The concept behind Blind Fate: Edo No Yami is an interesting one, you are a Samurai that is unable to see – but you have heighted version of every other sense that allows you to gather information. But most people will tell you that the best concepts in the world can still lead to a disappointing outcome. The question then falls back on how well the game plays and uses the remaining sense to build the world around it.
The world around is shown via implants that the character has, pulling old information about the local area and showing what the world should look like. This is an interesting concept that, when used, is used well. There will be areas that should have solid ground/walls do not, and additional data must be gathered through the level to get an up-to-date map.
The sense functions are interesting as well. Enemies need to be heard approaching, or sometimes smelled, to give a sense of their location. The first handful of times that an enemy is encountered with the wrong sense “active” is interesting and fun, until it starts to become frustrating. The blind gimmick is the same, as small touches as when it is raining everything outside is almost perfectly visible – which is almost never fully used.
Any trailer of this game will show incredibly well, as the concept and style are both on point. It is when they are the main core of the game that things start to break apart. There are too many areas that the only way to fully know that something was going to be attacking is to have gone through it before. While games like Dark Souls do this, those games never have several down moments where the player is trying to figure out how to even see the enemy.
Engaging the enemies also becomes an issue fairly quickly as every single encounter seems to have roughly twice the amount of hit points then they should, making the experience feel more like a test of endurance then that of skill. The first boss fight is a perfect example, as it takes almost no damage but delivers devastating damage with attacks that are impressively difficult to dodge.
Blind Fate has a bunch of really neat ideas and a great look. The problem is that everything else feels like it needed more time to cook before it should have been served. While the enemy being sponges for damage is something that could be fixed in a patch, the uninspired fighting and gotcha moments ruin whatever momentum the game could have built up.