When I first started playing through Blade Kitten, I couldn’t help but be filled with a “Saturday morning” feeling. The cut-scenes and bright visuals feel like they were ripped right out of the kind of cartoon I’d wake up extra early to watch as a kid, and the action-platformer gameplay recalls the kind of games I’d most likely play immediately afterwards. Sadly, for all the nostalgia it brings at first blush, Blade Kitten is a little too shallow to sustain that initial rush.
The big issue with the game is its combat. It’s not so much that it’s repetitive — you might even argue repetition is an inherent part of the genre — the real crime is that it’s boring. Enemies offer hardly any threat, which means the only thing preventing you from moving from point A to point B is forgetting to mash the attack button. It’s a shame, too, because Blade Kitten offers all sorts of options for approaching enemy encounters. In execution, however, there’s rarely any reason to use these; sure, I could parry that guy’s attack and go in for a slow-motion impale move — but why bother when I can just as easily breeze past him with a couple of standard sword swings?
