Blades & Battles is a knowingly retro brawler that's an affectionate throwback to Golden Axe‑era hack‑and‑slash design that embraces chunky combos, pixel‑filtered visuals, and a proudly old‑school Arthurian fantasy setup. It’s a game that understands exactly what it wants to be: short, loud, straightforward, and drenched in arcade nostalgia. But that clarity of identity comes with limits, and whether you enjoy it depends entirely on how much you value that 1990s simplicity.