Heavenly Sword Review

The Playstation 3 is a console that boasts two things, first the games you play are beautiful to look at, and 2 the games you play will be exclusive to the Playstation, and Heavenly Sword is defiantly 2-for-2 in that regard. While many people wrote this game off as more of a god of war clone, than the killer app the Playstation needed at the time; Ninja Theory crafted a strong title that they can be proud of, even if it’s not the greatest, or most original game in the world.


The story of Heavenly sword revolves around the brave warrior Nariko, a woman whose birth was said to be a curse. She was born into a clan whose sole mission is to defend the Heavenly Sword, until a warrior sent from heaven returns to claim it. Naturally this makes their clan appetizing targets, and the clan finds itself under siege by the mad King Bohan. The tale is basic and tight, albeit a little generic, and in the end, while satisfying, will displease some.

The characters of Heavenly sword are without a doubt interesting, but not particularly good. The main character Nariko is boring, other than asides to the audience between each chapter which are incredibly good, the actress Anna Torv is given little to work with. Nariko is frankly a rather generic collection of kung fu movie tropes more than a relevant character, a cursed warrior shunned by her village takes up a cursed weapon to fight the evil empire, it feels like checks on a list, and none of it really feels impactful in the actual story. You see the supposed animosity against her about two times from the same character, other than that you don’t really feel anything about her history, other than the fact that the story told you about it. She seems also to be fighting really for only two things her friend Kai and her father kind of, but you never feel any real attachment, to what she is fighting for. If Nariko’s tribe had a village or something concrete to attach to you could feel reasons why Nariko would fight, but without it she is just walking from place to place fighting for something or other.

He really is the best character in the game

The character Kai, a young tribal girl who plays second fiddle to Nariko, is vapid, and not all there, We learn nothing about her other than she can snipe people with arrows, and she saw her mother killed in front of her eyes. You don’t care about her particularly, but she’s in the game so Nariko has someone to back her up. If there is one perfect thing about this game, it has to be the lovingly executed performance of Andy Serkis; the famed performer of Gollum in voice and motion capture, he delivers a stunning performance as King Bohan, and really is the best the game has to show when it comes to performance. Bohan is the most fleshed out and interesting character in the game and Serkis makes us feel a large variety of emotions through his performance. The rest of the cast of characters, however are far less appealing.
The utter anguish of the game comes with King Bohan’s generals, Flying Fox, Whiptail, and Roach. Flying Fox has to be one of the most annoying characters in gaming history. Mostly stemming from his voice, which is a slow droning high pitched monotone that serves as a capstone of annoyance, every time he came on screen my soul died and I just could not wait to kill him. Now creating a villain that the audience wants to see defeated is important, however when that character does so by being intentionally annoying, its pathetic. You should hate a character for what he does, not what he sounds like. Whiptail a woman with a 7 foot long fish on her head… She is present in the story for all of 10 minutes, you fight her, she dies, and you just wonder why she was there. Roach is King Bohan’s bastard son, he is a generic simple man, who constantly gets howled at by Bohan. He is solely in the game to show Bohan’s cruelty, and to try and win sympathy votes, but his character archetype is played out and generic, I fully expected him to start saying “Oh boy George! Can I play with him, can I George? Dherrr” This Trio is absolutely horrid, and really only serve as a detractor to the game.

Pretty...

The game is ridiculously gorgeous, even 3 years later this game is an excellent example of what the PS3 can do. The game really shines in its art design, the world that Ninja theory has crafted is breath taking, and it truly encapsulates the feel of ancient Asian architecture and landscape. I personally didn’t like some of the character design however, I feel Nariko is overly sexualized, and she doesn’t match the design of the rest of her clan over all. Nariko’s hair is out of control. While it’s neat to see the ps3’s capabilities reflected in a characters hair, it moves with no rhyme or reason, and has constant clipping issues. Most of the other character designs range from the decent, to the exotic, down to the painfully grotesque, and while most are interesting several had me wondering what the designer was thinking.

Many coming into this title have called it a god of war clone with a female as a lead character, and in relation to the combat in the title this is in a large perspective kind of true. Square to quick attack, and triangle to heavy attack, just like god of war, however the combat system offers several unique and innovative tricks. First and foremost Nariko and her eponymous blade have three different stances she can stand in, speed, range, and Heavy. Range and heavy stance are achieved by pressing either R1 or L1 respectively. The stances are cool in look and each feels genuinely different, however the range stance in particular feels under powered, due to a combination of the enemies near constant guarding, and the fact that the collision detection feels loose, so you will probably avoid that stance for all purposes besides parrying special attacks from certain bosses.

Heavenly sword differs from many action games in that there is no block button, instead to block you simply have to stop attacking, and Nariko blocks accordingly. These further more ties into the stances in that when enemies attack they glow a certain color indicated which stance you must be in to properly deflect the blow, it was weird though because many a time I would find Nariko blocking even if she wasn’t in the right stance. The whole blocking mechanic is innovative however it is all very loose, since you don’t do the actual blocking, it’s hard to get a proper read that you did it, so when you mess it up you blame the game more than you blame yourself. Nariko has a dodge move that just like Kratos in God of War is mapped to the right analog stick. Meaning the player has no analog control over the camera, The game allows you to casually turn the camera to the left or right with R2, and L2, but you won’t want to or need to unless you want to get a better look at some of the graphical delights the game has to offer.

During several chapters in the game you play as a different character, Kai, a young girl equipped with a large crossbow. During her sections of the game Heavenly Sword turns into a third person shooter. Her missions really do mix up the game, she will be running from guards juking them if they get to close; she can take cover and, engage in sniping battles. Her missions are fun, and the character can add some much needed comedy to the game; however she feels a tad out of place in the game. I would have preferred to have more weapons or different game play for Nariko, but Kai’s levels are a welcome change in pace to game.

99 of the same guy is still the same guy

The enemies in the game are sad, because of the stance dynamic for blocking; they glow to telegraph all of their attacks which dumbs the combat down significantly. There are really only a handful of enemy types in the game the standard foot soldier, the bowman, the big soldier, mole men, and female ninjas, and trust me when I say you fight them all in nearly the exact same manner. Nariko will have a lot of trouble connecting attacks at times because the enemies are relentless at blocking; whereas on the flip Kai can take out most enemies in one or two shots easy. The boss battles are brutal, and at times can feel very cheap. Several bosses have homing attacks which must be avoided using dodge roll, however since the dodge roll is so slow, and the fact that the homing is so precise you will find yourself struggling to avoid these attacks at times. Several bosses have issues with you character not landing hits, because of arbitrary animations in the character. The difficultly spike for the final boss is staggering, and due to an aspect of the character and fight I found it incredibly difficult to see what was going on at times. After a really easy journey through the game having such a vertical incline in difficulty is disheartening, a steadier ramp up in difficulty over the course of the game would have been much appreciated, and felt more natural.

The puzzles in the game can feel completely pointless; they all revolve around throwing an object at a gong, or hitting a precise point on a catapult with a cannon ball. The only issue with this is that these puzzles besides the fact that they are all the same, is that you have to use an “after touch” to steer the throw item at your target using the six axis control, this can be incredibly frustrating because the six axis feels to touchy when using it, I personally recommend ignoring six axis control off, and just use the analog stick, it makes the process more enjoyable, albeit far less challenging.

Hit me

There will be many times in the game in which you will be forced into a quick time event, aka Simon says, However these quick time events are rather confusing, they don’t have a real feeling of success upon completion, in God of war there is a sound effect upon completion, and the presence of one here would have improved the game. Quick time events also can come across as to fast at times, and for some odd design reason, not everyone counts. While you may miss the first two in a chain, the third one may be the only one that decides whether or not the sequence has failed or not in spite of how well you where previously doing, making the entire thing feel random, and kind of scattered.

Due to the lack of stimulating puzzles, and constant battling in small cramped environments, Heavenly sword can come off as an arena fighter, with small distractions from fight to fight. While trying to build combos to attain bonus items is fun, it all feels vary stale with Nariko, she doesn’t get any other weapons beside the heavenly sword, so it’s easy to find yourself bored with her combat, playing as Kai is enjoyable and gives the game the mix up that it needs, but it doesn’t really feel like it’s enough. Frankly in the game play field this game is nothing but more of the same, however since the game is fairly short, taking about 8 hours to complete you hopefully won’t get to fatigued from the same old thing.

The music of the game is a mixed bag, there are some enjoyable tunes, but all of them feel more atmospheric as opposed to driving the action. There are songs in the collection that includes chanting that is absolutely laughable, and they can really take the drive out of a moment. All in all the score isn’t terrible, but it won’t set the world of fire. Also a large complaint I have in relation to the music is its absence during loading screen, heavenly sword is a slow loading game and every time you die you will be treated to a 20 second loading screen that is completely silent, and shows a still image of the main character and the logo. It is monotonous, and really breaks suspension of disbelief; a little music over this screen, and possibly the removal of the cover artwork from this section might have made the loading screens bearable, and without it feels really empty.

Heavenly Sword is a game that had a lot of potential, and may seem welcoming at first, but is disappointing after you got in. The game does something’s at times that are innovative, and really interesting, however they just aren’t executed that well. I found the title for fifteen dollars new at Wal-Mart, so there really isn’t a reason not to pick the title up now, but don’t expect more than an average title. The game is at the least a solid rental, if you’re willing to look past the frustrating parts.


Worth a purchase?
As long as you don’t pay more than 20 dollars for this game it’s not a terrible buy.

Gameplay
It’s a solid title, but a lot of little things will get in your way of full enjoyment of the game.

Length/ Replayablity
Shouldn’t take you more than 10 hours to complete your first play through, but there is a hell difficulty, and combat ratings orbs that you can earn to unlock new extras, but there is no real reason to replay this game. This game came out before Trophies, so their are none to earn here.

Graphics
Still a very attractive looking game, although the character design is hit or miss.

Music
It’s incredibly dull, although several tracks could be good meditation music.