The Real Potential of an Arena Brawler

It’s a good sign that you love a game when the first thing you do after completing a match is to jump back in line. If nothing else, Brazen Blaze nails the fundamentals of a PvP brawler, making it very easy to fall in love with MyDearest’s latest title – even if it’s just as easy to be disappointed with the lack of launch content.

Brazen Blaze – The Facts

What is it? :

A 3v3 arena shoot-and-brawler designed for VR.Platforms:
, Quest (review conducted on Quest 3)PC VRRelease Date:
Out nowDeveloper:
MyDearestPrice:
$14.99In a nutshell, Brazen Blaze is akin to a mix of Overwatch, an arena shooter, and something more like Super Smash Bros or PlayStation All-Stars. The players control seven characters to fight across the city. You can launch yourself in any direction by aiming your hand and pressing the trigger on the controller. Hold the grip button to punch your opponent or use a weapon at a distance. Each character is unique. Skybolt or Velvet are more focused on close-quarters combat. Their shoulder mounted weapons allow them to be a threat when they can keep their distance. While all characters use punches as their main attack, Brazen Blaze succeeds in making each fighter feel different to play, and forcing you to consider how best to approach combat with each type of character. While every character ostensibly punches as their main attack, Brazen Blaze succeeds in both making each fighter feel different to play, while crucially forcing you to consider how to approach combat with each type of character.

For example, Legacy’s shoulder-mounted weapon is a riot shield, which can make it far easier for him to dash into close quarters; characters that focus on ranged combat might have trouble finding an opening to attack him. Legacy players may struggle with Velvet’s Sword, which has some light targeting and can make you vulnerable if your opponent gets behind the shield. These floating boxes offer items that enhance any character’s abilities. They include an umbrella to shield from projectiles and a rocket for a boost dash. A baseball bat can be used correctly to knock opponents off stage. The controls are excellent and the game has a great balance between “easy to understand, but hard to master”. Brazen Blaze is incredibly enjoyable from a gameplay perspective, but a few issues are holding it back. Launch content is disappointing and doesn’t stand out as much as hoped. The maps are not as distinct. Each character is unique, but I cannot say that about the current ones. It’s partly because everything is destructible, so landmarks are whittled away over the course of a match. But it’s also more than just that. Item Box spawns are the same regardless of the map, and visual differences aside, playing on any one map isn’t meaningfully different from the others.

Matches involve players teaming up for 3v3 brawls across three different maps – two of them are technically variations of the same city – in either round-based elimination bouts, or a race to see who can deplete the other team’s stock of lives the fastest. You can also create your own custom match, in which you choose whether to fight 1v1 with another team or to set rules on how many rounds a team must win before the winner is declared. Players can opt to forgo the multiplayer mode and instead focus on completing target challenges. This will help them improve their skills. The limited number of modes at launch is probably due to queue management. I would have liked more options, but I can understand the reason for it being so conservative. The game has multiplayer bots, and I don’t know how many humans I have faced. I only remember one instance where voice chat was used. Brazen Blaze lacks content, and this raises questions about how long the players will stay. This only adds to my biggest concern – monetization. The game comes with seven playable characters, though only five are available right away. Levin and Chillout, both of which are included on the initial roster, require that players progress through their “Runner Pass”. It’s here that things start to get a little tricky. It’s not surprising that Brazen Blaze offers an optional premium track. The Battle Pass can be leveled up by completing daily and weekly tasks. This unlocks various cosmetics and currencies. The main Battle Pass is always automatically leveled, but the points you bank for your main Battle Pass can be used to manually level your Runner Pass. The maximum weekly bankable amount is 700 points. Each level takes 100 points. It’s not possible to unlock the additional Runners by completing daily and weekly tasks. This would take a full week. Despite this limitation, I’ve seen other using these characters online; it’s possible that some of them were bots, but players can buy additional currencies to level any of the game’s Battle Passes in addition to the free alternative.

Riot using her SMG in Target Practice

There’s no getting around the fact that by its very nature, Brazen Blaze is a tough nut to crack for VR comfort. There is no option to teleport. Players can select between smooth or snap camera movements. You can choose whether tunneling will occur and adjust its strength. It would be great if players were able to earn enough experience with every match that they didn’t have to wait for the weekly and daily cap. It leaves me with a bitter aftertaste to lock these characters up until the next week, while offering instant access for only $8. This is before you consider the price of upgrading the Battle Pass, the Runner Passes and the fact Brazen Blaze was already a paid-for release. It’s subjective how this affects your experience, but the fact that there is so little at launch makes it stand out. Although these issues are not sufficient to undermine the positive aspects of the game, I would be remiss in failing to voice them. The game is currently aiming to release two new maps, and two characters before the end of the month. The game looks great and performs well on Quest 3. Sure, it could have a higher resolution and the textures might be clearer, but overall, I’m very happy with the visuals and performance. Prior to release, I also tried the PC version over Virtual Desktop, though for Quest users it’s an easy recommendation to stick to the native version – at least on Quest 3.

Brazen Blaze Review-In-Progress – Current Final Verdict

Despite the lack of launch content and frustrating monetization, Brazen Blaze is still a game well worth playing. MyDearest’s ability to create a core concept that resonates so strongly is a testimony to their work. Even with the lack of content, it’s difficult to not play a few matches after clearing your daily challenges. It’s up in the air exactly how long the game will keep my attention, but one thing’s for sure; Brazen Blaze has nailed the fundamentals, so I’ll be sure to come back before long.

Using Brazen Gold to buy Runner Pass levels

UploadVR uses a 5-Star rating system for our game reviews – you can read a breakdown of each star rating in our

. This is a work-in-progress review, so it’s not scored yet. This review will be revisited once Brazen Blaze

is implemented.

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