Boreal Blade

I went in expecting a budget For Honor clone, and the combat surprised me. Boreal Blade's central trick is that your weapon angle never auto-resets after a swing - so every slash leaves you cocked in a new position, and your next move has to flow from that stance. There is no dedicated block button either; you stop incoming hits by physically positioning your sword or shield to intercept them. It sounds fiddly on paper, and it is rough for the first few sessions, but once it clicks you get something closer to actual swordsmanship than most games bother to simulate. The pace is deliberate, bordering on slow compared to character-action games, but that is a design choice that encourages reading opponents rather than mashing. Four fighting styles give you the broad strokes of how you want to fight: one-handed weapon, two-handed blade, shield-and-weapon combo, or long thrusting pole weapons - with unarmed play available too. Shields come in varying sizes with real trade-offs; a taller shield covers your head but slows you down. Three armour classes adjust your stamina and movement. You can charge attacks for heavier damage, feint to bait blocks, throw your weapon for burst damage, and even kick enemies off ledges. The modes on offer are Team Deathmatch, Boreal Battle, Boreal Claim (an attack-and-defend banner mode that tends to feel the most balanced), a standard Deathmatch, and 1v1 Duels. Maps have enough verticality to make positioning matter. On paper, that is a complete multiplayer package. The problems are serious and, at this point, probably unfixable without developer intervention that seems unlikely. Online connectivity was a recurring issue at launch - lag, disconnects mid-match, opponents blinking around the arena - and the playerbase never grew large enough to paper over those cracks. Current concurrent player counts on Steam are effectively zero in public matchmaking. This is an online-only game with no bots, no offline mode, and no solo content outside the tutorial. That means the game only exists for you if you arrive with a pre-arranged group of friends willing to buy copies and jump in together. There is a real gem of a combat system buried here, and Frozenbyte - best known for the Trine series - clearly had an interesting vision for what physics-informed melee PvP could feel like. The visual style is unremarkable and character models look dated, but the actual moment of two players circling each other, each waiting for the opening, has a tension that few games replicate. The shame is that by the time most people find it, that tension has nowhere to go because the lobby sits empty. If you have three or four committed friends who enjoy fiddly, skill-expressive combat and you can all agree to buy in, Boreal Blade will reward you. Anyone hoping to find pick-up games in public matchmaking today will be waiting a long time. Alex, Scout Team