Slayblade Review – Nostalgic vibes, chaotic gameplay, and an unbalanced finish

Beyblade is one of the wildest anime in existence, because while the pure absurdity of something like Yu-Gi-Oh can sort of make sense, a world that features beast spirits inside of spinning tops was almost a step too far. Still, it had some banger moments, and there’s no denying the appeal of the idea of enhanced spinning top battles. That was a long time ago, but that all leads to now, with Slayblade.

Slayblade takes the idea of Beyblade and turns it into a roguelike, but one fit for the early 2000s when the show was around. You’ve got a retro aesthetic as you’re running around the little town it’s set in, and a real sense of what was cool then. Well, what was considered cool. That bit sticks the landing, especially as someone who was a teenager around the turn of the millennium.

It does feel a little clunky to control, but you get used to it, and the same is true in the battles themselves. You have to try and take out other Slayblades to try and save the world with infinite energy, and you do that by, among other things, fighting in tournaments and progressing through episodes. The general loop is that you fight to win money to buy parts, but also to cover the entry fee to various events.

If you lose, you lose your money, so loss generally begets loss, while winning streaks end up appearing quite commonly if you’re doing well. I don’t love that aspect of any roguelike, as it means you can often call a run after the first few encounters. It never really evolves past that though, and that’s good if you really like whizzing around in circles, which seems to be the optimal way to keep your speed up and deal damage to the other Slayblades, but really bad if you wish it had slightly more complexity.

There are power-ups you can pick up in a fight, dictated by the parts you’re using, and whoever manages to get those is going to get a massive advantage. It doesn’t always mean a win if you grab the power-up, but they help a lot. That’s the point of a power-up, to be fair, but it feels imbalanced here when it’s just the one box every few seconds for you both to try and get to first, especially since it can effectively spawn right on one of the Slayblades.

It leaves fights feeling a bit like they’re skill-based, but also like a lot of luck and hoping for the best is involved too. It doesn’t feel great to control, no matter what weight class you build, and that’s not good when it’s the main thing you’ll be doing in this game. You’re also not getting much advancement in between runs, which leave the whole things feeling very repetitive after the first run.