Blood of Mehran Review

A once legendary warrior must take up arms again after his life is changed forever. Sounds intriguing, right? This is the basic premise for Blood of Mehran coming to us from developer Permanent Way, and it was one that, whilst not exactly original, certainly caught my attention. But is this journey of blood-soaked revenge an indie smash hit? Or is it a tale best left untold?

Set in Ancient Mesopotamia, players take on the role of the titular Mehran. The game opens as he comes face to face with the king responsible for the death of his wife and child, where the two begin a duel to the death. After this short combat introduction, we’re taken back to the moment Mehran is captured and his family taken from him, before the story truly begins as he attempts to break out of prison.

The game unfolds as a familiar tale of revenge. There are some snippets of intriguing plot here and there, though, with the developers drawing on inspiration from Arabian Nights folk tales. Unfortunately, these aren’t expanded on as much as I would have liked. Granted, I’m not overly familiar with the source material, but the overall narrative doesn’t seem to do these stories justice.

Blood of Mehran falls rather short of what is expected of videogames in this modern age when it comes to presentation. Although the model for our protagonist is quite detailed, other characters don’t fare quite as well, most noticeably with their hair and clothing. Animations are stiff and janky, causing some cutscenes to end up being unintentionally funny. The moves performed in combat look slightly smoother, although your opponents don’t seem to react to your offence as they should and will often continue to attack you. Surely getting slapped upside the head with a sword would cause you to recoil a little?

Environment pop-in is constant as you explore areas, while some textures that are loaded in just look downright unfinished. Not only that, but rotating the camera is enough to make some players feel nauseous, and the weird shimmering effect around Mehran when turning it is very off-putting. Despite having the option to disable motion blur, I found that it made no difference to the camera troubles.

As if that wasn’t enough, the framerate seems to fluctuate between 15–25 FPS during gameplay, with even a few split-second freezes during battles against many enemies. I even came across a few instances of the game outright crashing a few times. Most of these were as it was loading, before even getting to the main menu!

Then, there’s the audio. Whilst I can’t deny that the melancholic music heard throughout Blood of Mehran is enchanting and fits the tone of each scene, the voice acting is a different story. Remember how I said the stilted animations make scenes unintentionally amusing? Well, the voice acting takes that to the extreme. Hearing a character wailing and crying in the background, only for it to cut to them speaking, stone-faced, without a hint of emotion in their voice, had me laughing on several occasions. Certainly not the intended reaction, but I guess it’s better than no reaction at all, right?

When it comes to the gameplay, Blood of Mehran is your standard action-adventure title. You’ll explore numerous environments from seemingly endless sand dunes to desolate city streets, although these are mostly linear areas that act as brief respites between duking it out with your foes. There are a few places that allow you to deviate from the set path to uncover hidden collectibles or currency used to upgrade Mehran and his weapons, each of which has its own separate skill tree, but combat is the main focus here.

Mehran has a range of weapons to use: a single shamshir, twin blades, a sword and shield, and even a bow. Each melee weapon controls the same by using R1 and R2 for light and heavy attacks, respectively, with special moves performed by pressing either of these buttons whilst holding the block button once a gauge has been filled by using the regular attacks. Aiming the bow with L2 and firing with R2 is useful for picking off enemies from afar, but aren’t always one-hit kills. Some fights did seem rather unfair as I was swarmed with enemies and unable to dodge away before they rained down unblockable attacks on me.

Combat is fast, yet not particularly fluid, and it was hard to get into a rhythm despite learning enemy attack patterns. Once Mehran has filled his Rage Meter, he’s able to unleash a short burst of heavy-hitting, rapid attacks. This was incredibly useful when put up against numerous opponents, as they mostly just stood still whilst this was active.

Straight-up fighting isn’t your only choice, though. If, like me, stealth is your preferred option when given the chance, then you do have the opportunity to sneak around and silently take out enemies. Unfortunately, it doesn’t always work as intended. For starters, stealth kills are assigned to the same button as your light attack, meaning half the time the game didn’t register I wanted to sneakily off my opposition and swung at them instead. When it does work, it’s a quick and efficient way to whittle down enemy numbers. That said, this army of goons seems to be both hard of hearing and visually impaired, as killing someone mere inches from them often didn’t elicit a reaction. Easy prey, I suppose.

There are just too many issues with Blood of Mehran for me to be able to recommend it. There are moments, though, where I did find myself enjoying the gameplay. I hope a day-one patch addresses the numerous technical issues prevalent throughout the game, but even then, this would still be a pretty average adventure that may only be worth picking up during a sale.