Bloodless was provided by 3D Realms for review. Thank you!
I first had a chance to try Bloodless at GDC, and I loved the demo. I am a sucker for minimalistic color palettes, and this game was using it very well. Fast forward a few months, and I got to try a demo of it on the Steam Deck at home. I adored how it looked on the OLED screen. And that brings us to today, where the full game is out and ready for us to enjoy. And while I love the concept, a couple of things hold the game back from being a must-buy.
Regardless of the screen on which it is played, Bloodless is a gorgeous game. The colors you see on the screen are minimal and usually consist of black, red, white, and one other color, depending on where you are. This way of filling the scene makes it come off as much more stylized and unique than other titles. The color around you will change based on the type of environment (light green for Forest) or the characters there with a distinct color to them, highlighting the importance of that area.I think it is best played on an OLED screen due to how much black space there is, and having a true black experience makes a difference.
The story revolves around the Ronin Tomoe, who has returned home after being away for a long time. Having discarded her old life, she is now on the path to peace and nonviolence. But her home isn’t like she left it, and with bandits and samurai having taken over, she will have to fight back without fighting to reclaim her home. It’s an interesting tale and I liked it for the most part. It felt slow at times but was mostly pretty solid and intriguing enough to keep me invested.
While I like the game's overall concept, I also feel like it doesn’t hit like I would have wanted. The core combat is all about disarming enemies. To do this, you must dodge into enemies to break their weapons or disarm them completely. You can either do this by waiting for the opportune moment, when their weapon is flashing white, or use ki attacks to break enemies to create an opportunity to dodge them.
You can acquire and use more powerful techniques, skills to unlock, and crests to equip. Skills will give you new abilities and upgrades, while Crests modify the skills you already have. To unlock skills, you will get specific gems to use as you continue through the story. As for Crests, you can get those as you play or buy them from shops. The progression is not as in-depth as in other games, but I like the minimal style the team is going for. You also have a gourd to drink tea out of, which can have different effects or help you recover health based on the tea you brew and want to use.
It’s a cool core gameplay mechanic when everything fits, but there are some aspects I don’t like, mainly regarding movement. Moving around and dodging feels very stiff in combat. Whenever I dodged an attack, Tomoe would stop for a second and be unable to move. This has led to my death many times, especially if I don’t time a dodge/dash at the right moment. Running around also continues this trend, sometimes feeling like moving my joystick doesn’t fully move them in the corresponding direction. It feels the same with ki attacks, and it can make combat more frustrating than it should be.
Outside of the main story, Bloodless has other challenges you can complete for extra rewards. This can be in the form of currency to buy items from the store or other Crests. The challenges are a nice way to keep playing and get some extra stuff to help you get stronger, but other than this, there wasn’t much reason to replay.
I think the game is best enjoyed when you have the mindset of a unique one and done experience over a continual one that will last tens of hours, but regardless of how long you play, playing on the Steam Deck will be fantastic.
Now, we come to the Steam Deck performance, and Bloodless is unsurprisingly running like a charm. The game easily hits 90 FPS with ease and feels great to play on the OLED screen due to how black the environments are. But one little issue poked its head out at me: battery drain. I felt the battery drain was a bit too high for this kind of game, almost hitting 12W drain at times. So, while you can play with no changes, there is one I do recommend.
I would set the framerate and refresh rate to 60 FPS/Hz. By doing this, I was able to bring the battery drain down to around 8W with a high of 9W, which increased battery life by 1.5 - 2 hours. It's a small change, but it's much better for portable play and still feels very smooth. That's really the only thing I would change since the rest of my time with the game on Deck has been nothing but fantastic.
I did get some weird extra battery drain when putting the Steam Deck to sleep and waking them up. It spiked up to 18W and was very unstable, but closing and re-opening the game fixed this.
There really aren't any options to change here. You can change language, vibration, and audio volume, but that's it.
The game does support 16:10 resolutions, and it does have both controller and cloud save support. There are no HDR settings.
Bloodless is a unique game that gave me mixed feelings at the end of the day. It has a beautiful aesthetic, interesting story, and a nice gameplay loop. Still, the combat feels a bit too stiff at times and can lead to unnecessary deaths due to the inability to move after dodging. Going into the game expecting it to be a smaller and shorter experience helped me enjoy it more, but it was still hard to fully enjoy it. It runs exceptionally well on the Steam Deck and doesn't need any changes, though I recommend keeping the framerate to 60 so you can increase battery life. But it's a great time on the go regardless!
Bloodless is a unique game with great visuals and an interesting story that runs well on the Steam Deck, but the stiff combat stops it from realizing its potential.
Why did you give 5/5 controls when you lamented stiff controls in combat?
Because it isn't the Steam Deck's fault that the controls aren't great. The "Control" section is under our Build Score, which relates to how it feels with a controller. The stiff combat is moreso an issue with the game, not the gamepad, but I can see how it's confusing.