Heavenly Sword might be a game, or it might be a movie. Either way it's a lot of fun but maybe not the most original.
'Heavenly Sword' follows the last few days in the life of Nariko: A tribal warrior woman who is fighting to save her clan from the evil king Bohan who seeks to unite all the barbarian clans by force and to take the Heavenly Sword that Nariko's clan guards fiercely. When her father is about to be killed Nariko draws on the power of the legendary Heavenly Sword to save him and then go one step further and kill Bohan, herself.
What ensues, as mentioned, is a long legged red head cutting down wave after wave of soldiers with the Heavenly Sword. Gameplay is straight forward and mostly a case of button mashing to kill a lot of men. Nariko can use the Heavenly Sword in three different ways, giving you several options and combinations of attacks to kill your enemies. The less you get hit and the more attacks you string together, the higher your rank will be at the end of the level and consequently you will unlock more combos and more powerful finishers. It's bloody, it's brutal and it's damn fun.
One of the first things that really stuck out for me in this game is the environment. I haven't been this captivated by the environment alone since FarCry 1. Simply put: It's beautiful! The graphics are what you'd expect from a PS3 and it's put to good use in creating a low tech fantasy world of castles built beside great waterfall and lush green trees hanging over you. What more can I say? It's really nice to look at.
But the game isn't all good. That would just be far too easy. There are some terrible camera angles through the game and they can't be changed. While probably not as bad as what we've seen in the past with Devil May Cry, it's equally annoying. It's almost as if the designers wanted you to see how pretty their game world is and so they used as many long and wide shots as they could. This annoyance is especially bothersome in some of the boss battles and, unfortunately, the last boss in particular.
Believe me when I say that this game really doesn't need any help from the camera to be frustrating. There are a couple of messages you get in the game about controls far too late. While much of the game involves Nariko running, stopping, hacking people up, running, stopping, hacking people up, etc. You will come across the occasional puzzle to solve or a level in which you have to take control of a canon to destroy Bohan's army from afar. I'm not sure I've been this frustrated by one particular part of a game since the final boss in Sonic The Hedgehog 2 (Remember the giant Robotnik? The one you couldn't seem to touch ANYWHERE without dying and you had no rings?). It's frustrating and the learning curve is steep but persistence will pay off and if you're patient enough to keep on trying then you will eventually get through. Challenges are really more annoying than actually challenging and before long you're back to watching Nariko's ass as she runs from enemy soldier to enemy soldier with sword at the ready. And there's nothing wrong with building a game around that.
One of the biggest criticisms of this game is that it's short and it is. Steady play will get you through it in a day or two and trust me when I say this game is worth steady play time. Occasionally I felt less like I was watching playing a game and more like I was watching a movie. "Heavenly Sword" has a very cinematic feel to it and has employed a lot of decent voice actors and motion capture to give it that extra mile.
So all in all it's a good game and although it can be frustrating and may not provide you with week after week of entertainment like some games (see: Fallout 3), it'll definitely entertain you and suck you in with it's story and simple but rewarding game play. This is not one of the greatest games you'll ever play but a lot of effort has been put into and it'd be a shame to miss out on it. Hell, despite it all the game has charm and like a good movie, I'd go through it again.