Burning Sword: Death Sun Preview: The Indie Wuxia Challenging Phantom Blade Zero, Between Good Ideas and Still Clunky Combat

Although a beta will be available to everyone from this moment on, well before the preview's release, we were given the opportunity to try Burning Sword: Death Sun, which attempts to bring the darker and more violent charm of wuxia to the screen – yes, you've already heard it mentioned when we talked about Phantom Blade Zero – relying on a third-person action game set in 12th-century China and built around melee combat, martial arts, and decidedly spectacular clashes. The protagonist Zhang Yixian embarks on a journey dominated by revenge (undoubtedly an original idea), in a world where warriors, creatures, and almost legendary figures seem to merge with a deliberately exaggerated oriental imagery, made of brutal duels, blood, and a supernatural component that constantly accompanies the action.

Our Test with the (Burning) Sword in Hand

Zhang can use his sword along with different abilities, chaining close-range attacks, special techniques, and ranged offensives. The management of Qi introduces a further element into the gameplay system, while the ability to equip and change abilities during combos seems designed to allow considerable freedom in building one's style. Added to this is the Burning Sword, linked to a mechanic that aims to reward an elegant and aggressive approach to combat. The idea seems to be to progressively push the player towards greater mastery of the system, learning timings, concatenations, and characteristics of different opponents.

However, it is precisely by observing the action that the greatest perplexities emerge. The title wants to be fast, aggressive, and choreographed, but at the moment it doesn't always manage to convey this feeling through the protagonist's control. Movements are rather clunky, and some animations seem to lack the necessary continuity, creating a sense of heaviness that contrasts with the pace of the clashes. The problem becomes particularly evident when opponents and attacks increase on screen: the action accelerates, requiring immediate reactions, dodges, and changes of direction, while Zhang continues to move with a rigidity that makes the transition between one action and the next less natural. The combat system is also a copy-paste of Phantom Blade Zero's, with few variations, and curiously also has the same limitations and (especially) the same inaccuracies in detecting enemy attacks (though that's another story).

It's not so much a question of absolute speed. Clashes can be rapid and even chaotic, but there is still a lack of that sense of fluidity necessary to make a martial arts-based system convincing. Attack, movement, and defense should appear as parts of the same gesture, while currently, the separation between individual animations is too often perceived. Considering how much the project focuses on the spectacular nature of combat, this will probably be one of the most important aspects to refine. 

The (Many) Limits of an Indie Structure

The structure still seems to offer plenty of room for progression. Abilities can change the way you approach combat, there are power-ups and bosses designed to test what you've learned. The hand-crafted scenarios also aim for replayability through secrets, improvements, and more challenging fights, avoiding relying on simple linear progression for the entire experience.

Visually, Burning Sword: Death Sun appears less convincing. The graphics do their job but are hardly impressive, especially due to still rather flat lighting and a very limited presence of particle effects. Even the fire, which should have significant weight in the game's visual identity, features unnatural animations and still fails to give the clashes the scenic force one might expect. However, these are secondary flaws compared to the need to perfect the feel of the controls.

Burning Sword: Death Sun therefore remains an interesting project, especially for its setting, wuxia approach, and a combat system that shows several potentially valid ideas. In its current state, however, there is a fairly clear distance between the speed and spectacularity that the game wants to communicate and what it actually manages to deliver during the action. Making Zhang more reactive, lightening transitions, and giving greater continuity to animations could radically change the perception of combat. The foundation seems to be there, but it will be the fluidity of the combat that determines how much its Burning Sword will truly leave its mark.