Whatever you do, don’t call it Beyblades! Slayblades is a budget title that aims to pack a spinning top battle punch that is both easy to pick up and quick to get a run in. The idea is to take your Slayblade to the top of a local tournament within 20 in-game days. Do this, and you’ll get champion’s honours. Fail, and you can try again. There is a lot to love about Slayblade, but there is one gameplay mechanic that starts to encroach on that joy over time.
At the start of each run, you’ll begin in your Voxel-esque town with a standard Slayblade. Each one has a tip, body, and head, and these three parts come with a weight stat and some special abilities. These special abilities are triggered when powerups spawn onto the battle arena and are collected. The arena is a single screen-sized circle, and depending on the modifiers you have applied to your run, it may be smaller, full of grass, set on fire, have bombs around the perimeter, or have many other variations or hazards in play. The goal for each battle is to either wear your AI opponent down to zero spin by charging into them faster than they hit you, or by ramming them out of the arena entirely. Some hazards, like a giant foot stomp, can insta-kill, and these are valid options to push your enemy into, too.
There is another way that winning can happen, and it becomes more apparent over time that it’s the most powerful strategy once you’ve got up to speed with the basics. Powerups spawn in and trigger the special abilities for whoever collects them. Most abilities will adversely impact your opponent’s spin rate or recover yours, and as powerups spawn so quickly and they change stats so powerfully… guess what starts to take priority over ramming your opponent. It is safer to run around and away from your opponent and chase a powerup than it is to be combative. What starts out as a ramming-fest turns into an avoidance-and-snatch-fest. I feel like powerups are too powerful and undermine the skill of ramming your opponent out of the arena or into submission.
Win a battle, and you’ll earn cash, as each battle comes with a bet to wager. If you lose all your money, your run ends, and there will always be at least two tiers of battle and bets to place. Alongside that, every few in-game days, you should also play the quickfire grass mowing minigame. The more grass mowed, the more cash you get. Battles, grass mowing, and cash spending can increase your Slayblade level rating, and this increases your spin stats. You’ll need to keep this in mind as whilst a low-level Slayblade can outfox a better one, a better Slayblade may overrule a clash with lower speed and power because it’s got better base stats to begin with. There is also a gatchapon to buy Slayblade parts at random, or you can pay more cash for specific items in the shop. Money is a premium, though, as entering the three tournament brackets costs a lot of cash, so I found myself rarely buying things after the first few days and focusing on levelling them up instead.
The more you play Slayblade, the more global XP you earn. This unlocks more modifiers, and when certain mods are available, different VHS tapes unlock, allowing you to tackle very angular versions of the game. Some shrink the map and grow the blades, another sets everything on fire, whereas others have missiles and feet stomping from the sky. They are varied and truly impact the way you play the game, but you need to love the base game first in order to get maximum enjoyment out of it. It’s a decent way to extend Slayblade’s cool early 2000s graphics and hip-hop stylings, whilst keeping the price point low. I will say that Slayblade is absolutely value for money, even if the gameplay is skewed.
The power-up situation is what pulls the overall score down for me, but I still had fun and enjoyed my time with Slayblade. You could play the game with all the power-ups turned off, but that will lock you out of many other modifiers and things that add replayability. Balancing in video games is an art, and not every game gets it quite right. In fairness, balancing is a very unique preference, too. If chasing powerups over attacking enemies doesn’t bother you so much, bump the score up. If you think that a 1v1 spinning top battler should be aggressive and angry, then the score reflects the current state of play.
Higher Plain Games is part of the Higher Plain Network. If you like what I do, please consider supporting me via Patreon for as little as $1/£1 a month. There are additional perks for supporting me, such as behind-the-scenes content and downloads. You can also share the website or use the affiliate buy now links on reviews. Buying credit from CD Keys using my affiliate link means I get a couple of pence per sale. All your support will enable me to produce better content, more often. Thank you.
