Blade Symphony's massive Harmonious Prelude update goes live later this month

Blade Symphony's huge Harmonious Prelude update, which will act as a "precursor" to the multiplayer swordfighting game going free-to-play, will be out later this month, developer Puny Human has announced.

Harmonious Prelude will, among other things, update the game's engine, add new game modes (including Arcade), introduce a level progression system and a new fighting style, and allow for multiple duels in a single arena. You can check out its first trailer above, and the update will go live on September 26.

It's considered to be one of the purest melee combat games on PC. As Will said in his review, its 1v1 battles are fast, intimate and complex, and it has a friendly community to boot. If you're interested, Chris wrote a brilliant two-part series on trying to become one of its top players.

Harmonious Prelude was due earlier this year, but was delayed in April. Puny Human announced that the game was going free-to-play last year, and that Harmonious Prelude was the "precursor" to that change, so expect the transition to happen soon.

It's a game I've always been curious about—and enjoyed reading about—but never actually played, mainly because I'm afraid of getting my face bashed in over and over again while I'm trying to get to grips with its deep combat system. Hopefully, going free-to-play will pull in more players, including novices like myself, which would make it a less daunting prospect.

Samuel is a freelance journalist and editor who first wrote for PC Gamer nearly a decade ago. Since then he's had stints as a VR specialist, mouse reviewer, and previewer of promising indie games, and is now regularly writing about Fortnite. What he loves most is longer form, interview-led reporting, whether that's Ken Levine on the one phone call that saved his studio, Tim Schafer on a milkman joke that inspired Psychonauts' best level, or historians on what Anno 1800 gets wrong about colonialism. He's based in London.