Lately, I have been scrounging up a bunch of cheap games at my local DiscReplay. Wonderful store by the way, great selections of old games at reasonable prices. Anyway, I came across Heavenly Sword one day, I was kind of keeping an eye out for it as I have always wanted to try this one. I played the demo back when it was first released and was completely put off by the writing. When Nariko tells Kai to play "twing twang" I regarded it as the dumbest thing I have ever heard in gaming since Metal Gear Solid 2's "I live through this arm!"
Years later a friend of mine randomly brought up this game, and how great it was, and that I should give it a shot. I didn't take his advice until just a few months ago, and, well, I basically regret it. This might be the worst game I've ever played, that's how much I didn't like it. Let's go through this.
Story:
I suppose we'll begin here with the story, since this is what was sold to me as so great. Nariko (main character) is the daughter of the leader of a dying tribe of people who base their entire religion if you will around this mighty sword, that, if wielded will eventually take the life of the one using it...for some reason. The story never bothers to go into any detail what so ever about the sword, where it got its powers, why anyone in their right mind would even WANT the damn thing either. Sure, it's really powerful, ok, that part I get. But the main bad guy of the game wants this thing, really badly, he knows it will kill him though so why the hell bother with it? Seems like a worthless treasure if you ask me. He never delves into why he wants it, he just does...
Nariko is a sort of outcast in her tribe. Her father doesn't show her affection, and quite frankly he wished Nariko would never have been born, mainly because he was worried about some prophecy where Nariko would take up the Heavenly Sword, free their people, and die through the evil powers of the sword. (SPOILERS) That's what happens. But....the game never once takes the time to make us care. From the onset Nariko is treated pretty badly by everyone. Saving these people is thankless, and she's not "noble" in any way about it either. She doesn't like these people, she outwardly hates her father though still very much doesn't want him physically hurt or captured.
She is literally going through this "quest" of hers for revenge, the satisfaction of war. Which, is interesting, don't get me wrong that is clearly what they were going for here, but never once do they ever make me care. Her vengeance is never fully realized to make me care. Compare this to God of War, Kratos is tricked into killing his own family. We see the brutal murder, we see his inner turmoil, we relate to this immediately. We care with Kratos, and want to do some murdering ourselves. We never get this moment with Nariko, and the game squanders every chance for us to care. Her father gets captured, not killed, she takes up the cursed Sword to free him. She frees him, fairly quickly after that, and then her quest continues for the majority of the game with little if no motivation at all. Her sister Kai, who as far as I can tell is autistic or something, gets captured and killed? I dunno, she gets revived at the end of the game, but the point is this happens JUST before the final mission so, again, the game isn't giving us time to breathe or care about what happens to Nariko.
Worse yet, she never really addresses any of these things in a way that we can relate to. She monologues to herself, sparsely as it is, mainly just lamenting that the sword has taken her life. Oh, right I forgot to mention, the game STARTS at the endgame battlefield where the sword just randomly decides to take her life. Yet another poor story choice to take me out of ever giving a crap. She spends a lot of the game just bargaining with the spirit of the sword, and finally she has a whiny speech getting the sword to believe that she is all the sword has left as it will be a museum piece if it doesn't let her use it to kill more people. Hilariously, just before Nariko dies she tells Kai to bury the sword where no one can find it....as if the evil sword is so dumb to have not known that would happen to it. Why did the sword give into her horrible logic and let her free? I have no idea, the sword never talks, it has no history presented to us, it's a useless, ill-conceived plot device.
So...I mean that's really it. You beat the bad guy, revive your friend, and die and are given a viking funeral. The story was extremely hollow, poorly written, and my god the voice acting was bad, especially the main villain. I have heard less scene chewing from Disney villains.
Graphics:
Really good graphics for its time, early PS3 days after all. The frame rate on the other hand was unforgivably bad. Constant drops all around, couldn't get past this at all.
Gameplay:
I was hoping this would be the saving grace of the game. It's not. I was hoping for a God of War clone. It isn't. The combat in this game is...really clunky. There's no block button, just color patterns you have to react to from enemies. If they glow blue, Nariko will block if you touch nothing then hit Triangle as they hit you, orange you have to hold R1 which is "strong stance" then hit Triangle as they hit you. That's the defense of the game. I never used it until I got to the final boss where it's just a game of throwing his Blue or Orange orbs back at him. Otherwise I just button mashed through he whole game and did just fine.
The combat is mostly serviceable, but where the game really aggravated me was everything else. The game frequently has you control Kai...where you play the aforementioned "twing twang." So what is twing twang you ask? It just means Kai is going to go shoot people with her crossbow. These missions are god awful. This is back in the PS3 days where you have to use the Sixasis motion controls to guide her arrows and...let me tell you they do not control well at all. There is significant delay in the movements, it's not 1:1 in the slightest. This wouldn't be so bad if there weren't so MANY of these missions with Kai, or even sometimes you have to do this with Nariko too. They added this gameplay type wherever they possibly could, and I'd say it makes up about 40% of the gameplay overall.
This is a mercifully short game thankfully.
Sound:
Forgettable. Music was...ok? Voice acting was average to terrible, as I mentioned before the main villains are so busy chewing the scenes they likely had no idea what they were actually saying. It's insanely bad, and hard to describe. There's one villain that can fly using....uh...blades attached to his back....that don't even flap....yeah physics are not this game's strong suit either...But anyway, he is utterly ridiculous. He draws out nearly every word. Like, he'll say Nariko as....Naaaaaaaarrrriiiiiiiko in a high pitch whiny tone and he'll make a line with maybe 7 words in it last a solid minute to say. It's infuriating and takes whatever seriousness the game was going for in tone and throws it completely out the window.
Final Thoughts:
This game sucks. Best part of it was the credits because I knew then I'd never have to play this ever again.
*DiscReplay was selling this for $3.99. I now understand why.*
