappable controls: The controls cannot be remapped. A selects/unleashes special ki abilities, B closes/dodges, X uses items, Y ki jabs/interacts, left trigger/right trigger sprints, right/left bumpers switch ki abilities, switch items, – accesses skills, techniques, etc. and + opens menu.
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