Heavenly Sword
PlayStation 3
Nostalgia Factor:
Mop Up Duty moves us along to the year 2007 with my review of Heavenly Sword. This is a game that I never had much of a desire to play when I was younger. I remember checking out a demo for the game and coming away from it unimpressed.
A year or two after its release, the manager at my former place of employment bought me this game for my birthday. I remember looking at it and kind of being like "oh yay... this game."
Heavenly Sword would sit on my book shelf, still in its plastic casing, until November of 2022. 15 years after this game first came out, I'm just now giving it a shot. How would I feel about it? That's what we are here to find out, isn't it? Keep on reading for the full scoop.
Story:
Prophecy foretells the birth of a mighty warrior, destined to save the people of a countryside town from an unstoppable force. When the prophesized warrior turns out to be a woman, seeds of doubt begin to fall over the land.
This woman, Nariko, is not phased. Under the watchful eye of her father, she trains for combat with the mystical Heavenly Sword. When an invading force threatens her town, she rallies its people around her and forms a defense against the enemy forces.
As the game progresses, you'll learn more details about Nariko and her relationship with her father. You also learn a lot about the invading forces and their eccentric command structure, led by King Bohan. These characters are wild and seem like they'd be right at home in a Resident Evil game.
I don't want to spoil too many things, but the main focus of the game centers around this five day skirmish between Nariko's people and Bohan's forces. Expect to see some supernatural things happen. Expect maybe a shocking death or two.
I didn't expect much from this game's narrative, but it is actually pretty good.
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Gameplay:
I'll get the God of War comparisons out of the way. This feels like a PS2 era God of War game. Nariko moves like Kratos, she jumps like him, she rolls like him, she blocks like him, her weapons feel like his, and some of the buttons are even mapped out in a similar or identical fashion, like the weak and the strong attacks. Square, square, triangle for the win!
Where this game differs from God of War is how you switch back and forth between different attack modes. There's normal attack mode, ranged attack mode when you hold the L1 button in combat, and a more powerful attack mode when you hold R1. Different enemies are vulnerable to different attack styles, so being adept at moving back and forth between them in battle is an absolute must.
You can also block enemies in these different attack modes too. Blocking is also an absolute must, because some of these enemies can be absurdly tough to beat unless you let them attack you and then you counter their attacks. Watch closely for the color of your enemy's attack, because depending if you see orange or blue, this effects the battle mode in which you'll want to place your counter attack. Don't hit anything to block blue attacks and R1 to block orange attacks. If you do it right you can then hit the triangle button to get some hits in on your attacker
There also exist stages where you have to fire projectiles at waves of incoming enemies. Nariko has a friend named Kai who has a crossbow. You take control of her many times throughout the game. Firing with the crossbow is a little difficult, as this game is from the era of experimental motion controls. You have to hold up the PS3 controller and treat it as a steering wheel to guide your bolts and arrows. I wasn't a big fan of this gimmick when I first started playing the game, but it grew on me. I came to love these shooting stages more than the regular combat ones.
There are also stages where you control Nariko as she fires things like catapults and cannons at incoming enemy forces. These utilize the same motion control gimmicks as well. These stages are a little more annoying than the Kai stages, as some of the enemy weapons of destruction can only be destroyed by hitting very small and specific target areas.
While this game is reminiscent of God of War, it reminds me of a few others as well. There's no real exploration or puzzle solving in this game. It's mainly just watch a cutscene, fight through a battle sequence, watch a cutscene, fight through a battle sequence, etc. It really brought to my mind a game called Sword of the Berserk: Gut's Rage for the Sega Dreamcast. But Heavenly Sword is much better.
For an early era PS3 game, Heavenly Sword looks really good! The character models are a stand out, particularly Nariko's character (boom chicka wow wow). All jokes aside, the characters look terrific and each have their own fun and unique distinctions about them.
The environments are terrific. The colors are bright. The battles are massive and epic in scale. The entire game has this cinematic feel to it, almost like a Lord of the Rings or God of War game. While this is certainly no Ghost of Tsushima or anything like that, the entire game is pleasant to look at, with no obvious eyesores, except for perhaps that bizarre PS3 shininess that seems to creep its way into the action quite often.
Sound:
The voice acting is good, the music is sweeping and epic. I can't complain about anything here either.
Everything sounds exactly as it should.
Overall:
This was a very surprising and pleasant gaming experience. I shouldn't have let my negative experience with the demo almost 15 years ago keep me from playing this game until just now. It's pretty good!
It's not a perfect game by any means. I would have liked to see the game open up a little bit more and allow for some exploration and puzzle solving. Maybe if there had ever been a sequel it would have gone in that direction. Instead, this game is more of a fighting title where you take on waves of enemies at a time, with the occasional gimmicky shooting level thrown in. And I'm totally okay with that. Everything this game does manages to work on some level. It may not be incredibly deep, but at least it is fun for what it is.
THE GRADE:
B
40th Birthday Mop Up Duty Celebration Tour:
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2007:
Heavenly Sword (the review you're reading)
Next we move onto 2008 with something I've been wanting to
play for a while now:
Far Cry 2!
For a complete index of all my past posts and game reviews, click
>HERE<
