In it's defense: it was a launch title
posted by yourdog23 (DENVER, CO) Dec 13, 2012
Member since Jan 2010
Heavenly Sword has a lot going for it, but it just doesn't add up to what makes a good game in the long run. Let's start by describing the good. It looks beautiful, even years after its release. The story is actually interesting, almost to the point of engaging. I did find the combo system interesting, and I believe they were much more exhaustive than anything you'd get in a God of War game.
To start off with, this game is extremely short. If you know what you're doing, and are really good at GoW style games, you could probably beat this game in 5 hours. I finished all but the final boss battle on the first night I had this game. It took the second night, and another hour, just to beat the final boss.
The game requires you to know the rich combo system for the final boss battle, yet you don't ever need to use anything other than strong/weak attack through any of the fighting sections. The tutorial section of this game is so lacking that you really do need the manual, since you won't be learning the moves otherwise. Even with the manual, you'll probably need the help of a guide and plenty of patience and retries for the final boss battle (even if you didn't die once through the rest of the game).
The non-fighting portions of this game require the use of the six-axis motion controlling, and are truly frustrating. Again, the tutorial sections of the game neglect to explain this, so you'll be frustrated by motion controls before you even make it out of the tutorial. Thankfully a review mentioned motion control annoyance, which prompted me to look at the manual. Once I figured them out, they made sense, but they were still the most frustrating (minus the boss battle).
This game had promise, and I would have loved to see what would have happened if the above issues were addressed in a sequel. But with the full catalog of PS3 games out there, I can't recommend anyone but die-hard fans of the GoW genre of games put this in the top 40 games in their
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