I won this game through SteamGifts.

Of Blades & Tails is one of those games I really wanted to love. The pixel art is charming, the world is surprisingly big for such a small development team, and everything runs smoothly. The characters and writing are nice enough too, so it definitely has a solid foundation.

Unfortunately, the gameplay just didn't click with me. Even on the lowest difficulty, the game is brutally punishing. I played for around six hours and ragequit at least three times. It feels like you're expected to grind levels before you can make any real progress, but experience comes in so slowly that the grind doesn't even feel rewarding. On top of that, you're constantly picking up mountains of gear, but almost all of it is vendor trash.

The procedural quests didn't help either. Being told to dig up one random tile in a map full of identical-looking terrain isn't exactly exciting gameplay. I don't mind difficult RPGs, but I want the challenge to come from interesting mechanics rather than endless grinding and frustration.

There's definitely a good game hiding in here somewhere, and I can appreciate what such a small team accomplished. But for me, it ended up being more hard than fun, and I just couldn't bring myself to recommend it nor finish it.