As a title, "Blade Kitten" probably brings to mind a bunch of things. Very little of them positive. As a game, Blade Kitten brings to hand a bunch of things. A very different set of things that manage to be completely different from what was expected. And yet, very little of them positive.

To get the obvious out of the way: this is the most 2006 game to ever exist. It is a Saturday Morning Cartoon through and through, made by people who either read or made one too many How To Draw Manga books. It's of the "bounty hunter" variety with an emphasis on being slice of life - for roughly half the game there's not much of a plot beyond pursuing almost unrelated goals while the main character overreacts to having her... bounty hunting key stolen then deactivated by a longtime rival? I didn't read the comic, this didn't make any sense. Didn't need to.

Probably says something when the nearest entity they have to step in for death-defying character motivation near the end is a pet rat.

- Loss quote from Kat

So none of this is particularly bad or good. If anything I'd say it's not aimless enough, I was enjoying it particularly well before it made the mistake of trying to have a plot. Certainly has its audience either way.

For the aesthetic, you've got your somewhat alien planet that's probably too human, with your somewhat human protagonist that's probably not alien enough. It looks fine when it's not applying some nasty filter; the environments, enemy designs and character costumes are all fairly interesting and apart from some really weak animations it's alright.

No, where this game completely falls apart is purely the gameplay. It's a mess.

"Floaty" is a term that's tossed out a lot and technically doesn't mean anything unless you subscribe to terms like "gamefeel". While I don't, I'd certainly describe everything in this game as floaty, and I'll attempt to define it for you without making too much of a mess of it.

- Chest open quote from Kat

It's a 2.5 action platformer with de-emphasized action and platforming. It's all mostly automated - just cling to a surface for your cat-like protagonist's claws to spring to action and just crawl around whatever. You've got a basic moveset that's short ranged attack, long ranged attack, slide, grab attack, and a slam attack. Also a midair and ground block so long as you still have stamina left, that old amazing mechanic that's always great and not annoying.

Everything is weakly animated, with little character follow and little indication that hits register other than particle effects and SFX. It takes way too long to perform any action, with grab attacks locking you into several second long animations that show nothing but static poses, and stamina itself regenerates at the snails' pace of 10-15 seconds for a full bar. Where every stamina-reducing action predictably halts it.

It's not like this is a tactical game about meter management - even then I'm heavily biased against it. In this game, you just chew through it to either abuse the slam attack to clear crowds or sprint for 2.5 seconds, and then spam light attack and jog while it recharges.

Platforming itself involves a whole bunch of waiting for way too late, or jumping across two or three platforms then just walking across the ceiling for way too long, and generally just takes too long and is ridiculously easy for how much time it demands.

This isn't a short game. Sure, you can run through it in 2 or so hours, but unless you do it'll be at least 5-6 hours for a first playthrough. It's a full-length indie game. And that's way too long for a game that doesn't have the novelty, pacing or patience to sustain it.

- The top tier of skill for Kat. Also features "Noob"

With a surplus of lackluster mechanics in love with empty levels, and an underwhelming narrative that leaves me with very little to recommend this on. I did like the complete overhaul that the alt costumes got and the general aesthetic, and while the pacing does pick up in Episode 2/Act 3 it's too little too late.

200%ing the game is almost worth it for that Blade Kitten Space Pirate costume.
Pro Tip: When the game states that you need 20 Skiffs or Datapacks for the first two costumes, they really mean all the collectables from the first two Acts. It'll automatically unlock then.

If you really want to see what's up with Blade Kitten here and get a fistful of 2006's nerd culture, then yeah it won't be the worst game you've played. But it just left me bored, and boredom is timeless.

As the game went on, I found myself increasingly disinterested in it. In fact, a few of the hours I've logged in this game have been spent on the pause menu as I got so bored I started doing other things instead.

The music is pretty good, and level design isn't half bad. At times it feels like a (good) Crash Bandicoot game, even to the point I'd call it fun! However, that's about all this game does well.

The game has a currency/upgrade system, which is fine until you realize there's only one weapon worth getting. Most of your money goes into stamina upgrades, as the alternate costumes are bland and uninteresting. Health upgrades should normally be as effective as stamina boosts, but the only times your health hits zero are instant-death situations.

Most of the combat in this game revolves around hitting the attack button until something happens. If you don't have the (very inexpensive, you can get it during the first level) final sword, almost every attack will bounce off and you have to use 'special' attacks which consist of swinging your sword out a bit further and sliding. There's also a ground-pound attack that takes far too much stamina to use.

Platforming in this game relies mostly on physics. That's not a good thing. You often find yourself stuck on a wall, pushed through the level, or outright unable to run and jump. The game has an aspect of velocity to it that doesn't make much sense in an action platformer. The entire game feels like a poorly programmed ice level with a stamina bar.

Nitpicking time? Nitpicking time. There's a section at the end of the game where you're forced to climb long sections of walls while flying bugs attack you. Being attacked while climbing makes you fall. There are enemies with shields that can deal minor damage while stunlocking you, and if there are two surrounding you then you'd better hope you didn't buy any health upgrades. It's best just to run past them as you need to use a special grab attack to take away their shield. Special attacks take stamina, also known as the make-the-game-go-by-faster meter.

The final boss is well designed. Brings together a culmination of the game's essentials: climbing, running, jumping, and attacking. However it's heavily dampened by the horribly annoying four or so lines of dialogue being constantly spewed and the fact that all of the things I just mentioned are broken. I ended up exiting the game and watching the ending on youtube for a sense of finality. The plot's not even that great, considering you have to read the (not so good by any means) comic series that the game neglects to tell you about.

Overall it's a good port in terms of additional content and playability, but you can't just paint a brick wall red and call it art.

A combination of memes that were obnoxious and long dead in 2006 and a shopkeeper character who is a racist caricature as written by someone who doesn't know the difference between Chinese and Japanese people prevent me from ever being able to call this a "good" game.

It is however infinitely more playable than the original release sounded like, so it makes for a good Irony Game at least. Far more use in dumping this on your unsuspecting friends than another copy of Bad Rats.

Also sometimes you can find good bits of geometry to slide kick on that will just send you through walls, so that's fun.

But seriously, this game's writing can be summarized with "I can haz epic win get XD". Please handle moldy memes responsibly.

Don't even bother, this game could have been an average at best action-platformer, but it is so plagued with nuisances and an overall lack of polish to the point i don't consider it worth buying even on sale, where should i begin?

Story and presentation are all over the place, plain and simple, apparently this game is based on a webcomic and i wish i knew that before buying this game, because the game never tells you anything, i mean, many people complain about games having long cinematics full of infodumps, well this game does the polar opposite, there is a lot of cutscenes, but they never tell you about the characters or the setting, you never know who these characters are, what's the relationship between each other, nothing, i mean, i'm not asking for 30 minute long cutscenes like it's a Metal Gear game, but a little bit of context about who the main character and her rival are would be nice, and the overall story? doesn't seem to follow any kind of structure, it seems to be mostly a bunch of completely random events from beginning to end, so what you get in Blade Kitten is a bunch of unrelated events, with no context at all, trying to be like a cartoon or an anime, with an average at best voice acting and lots of cringy dialog

The rest of the game doesn't fare much better

Well, some people complain that the combat is way too simple, that you can mash the X button and run to kill everything in your path, that's somewhat true, however if you do that you most likely will run into an enemy that somehow, will block your attacks, will kick you, and leave you open to be stunlocked by other enemies, the game doesn't seem to know if it wants to be an action game or if it want's make you to avoid combat altogether, if you try to fight everything you risk to get stunlocked, same if you try to run, doesn't help that in later stage enemies start spwaning infinitely, and how can i forget the stamina bar?, it is the kind of stamina bar bar that everyone hates, it runs out to fast, and it recharges too slowly, you need stamina mostly to use your shield, run and use your long ranged attack, yes, you can buy upgrades for your stamina and health but i never saw any real improvement, most of the game you just will sit there waiting for your stamina to recharge so you can make a jump or attack an enemy at long range, and sometimes, that doesn't even work, this game, since its a 2.5d platformer, it seems to use several planes, mostly to place objects to make the levels feel that have some "depth", but, enemies can attack you from other planes too!, it is really infuriating how you try to swing your blade to defend yourself from half a dozen of enemies, all of them hitting you from different planes where you can't attack, but you can be attacked , not to mention, sometimes, something like an explosion can set you in a different plane, if that happens, you can no longer land on platforms or grab collectables, there was a chest i couldn't get in one of the later stages because of that, and the platforming itself doesn't feel particularly well either, the game will either take control away from you in mid-air most of the time to land on platforms, of you will miss a platform entirely because of the shody hit detection

overall, this game feels unfinished to say the least, it baffles me how this game somehow has a "very positive" rating, when, at the time of this review, only 23% of people who played this game finished act 1, that's like 4 of 5 stages into the game, so i guess most people who gave this game a positive review, most likely only played the first couple stages and never touched it again, and even fewer people bothered to finish act 2 and 3, really makes you think

stay away, camera handeled very wierd way causing motion sickness .

Judging by screenshots I was thinking that the game is 3D Action Slasher-kinda style, but in reality, it's a dull 2.5D platformer.
Pros:
+Pleasant graphics
+Nice sounds
+Low price (especially with 75% discount)
+Charming characters
Cons:
-The storyline is really weak, which implies the lack of motivation to do anything. Why would you kill everyone on your way? Why do you need to collect credits and find the secrets?
-The combat system is awful, you either insta-kill a soldier or he would block all incoming damage by kicking you.
-Level design is ridiculous, you can spend half an hour looking for secret locations, or speedrun the level in 5 minutes.

All in all nice game, but I would not recommend to buy it, since you can't really enjoy the game.
Get it on sale for cards.

Technical execution of this game is good but not great - it's clearly a console port and has irritating prompts for the player to use a game controller.

Graphics are fine, the game runs smoothly, but for some unknown reason they used all the engineering and artwork to make a 2D platformer.

Gameplay itself is where the game lets you down - 2D platformer with limited "fighting" (button mashing like a console gamer does). Bonus thumbs down for prompting you to give them even more money for their DLC on the front screen of the game.

If you really love console ports, 2D platformers, or games for children, this would be a good choice. But it's most certainly not aimed at PC gamers.

This is not a good game. like at all. I couldn't even make it past the first stage without wanting to snap my controler in half. the platforming is awful, the voice acting is embarassing and the hit detection is so off that it will frustrate you to no end. you go to hit a target infront of you, in stead you tage damamge because even though your attack struck him, their attack blocks it and hits through to you. The game tries to explain this parry system it has, but the system is horribly flawed. supposedly you can deflect an incoming attack by tapping the attack button right when they attack but it never seems to work and i can't figure it out. most of the time my character just flinches if an enemy just looks at them funny and it's just a really bad exprience all around. If you think this is an interesting platformer to pick up on sale, I'd advise you to look for something else. I cannot recommend this game even to a casual gamer.

don't waste ya money - this is your final warning

Why I bought this?:/