Blind Fate: Edo no Yami Review

In Blind Fate: Edo no Yami, you play as one of the deadliest demon-hunters, Yami. You come in expecting a fast-action samurai game, but you will be surprised at the slower pace and the amount of thinking that is required to be successful. We learn that because of Yami’s thirst for vengeance, he has lost his sight and his limbs. A robotic dog found the severely injured Yami and took him to his owner Tengu for “fixing”. Yami has now been cybernetically enhanced and has sensors replacing his remaining senses, making them stronger, to compensate for his loss of sight. This makes for some interesting gameplay mechanics we don’t usually experience in games. 

The Kami of the Shogunate has begun to attack Yami; they shouldn’t be attacking demon-hunters, so what is provoking their attacks? Yami luckily has help from Tengu; he has made simulations in some of the different areas so you can see it through your reconstruction system. These are based on how the areas looked in the past and are created with static frames, so elements, like rain, look like they are frozen in mid-air. The controls were quite simple, with X used to swing your sword, Y for your projectile/stun weapon, B to dodge, and A for jumping. Unfortunately, this visual reconstruction doesn’t last long, and Tengu has to activate your sensors. Your world is now black; you will have to use the left trigger to switch between all your senses to get an idea of the layout of the environment you are in and if there are any enemies around you. This is a very interesting way to play the game, but after a while, it gets pretty repetitive and slows down the game. I just wish using the senses themselves were faster to switch between!

Once you get to the dojo area, you will unlock a skill tree where you can learn new abilities. There are abilities like double-jump that you had for a brief period of time before the combat system went down that you can once again unlock to use. It takes hours to unlock just a few of these abilities, so I feel people will get tired of the slower gameplay and give up before it is improved with these power-ups. 

The visuals in Blind Fate: Edo no Yami look nice, particularly during the cutscenes or when you use your different senses. The story in this game is interesting and felt incredibly serious the whole time I played; there were only a few humorous moments. The voice acting in the English and Japanese audio tracks is very good; it was obvious that the voice actors were really into the story they were telling. The music has a futuristic, post-cyberpunk vibe, it wasn’t super memorable, but it fit the story. 

The game offers players three difficulties, with only minor differences between them, just changing how much damage you can do and how much you take. Blind Fate can be incredibly hard, and that isn’t on purpose, but because the hitboxes didn’t seem to be in the right spot a lot of the time. It felt that no matter what you did, Yami would constantly be taking damage when you thought you had avoided the attack. I died a lot during boss battles as trying to parry, block, or dodge attacks never worked as well as I expected.

Blind Fate: Edo no Yami is an interesting game that did many things well, like the story and the great voice acting. But it is incredibly difficult and feels unfair because of poor hit detection and the long time it takes to learn new skills. I think it definitely has potential and is worth checking out if you find it for a decent price, but be prepared to put in a lot of hours to get to the point where the action starts picking up!