Heavenly Sword for PlayStation 3 Reviews by Gamers

Heavenly Sword is a great way to spend a weekend or two if you like fantasy melee games. The cover art of Nariko, the heroine, sums up the gameplay: Nariko and the Heavenly Sword bring on the pain.

Excellent: Melee combat combos are seamless and beautiful. Some, like counterattacks, zoom in and require you to think fast and hit randomized buttons to continue. The music and artwork are well done and help make Nariko's world feel real. The main characters and villains are unique and interesting to play (or play against).

Good: The storytelling relies on classic elements (defend your clan and the holy relic) and is paced well, and building to an epic battle of Good vs. Evil. Melee levels are interwoven with six axis based archery and other ranged concepts. You'll become a deadly sniper and pull off shots that are satifyingly impossible in the real world.

Passable: Puzzle levels. Mercifully there aren't many, and they don't take long enough to feel like they're getting in the way of the carnage. They provide needed practice with the six-axis controls, and a break from the intense action. Most challenges can be beaten by simple button mashing, using just one combo or none at all. This would be a relief to new players, though.

Buy/Rent/Replay: Completely satisfying as a rental. There are so many unlockable combos that the average player isn't going to get them all in the first play-through. Also, some are complicated to pull off, adding more replay value. This is a game I'd pick up on the cheap just for the swordplay in the last chapter. Sometimes replay isn't about the plot. It's about over the top mayhem and special effects.

Ages: Teens and older. Aside from the well-deserved Teen rating, the game play is not likely to be accessible to young children.

All I kept hearing before renting Heavenly Sword from Gamefly was that it is "short." Took about 6 hours of gameplay for me to beat the normal mode. It does seem to pass quickly with the short segments per chapter, but this does have its advantage. You can go back and play the parts that you enjoyed most very easily, and go for that perfect rating.
The cinematics are great and do the console justice, I think.
The melee set up in this game is enjoyable and effective with easy switches between the stances, crossover combos are easy to engineer and make crowd control very managable. In one segment toward the end of the game, you are required to kill 500 enemy soldiers! RAWR! The full level superstyles are kind of overpowered and make this somewhat easy.
In comparison to God of War 2:
The action sequences that require directional or single button input seem faster and more difficult, though in the end there is only a simple 3 step sequence to kill the last boss. As a general rule I dont like these sequences because it makes it impossible to watch the beautiful video that corresponds, or the empowering and gruesome counterparts found in GoW2.
The puzzles in Heavenly Sword do not lay a finger on the God of War, with only a few deflected throws that implement the "after touch" feature this was an obvious dissapointment. Add puzzles or don't.

Overall, this game recieves a good (7) rating because it was fun to play and is quit beautiful. I am a big fan of the combo based melee system and the animation models are respectable. The only draw backs are: lack of content(no ungrading and only one unlockable gameplay mode similar to unlocking titan mode,) short game time left me wanting more, and I was not impressed by the lack of viewpoint manipulation there is with its follow the leader unidirectional design.
This would be a great game to rent off Gamefly (not buy) since you'll be done with it soon.
Can't wait for GoW3!