Dinoblade is easy to pitch badly. It is the one where a Spinosaurus carries a greatsword in its mouth and fights other armed dinosaurs. That sounds like a meme, because it started close to one. The useful question is whether the joke survives contact with an eight-hour action RPG, a Steam launch, and critics who have played enough Soulslikes to know when a parry window is lying to them.
The short answer from this week's Dinoblade reviews: mostly, yes. Not cleanly. Not without a pile of rough edges. But enough that the game is already more interesting than its elevator pitch.
Team Spino's PC action RPG launched on Steam on July 23, 2026, with Boltray Games listed as co-publisher in several review writeups. Metacritic had not assigned a full Metascore at the time of writing because it had only one counted critic review, The Wand Report at 70. Steam's store page showed a Very Positive user rating from 478 reviews. The scored critic range I found runs from 7/10 at The Wand Report and mxdwn Games to 9/10 at AltChar. Game8's first-impressions review does not score it, but lands closer to the cautious side. Summit Reviews is the most skeptical read of the bunch, even while admitting the game has a strange pull.
That spread is why Dinoblade is worth slowing down for. It is not simply a bad game with a funny premise, and it is not quite the breakout indie that the most excited reactions make it sound like. It is a game critics seem to like in spite of themselves, then immediately qualify.
Dinoblade review scores and critic range
Here is the useful score picture, without pretending the aggregate is bigger than it is. AltChar gave Dinoblade a 9/10 and called it "some of the most fun I've had with a game in a while." The Wand Report scored it 7/10, writing that "despite a series of rough edges, the idea's execution is so hilarious that it manages to become an exhilarating and endearing adventure." mxdwn Games also scored it 7/10 and framed it as a more approachable Soulslite rather than a strict Soulslike. Metacritic listed The Wand Report's 70 and held the overall Metascore as tbd. Game8's first impressions argued that the foundation is solid, but that the game "needs more time in the oven before it can truly become an apex predator of the genre."
Those quotes point in the same direction. The praise is not really about refinement. It is about commitment. Dinoblade knows that a dinosaur with a sword is silly, then builds boss fights, music cues, death screens, and animation flourishes around that silliness until it starts to feel weirdly sincere.
The criticism is just as consistent. Reviewers keep coming back to camera trouble, unreliable lock-on behavior, uneven parry feedback, sparse level design, and technical jank. Nobody I found is describing Dinoblade as a polished FromSoftware peer. The split is over how much that matters.
Why critics like Dinoblade anyway
The most positive Dinoblade reviews are not pretending the game is subtle. AltChar's review is almost delighted by how direct it is. The outlet praises the combat, boss designs, and soundtrack, especially the way the music moves from mournful exploration to metal during fights. It also notes that the game reviewed on PC, runs in Unreal Engine 5, and took around eight hours to finish with exploration and boss fights included.
The boss design seems to be the game's strongest common point. AltChar calls out a fight where an opponent wields an entire Ankylosaurus like an improvised club. Summit Reviews, even in a much more critical piece, agrees that the enemy concepts are the thing people will remember: chained whips, biological weapons, acrobatic dinosaurs, and animation work that still carries the energy of the viral Jean Nguyen clip that helped the project take off.
That matters because Dinoblade is not trying to win by systems density. It wins, when it wins, by showing you something ridiculous and then refusing to wink at the camera. The Wand Report compares the feeling to Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, not because the games play the same, but because both understand that a straight-faced absurd idea can be more charming than a carefully balanced one.
There is a line in The Wand Report review that gets close to the appeal: "There is no grand metaphor or big picture message to pass along to future generations." That could be a criticism. Here it reads more like relief. Dinoblade is not carrying a lecture. It is carrying a sword in its mouth.
Where the Dinoblade reviews turn cautious
The cautious reviews are not nitpicking. They are pointing at things that change how the game feels under your hands.
The Wand Report says Dinoblade borrows heavily from Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, especially with its posture-breaking deflections and finishers. That comparison is dangerous for any small action game. If the deflect timing feels even a little off, players notice. The Wand Report says the parry lacks the responsiveness of the games it is borrowing from, and that dodging can become the safer answer. It also flags lock-on problems, camera positioning, typos, odd voice acting, and enemy AI glitches.
Game8 pushes harder on technical and quality-of-life issues. Its first-impressions review says the lock-on camera can become aggressive enough to obscure the player's view, especially against smaller enemies. It also points to frame rate drops, bugs, thin narrative material, and smaller enemies whose attacks are harder to read than the bosses. The review's most useful line is blunt: Dinoblade has a solid foundation, but in its current state, it needs more time before it can become the apex predator it wants to be.
mxdwn Games lands in the middle. It likes the lower barrier to entry and calls out the absence of a harsh death penalty. Souls are used more like currency for core stats such as health, attack, stamina, and resonance. Checkpoints behave like bonfires, but the whole structure is more forgiving. That makes the game easier to recommend to people who like the idea of deliberate melee combat but do not want a full punishment ritual every time they misread a boss.
The tradeoff is that accessibility does not fix thin spaces between fights. mxdwn criticizes wide, flat areas with limited exploration, pop-in, inconsistent frame rates, and a control-remapping bug that affected block and parry. Summit Reviews is even more direct, saying the environments often feel like linear corridors or empty circles, with shallow progression and Soul Arts that look better than they function.
Dinoblade is a Soulslite, not a Soulslike, and that distinction helps
A lot of the Dinoblade discourse will call it a Soulslike because that is the fastest label. The more useful label is Soulslite.
The reviews describe a game with stamina, dodge rolls, parries, bonfire-style checkpoints, respawning enemies, boss gates, and stat upgrades. That is the familiar language. But the punishment profile is softer. mxdwn says there is no dropped-souls penalty on death. Game8 notes that progression can be farmed because some upgrade resources respawn. AltChar even asked the developer about souls respawning with enemies and was told it was intentional, meant to help struggling players catch up instead of locking them out.
That design choice explains part of the critical split. If you come to Dinoblade wanting precision, discipline, and level design that teaches through pain, the forgiving structure may feel messy. If you come to it wanting a readable action game with bosses, parries, loud music, and dinosaur spectacle, the looseness might feel generous.
I think that is the right lens for the game. Dinoblade does not sound like the next great test of action mastery. It sounds like a game that wants you to have the boss fight, not worship the runback.
The review consensus on Dinoblade
The Dinoblade consensus is warmer than the caveats make it look. Critics broadly agree on five points:
- The premise is absurd, but the game commits hard enough to make it work.
- Boss design, animation, and music are the standout pieces.
- Combat can feel exciting, especially when parries and finishers behave.
- Camera, lock-on, performance, and polish issues drag the game down.
- Level design and progression are thinner than the best games in the genre.
The disagreement is over weighting. AltChar weights the highs heavily and ends up at 9/10. The Wand Report and mxdwn Games weight the jank more heavily and end up at 7/10. Game8 and Summit Reviews sound less interested in score generosity, but still see the same core appeal under the problems.
That is a good kind of divided reception. Not the exhausting kind where nobody is playing the same game. Everyone seems to be seeing the same Dinoblade. They just disagree on how much polish a game this charming owes the player.
Who should play Dinoblade now
Dinoblade seems easiest to recommend if you like action RPGs for boss spectacle more than for world design. If the words "Spinosaurus with a greatsword" make you smile before you start asking about animation priority, you are closer to its target player. If you mostly play Soulslikes for tight input response, intricate shortcuts, and combat readability, the cautious reviews should probably carry more weight.
The timing also matters. This is a fresh PC release with limited aggregate coverage and visible technical complaints. Waiting a few patches is the boring answer, but it may be the right one for players who are already sensitive to camera issues or frame pacing. On the other hand, part of the fun of a game like this is being there while everyone is still figuring out whether it is a mess, a cult hit, or both.
For Perthro players, this is exactly the sort of game that benefits from a real note in your journal rather than a score you forget later. Maybe Dinoblade is a 7 because the lock-on got you killed twice. Maybe it is a 9 because you fought a dinosaur holding another dinosaur and did not stop grinning. Both reactions can be true. The useful part is writing down which one was yours.
Bottom line
Dinoblade's early critical reception is split, but not confused. The scored reviews I found range from 70 to 90, with Steam users sitting at Very Positive shortly after launch. Critics praise the boss spectacle, soundtrack, absurd confidence, and accessible Soulslite structure. They criticize the camera, lock-on, performance, sparse level design, and uneven mechanics.
That makes Dinoblade one of July's cleaner sleeper-review stories. Not because it is secretly perfect. Because it is obviously imperfect, and still hard to dismiss.