Heavenly Sword was a project borne into a rough situation. Being one of the PlayStation 3’s headlining exclusives at the time meant it had the unenviable task of trying to sell the PS3 in 2007, which meant it had to convince people of two things: 1.That the PlayStation Triple Ballin’ was worth paying $599 US Dollars for and 2.That the SixAxis wasn’t a pile of shit. Unfortunately, this was not a task Heavenly Sword nor its developer Ninja Theory were up for.

Heavenly Sword certainly looks great. If there’s something Ninja Theory has always been good at, it’s the visual design of their games. There are some very good character designs here, the main character Nariko being the obvious standout, and your journey takes you through these lush locations inspired by both Eastern and Western fantasy (Ninja Theory named Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Lord of the Rings as inspirations) that keep the game still looking good despite the fact it’s rapidly approaching 20 years old. The game isn’t free from technical issues, however. There’s constant framerate drops and some absolutely vicious screen tearing, and inconsistent audio mixing where cutscenes will be much quieter than gameplay.

When it comes to gameplay, that’s probably Heavenly Sword’s biggest stumble. In this game you block attacks automatically while you’re not attacking. If you press Triangle at the right time while blocking, you’ll counter their attack. Another wrinkle is added with your stances. You have three stances, and your stance has to match your attacker’s in order to block their attacks. In theory this discourages mindless button-mashing, in practice this and a crappy dodge roll just ends up with you constantly getting hit out of your combos, leading to a combat system that isn’t very fun, especially since you have to use the dreaded SixAxis to initiate air combos. Boss battles alleviate this a bit since you only have one enemy to worry about, but they’re extremely mediocre and one-note, which wouldn’t be such a problem if they didn’t take so goddamn long to get over with. They made 5-minute bosses that take 10+ minutes to beat.

The hack & slash gameplay isn’t all you’ll be doing here. At times you’ll be controlling Nariko’s friend Kai, whose weapon of choice is her trusty crossbow. Kai’s sections are the worst parts of the game. They move at a snail’s pace and you have to deal with aiming so bad you’ll struggle to hit enemies at point-blank range.

These days Heavenly Sword seems to have been almost entirely forgotten, and it’s no mystery as to why. Apart from its looks and cinematic presentation, there’s very little here to recommend. Doesn’t help that it released just two weeks before Halo 3. “Don’t buy an Xbox 360 and Halo 3, buy a PS3 and Heavenly Sword instead!” is an extremely hard sell. Really, I think the most interesting thing about Heavenly Sword is the context in which it was released. I have a fascination with early 7th gen releases. They have a special kind of jank that is different from that of the previous gen and also later in the generation. It’s a jank borne from developers still getting used to HD development being very excited to show off what they can do with the new hardware but whose reach still exceeded their grasp. That’s Heavenly Sword to a tee. As a game it’s not very good, but as a piece of PS3 history I’m genuinely enamored with it.

I don't know how well this game sold, but back when I was young, this game was featured on EVERY SINGLE ps3 advertisement poster in my country. There's always been something about this game that just made me want to play it since I was a kid. Of course there's the half-naked warrior woman on the cover artwork🤣 but also the game's incredible art direction that somehow just got better to look at as I grew up. And now that I've played it, it's...... good. kinda.

Considering how low this game is rated on this site, I didn't go in with the highest expectations, but was quite impressed with the combat mechanics initially. But it didn't take long for me to realise how messy the controls actually are. There are three different stances in this game that are quite distinct, but the blocking mechanics in this game just suck. Your character automatically blocks when you're not attacking, and with a quick press of the attack button right after blocking you can cause massive damage to the enemy, which is my biggest problem here. You can either be on the offensive and deal little to no damage while getting interrupted and beaten by your enemies, OR you can wait for your enemies to attack you, so that you can counterattack them, which made the combat very monotonous for me. It's fun initially but gets boring over time. It's not annoying, but kinda dull

The combat is serviceable for the most part, but the game has other problems. It keeps throwing massive waves of enemies that don't bring anything new to the table, adding even more to the monotony of the game. And finally there are the absolutely cringe-inducing voice acting and live capture performances. Holy shit they're terrible. The story is cliche as well and fails to leave an impact on you.

Now that we're done with the negatives, here's what I liked about this game.... the art direction. This is always what kept this game on my mind for years. This is a 2007 game, and the just scale of this game, the attention to details, the interactability with the environment is mindblowing. There are some sections in this game where you're supposed to shoot arrows or fire cannons(oh and the aiming mechanics surprisingly don't suck) and just the number of things on the screen just blows my mind every time. Istg, if it wasn't for the incredibe art direction of this game I would've dropped it in no time. I'm not familliar with ninja Theory's other works, but I've heard that they're great at making their games cinematic, and if this is their worst, I'm REALLY excited to try out their other stuff.

Last but not the least, I just wanna say that despite the massive amount of flaws, you can tell that a lot of heart was put into this game. It's one of those times when you know that all the hardwork behind this game went completely in the wrong direction, but you can't help but still have some amount of praise for the team that worked on it. The amazing art direction aside, everything here is average to below-average, with the voice acting being an exception(it's straight up garbage), but the game never really annoyed me so just for that this is the rating I'll be going with. Would I recommend this, I'm not sure, but I'm kinda biased towards this game so yeah, that's my rating.

I saw all the bad reviews of this game, and for the first Chapter or so, I thought I was weird for enjoying myself. The visuals were nice, the combat was fun, and the world/story seemed interesting!

Then I kept playing.

This game is so incredibly sub par in every way. The combat is satisfying at first, but the enemy variety, and repetitive level design makes it boring and annoying after the initial few chapters.

The voice acting and writing is awful, and cringe inducing, with the notable exception being Andy Serkis, who does a great job playing the villain.

The cutscenes themselves were fine, though the game too often would throw poorly telegraphed quick-time events, which would make trying to relax and enjoy the cutscenes impossible. The margin for error was slim too, which was especially frustrating for every single boss fight that had to end in that way.

Don’t even get me started on the “puzzles”. Throwing objects with poorly thought out and annoying to control motion sensors were some of the most frustrating parts of the whole experience. Even when I turned the motion controls off to control projectiles with the analogue sticks, it just slowed down gameplay for an already tedious game.

The last chapter however, was very fun. The final battles felt huge, and even with a choppy frame rate and some minor design annoyances, the entire chapter was a solid end to the prior levels. The final boss fight I found very satisfying to learn the patterns and timings of - though the aforementioned quick time events certainly ruined a lot of the fun I was having, even here.

I fear a lot of these issues are just due to this game ageing poorly - but all in all, I won’t be touching this one again.

I played this for the first time this year, and it's a hard game to judge without playing it back then. I can tell that the animations and visuals must have been great, it's still impressive to watch some of the cutscenes, and there are some massive scenes with hundreds of NPCs on screen, something we rarely see even today.

But these things won't carry the game in 2023. The controls are not as responsive as I would like, and the PS3 controller is not as good as modern controllers, the game can feel like walking underwater.

The game wants you to counter a lot with its 3-style combat system. But the slightly sluggish controls made me abandon that and I ended up button-mashing my way through the game.

I found the campaign to be too obsessed with large encounters, I wish I could run around and bump into one or two enemies, practicing my countering and combat styles, but it's structured in a way where you walk into an area and get swarmed most of the time.

There is also a good deal of motion sensor gimmick fights, where you tilt your controller trying to guide projectiles around. I'm not sure how people like these parts, but I actually liked these sections a lot.

And lastly, the characters in this game are so odd, Nariko the main protagonist is fine, even if she looks like a supermodel from another world compared to the other characters, but the enemies are so weird it's hard to describe it. They remind me of a Monthy Python sketch or a rude and crude version of Benny Hill. You really have to see it to believe it.

It's a rough but fascinating early PS3 game.

Combat system was enjoyable with the use of the 3 stances. I found that although a shorter game, you're still able to make use of and master the game mechanics. Boss fights in this game are implemented well; some are a breeze while others make time some retries to get through.

The Kai sections are a bit of a drag (and that was without using the motion control function). One last critique is the mesh of cultures leading to a lack of identity, as you have East Asian set pieces and characters, but with British voice actors, supplemented with a Middle Eastern-inspired OST.

You can toss people in this game in slow motion, and then the enemies ragdoll, so that's kinda funny and neat I think.

You fight too!

5/10 One of the prettiest tech demos for the PS3.

This is tough to rate. I am enamored with the wuxia-inspired, non-specific Asian fantasy setting, with its striking landscapes and architecture. It's evocative without being a caricature or cliche. On the other hand, the game doesn't have much time for expansive worldbuilding and lore.

The graphics are great showcase for the PS3, but there are some baaad slowdowns and screen tearing occasionally. The mo-capped facial animations were truly next-gen at the time, though.

The writing is pretty good, but the superb voice acting takes it to a whole other level. The heroines Nariko and Kai, as well as the main villain Bohan (played by Andy Serkis), all have fantastic performances.

On the other hand, everybody is just a little bit nuts.

The villains come off as grotesquely buffoonish. Serkis’s Bohan walks the fine line between menacing villain and pathetic narcissist, a Trump-like figure, but the sub-bosses (Flying Fox, Whiptail, and Roach) are just cartoons that feel out of place against the seriousness of the rest of the story.

Nariko herself is a wonderful lead, a powerful, magnetic presence in the game, but the splash art on the title and loading screens make her look like a pornstar. Surprisingly, the sweet, crazy little Kai is not annoying at all thanks to good character design and outstanding voice acting (TWING TWANG).

The QTEs suck. They come up quite suddenly, can be hard to spot in the moment, distract from the cinematic action, and are quite strict. The ones that require directional input are the worst, because half the time you'll be a little too diagonal on the analog stick (down-left instead of pure left, for example) and the input will fail.

The battle system, focusing on predefined combos and a color-coded counter system, is enjoyable. In this game, you block automatically by waiting in the correct stance and not attacking, and then hitting the counterattack button at the right time. This is clever because it discourages button mashing. Either way, I suck at this type of game generally and there is no easy difficulty option, only a “Hell Mode” that unlocks after you complete the game once. That said, I only died during the boss fights, so the game isn’t too hard overall.

The main points of frustration are the QTEs and the energy beams you have to counter from the last boss, which are really strict timing-wise.

The sixaxis motion controls are terrible and make the game so much harder, but thankfully you can turn them all off. Once I turned off the gyro controls, I really started to enjoy the archery and artillery sections of the game. The game peaks in the 3rd chapter, when you have quick alternating scenes between Nariko and Kai.

I liked the game at first, then I started to hate it, but then I started to like it again towards the end... except for the frustrating final boss fight.

Incidentally, this game also spawned an animated feature film, but it was terrible. The main characters were fairly detailed, but the animations were stiff and lifeless, the non-main characters looked like NPCs from a PS2 game, and the backgrounds were just low-poly mounds with a simple texture applied. It looked more like machinima than theatrical-level animation.

The writing also took a huge nosedive. Boring, wooden dialogue. All the subtle characterizations from the game are gone, whether it’s Kai’s nuttiness, Bohan’s manic narcissim, the sad and tortured relationship between Bohan and his son Roach, or even the little rivalry between Flying Fox and Whiptail. Nariko’s voice actor reprises the role, but her fiercely impassioned delivery from the game is gone, and now she spends the entire movie sounding only lightly chuffed. Kai goes from twing twang in the game to I like blood in the movie. Just garbage screenwriting.

We do get a little extra backstory. Bohan was always a backstabbing jerk who never can get the respect he thinks he deserves. Nariko and Kai are actually biological sisters, because apparently their father Shen went on a big raping spree after Nariko was born, desperately trying to sire a son as the Chosen One. And in fact there is a son, named Loki, but he’s just a blacksmith who is literally stabbed in the back after spouting some contradictory dialogue. That's one way to subvert a trope, I guess, but the whole plotline is just a stupid waste of 1/3 of the screen time.

The whole thing (the movie, not the game) is just awful. A simple compilation of the cutscenes from the game would have been better. Apparently Andy Serkis not only voiced game-Bohan, but also helped write the dialogue and direct the cutscenes. His presence is sorely missed from the movie.

Esse jogo chega a ser engraçado de tão RUIM.

A história é horrível e nada cativante, os vilões são uma completa desgraça de ruins, os diálogos e cutscenes são completamente vergonhosos.

A gameplay é minimamente decente tirando o parry horrível, a maneira horrenda de defender ataques e os ataques à distância com o six axis.

As bossfights desse jogo são tediosas, elas são sempre uma rotação entre defender ataques a distância e dar chip damage com ataques corpo a corpo, isso limita os combos desse jogo que são bons porque o boss sempre defende depois de 2 ataques.

Os únicos motivos pra se jogar esse jogo é pelo VA do Andy Serkis que faz um vilão bem nós. E os diálogos engraçadíssimos entre a protagonista e os vilões, não duvido nada que o roteiro desse jogo foi escrito por uma garotinha de 11 anos fanfiqueira, porque sinceramente é bem isso que parece.

Enfim 4/10.

“A Stinker Of A Hack-N-Slash”

This right here is one of the weirdest games I have ever played, but it's also one of the most unpolished ones I’ve played as well. While it contained huge set pieces pushing the PS3 towards (and most of the time past) its limits, it provided a ridiculously strange story full of a mixture of terrible cliches and completely insane characters. The plot is complete rubbish, the character voice acting is some of the worst I have ever heard, and the combat is terrible. Yet for some reason, this game had enough charm to keep me going towards the very end - though I wouldn’t recommend you finish it yourself.

This game’s first impression on you will no doubt be its visuals. They appear to look good at first, but as you examine textures, animations, and the color palette, you’ll begin to notice the lack of visual clarity. Textures suffer from pop in, the colors are mostly a dull brown/green/red, and character models are pretty strange looking. There is some nice lighting, but it's not the best looking game by a long shot. There is a lot of detail in breakable environmental objects though, which is a very nice touch for a launch PS3 title to have. Additionally, the scale of battles is impressive at times, though they’re a bit rough on the eyes…

The game suffers from a slew of performance issues, at least on my PS3 (which has never had issues with any games besides some parts of the “Ratchet & Clank Collection”). Large groups of enemies cause the frame rate to plummet, and the game is capped at 30fps despite not maintaining it in any consistent manner. There are bugs where you can’t attack some enemies, objects are not able to be picked up, and massive desync for voice acting. It really makes the flaws of the game stand out even more when the presentation is constantly interrupted by weaker visuals and glaring technical problems that lead to a bit of a jarring experience.

When the game is functioning properly, it still leaves something to be desired. Combat revolves around alternating between three variations of the “Heavenly Sword”, a weapon that can be transformed into different forms to suit various combat encounters. It’s a neat concept, but the huge amount of input lag really deters the experience from being anywhere near something fluid. Combos are tricky to figure out and the delay does nothing to help the cause, and hitting enemies just feels unsatisfying due to the mediocre sound design in combat. It’s weird to see Ninja Theory make a large action-oriented title seeing that they found more mainstream success with a slower and more methodical title like “Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice” many years later.

Yet, despite all of its technical issues and weak gameplay, the characters kept me intrigued in the experience. Not because they were quality (far from it), but because they might add up to the strangest cast of protagonists and antagonists I’ve ever seen in a video game. Each character has a really strange way of delivering lines, the story makes absolutely no sense, and there is a complete tonal shift when interacting with them. It’s hilarious and puzzling at the same time, and single-handedly drove me to want to finish this title. Words really don’t do it justice, so you’d have to see for yourself (preferably on YouTube - the gameplay is still not very good).

There are some weird gimmicks involving the PS3’s SIXAXIS function that I hated as well. There are segments where you have to throw objects in order to solve a simple puzzle or defend against waves of enemies, but the controls just feel AWFUL. The input is really delayed but also floaty, so it is really tricky to land precise shots on enemies. Maybe it was my controller (I did buy a knock off set from Amazon due to cheaper price), but they worked fine for other games that used that input (“Shatter” being one of them). I wish the game had optional puzzles that used these inputs instead of relying on them in such an active way, since I don’t feel like they were polished enough to make it into the game.

As a whole, this is just a really weird PS3 launch title. The forced inclusion of motion controls made many sections of the game more unbearable than they needed to be. The gameplay felt delayed and confusing, with impacts of the sword lacking in weight with the poor audio design. The performance was horrible, and the game generally ran below 30fps for most of the playthrough. Yet the strange character performances in the story carried me all the way through the experience though just barely)! While this game is definitely one of the weirdest ones I’ve ever played, I would Not Recommend playing it. Outside of its strange characters and story beats, it doesn't have much else going for it.

Final Verdict: 3/10 (Poor)

"Maybe I'll hit your weak point, for MASSIVE DAMAGE!"

Immediate start. Ninja Theory knows what the fuck they're doing when it comes to cinematically presenting video games.

Nariko legitimately looking straight into the camera and asking the player why they sent her here, saying that they turned her into a killer, and telling them she's not ready to die yet. And shouting "Do not abandon me! Not now I need you the most!" as I'm getting ready to turn the game off for the day.

Masterpiece?

Controls feel a little scuffed and a bit slow and unresponsive. But I'm so used to the DMC/Bayonetta super-quick style of hack-n-slash, and less of the rhythm-style of gameplay.

But I love how the gameplay never lets you settle down and go "this is what the game is." It's constantly switching things up, and breaking up the hack-n-slash with different gameplay sequences.

The aftertouch is one of most batshit things to watch. You literally make cannon balls go in upwards arcs.

The voice-acting is pretty fantastic, and Andy Serkis is a hoot (he was also one of the writers and directors). And the lip-syncing is surprisingly advanced.

And Kai is the best character ever created. And her voice-acting is beyond this world.

The script is legitimately funny. And legitimately dramatic. And legitimately tense. And seriously sad and frightening sometimes.

And one specific sequence, coupled with Kai's voice-actress, is seriously bone-chilling.

The gameplay can feel aged and unpolished, and you have to replay entire sections if you die, but the story, and structure, and pure execution of this game, more than makes up for it.

I found myself wishing it never ended.

This game....just really fell flat. It hasn't aged well, and with no real way of playing it aside from getting a ps3 or emulation, the amount of time I waited to finally get to it combined with how lackluster it is really made for a let down of an experience.
The thing is there is a good game in here somewhere. Perhaps it's buried under:
- The cringe dialogue
- The horrid aftertouch sequences
- The clunky combat system that's supposed to feel fluid and nuanced but instead is just frustrating
- The long playtime
- The appropriation of japanese culture with white voice actors

This is an easy skip - it may have been cool or stylish at the time of release, but it really, really is a flawed game.

text by tim rogers

★⋆☆☆

“DEFINITELY NOT THE GAME ANYONE INVOLVED WANTED TO MAKE.”

In a riveting scene in Paul Thomas Anderson’s film “Magnolia”, William H. Macy’s character, teeth broken out of his skull, tells someone he just met, “I have so much love to give. I just don’t know where to put it.” Ignoring the fact that it makes you objectively gay to actually express sympathy for the man portrayed in said piece of cinema, we can move right along and say that each and every human being at Ninja Theory, developers of this videogame called Heavenly Sword, would probably say the same thing if they’d fallen off a metal ladder and had their teeth broken in. Heavenly Sword is a big, lush game, crafted with careful and deliberate attention to what’s popular in videogames these days, and it’s also just about jaw-droppingly boring.

I have wracked my brain, and the brains of many innocent and unwilling civilians, and pored over the cat-burglar-calling-card-like clues that plopped all around the PlayStation Store in the months leading up to the game’s release, and I have come to the Sherlock Holmesian conclusion that Heavenly Sword is in no way the videogame that anyone working on it actually wanted to make. You can tell by the way the nice-enough developers chat about the game in the making-of featurettes, you find scraps of evidence in the shiny two-minute “anime” episodes.

Exhibit A: the PlayStation Store description for the making-of featurettes touts the game as “with a budget rivaling a Hollywood blockbuster”. So games are at war with Hollywood now? And whoever spends the most money is the winner? That settles that debate.

Exhibit B: the anime episodes are actually called “anime” — they’re obviously trying to sell the game to the anime-liking crowd, via wholly optional episodes of “anime” that look good and go nowhere plot-wise, just like, hey, most actual anime.

Exhibit C: I see these anime episodes and think, “If the game actually looked like this, I’d probably buy it”, which is exactly what they want people to think. As far as the marketers are concerned, the next step from here is “Well, the game doesn’t actually look like this, though I guess I’ll buy it anyway.”

Exhibit D: a video I saw on YouTube around two months ago, comparing the way this game ended up looking on PlayStation 3 to the way it used to look when it was in development on Xbox. Back on Xbox, the main character was a large-headed China-dress-wearing kung-fuing she-freak. This must have been because the developers knew that another popular game on the Xbox was Dead or Alive, where characters looked just about exactly the same. Now that the game’s on PS3, the main character is something like the daughter of a supermodel and the hero from God of War. She has some kind of ambiguous friend, who’s about halfway mentally &^#$#ed, who wears a cat ear hood, because, as we’ve established, someone on the game’s staff both watches and likes anime. It’s safe to say that the oriental trappings were chosen because someone had a hunch that east Asia was marketable and no one could prove him wrong. And while the game isn’t nearly as offensive with its setting as Jade Empire, which painstakingly recreated a “mythical fantasy world” that looked a whole heck of a lot like Ancient China and then hired an actual linguist to create some hokey-as-stuff-sounding “Ching-chong ching-chong” Chinese apery and/or scrawl disgusting scribbles on scrolls in temples instead of just, you know, using actual Chinese and being done with it, it has these jarring, groan-worthy moments in which large Asian-looking men will scream at our red-haired femme fatale, “I’LL TEAR YOU A NEW ONE!!” I’m pretty sure that coloquialism didn’t exist in any one of the many imaginary Japanese historical periods. And I’m pretty sure there aren’t actually any Japanese girls named “Nariko”.





How is the game, then, you ask? Who gives a heck? Read IGN, for God’s sake.

Heavenly Sword screams focus-tested, market-safe, screenshot-approved. The graphics are nice enough, with more bloom than a rose garden. The music is brassy, boring Bruckheimer-film-score stuff. There are big, meaningless heaps of collapsing architecture and things that break just because something needs to break. There are enemies who block every attack you throw at them, because otherwise, you’d never press any different buttons. If you want to just keep pressing the same button, however, you can do that, and you might get away with it. It’s actually not that terrible to play, when you’re fighting things. You dial in combos and hit the right button when you see a flash on the screen, to perform a “spectacular” “finishing move”. After seeing these a hundred times or so, you won’t care less, though as a core game system, I guess it’s not too terrible. There are boss battles, and a story that I suppose is more interesting than taking a stuff without a magazine to read, and while it’s easier to follow than the last “Pirates of the Caribbean” film’s screenplay-by-the-numbers, it sure as hell isn’t Tolstoy. It’s just . . . there.

Should it be trying to be Tolstoy? There’s the rub. Games that, in the past, have tried to be Tolstoy have included Sin and Punishment, the pre-written English script of which scared so much stuff out of so many marketing directors that the game, spectacular as it was, never got released outside of Japan. Heavenly Sword is made by British people; Britian is a country that has produced many proud people who hecked the system and did whatever the hell they wanted in the name of rock and roll, though Ninja Theory is acting bizarrely Japanese, like one of those aching Japanese developers who avoids showing off by clinging to one tired license for twenty years. Except they don’t have a license. They just have Heavenly Sword. And after playing Heavenly Sword, I’m neither convinced nor not convinced that they could make a great game, that they could put all their love somewhere without frightening us or putting us to sleep. I’m not going to rule out the possibility that it might be nice if they try, though I will be (slightly) unfair and insist that, with Heavenly Sword, they didn’t try, really. There’s the occasional scene where you control a semi-&^#$#ed girl whose method of “attacking” involves pressing the appropriate button to counter an enemy’s attack and swerve around them; I could try really hard to spin this out and call it a subversion the modern trend in “stealth” segments in videogames, though when I consider how heavily the game relies on quick-timer events (press X rapidly to run down a chain!), and how utterly bland the rest of the game is, I have to go ahead and consider the actual cool concept an accidental one-off.

Tomonobu Itagaki, producer of Dead or Alive and Ninja Gaiden, when asked what he thought about this game for some reason, said that the quick-timer events were boring, and that he would never make a game with such things in it. Itagaki is known for saying some jerkweed things with diarrhea frequency, though sometimes you really have to hand it to the guy. A spokesman for Ninja Theory, clearly on the defensive because he has Dead or Alive posters on his wall, was quick to say that they put these button-rapping events into the game because it allows players to experience an unparalleled level of cinematic excitement that they can’t experience merely through playing the game. I thought about this answer, knew deep in my heart that it was a cop-out, scoffed, and spoke to my computer monitor: “Maybe you just need to make some more interesting games!” There was no one around to high-five me, so I got a little depressed for a bit, and I got even more depressed when I realized that the Ninja Theory dude’s statement had been, essentially, a confession — he was apologizing for not being able to think of more interesting concepts for a game. All at once, it dawned: this is why Treasure bases their games on one tiny core concept, explored and mutated throughout the duration of the game; this is why Itagaki’s Ninja Gaiden lets the player run up walls: without these little crunch-pockets, your videogame is not a videogame. Man, I don’t even like Ninja Gaiden, and here I am defending it. I guess that says about all there is to say about Heavenly Sword, then.

Cons:
1. Something about this game is not right, but i can't tell what.
2. The sound track do not match the spirit of the game.

Pro:
1- Great fighting physics and animations.
2- Good story.
3- Great characters on both side.
4- From graphical standpoint, it matches the era that game released.
5- Not that long to make game boring.

Remember this is a 2007 game, and it is a very good game for that era, other than 2 cons that i said.

Technical note on emulation:

You can emulate this game on pc, but you can't play with Xbox controller. The game is only playable with Genuine Dual Shock 3/4 Control (not even bootleg ones). Also i should mention that it is one the most cpu intensive games that i ever emulated, to the point that i found this is a hard pressure on my cpu (Ryzen 5 5500), and started playing via PS3 (borrowed from a friend). Maybe Ryzen 5 5600 or i5 12400 is good enough to emulate the game with ease.

This is an odd ball game to say the least. While the title suffers like most gen 7 games, this has the added effect of 1st year ps3 being about “YOOO look at this these new features! There’s motions now”. This title has been made with flaws and boy did I enjoy this game despite it.

The motion feature I found entertaining in aspects, one great reason is picking up a corpse with one arm and slow mo smack another person with it. Besides this aspects, I found it good in some ways, while others being awful, more specifically being awful when it comes to puzzles. It works well in combat scenarios.
The story in this title is decent, it’s a basic set up that you have seen a dozen times already. The characters is what makes the game memorable in my book. The main antagonist is great, so great that I genuinely couldn’t wait to see this hypocritical pervert have their inevitable downfall. The side antagonist are power ranger villains with wacky mannerisms, some could find it annoying, I find them entertaining by showing you’re up against clowns that are better than your side simply by having more access to tech and strength in numbers. My word of advice is to go into the game and pretend logic doesn’t exist.
My only disappointment being how they handled the villain Flying Fox, he was hyped up the entire game and given as equally amount of screen time as the main antagonist. Feels like they wanted to do more, but were running out of time or budget. I enjoy the game’s plot and ending anyhow, not great by any means, but not bad either.

(Minor spoilers for gameplay)
There’s two characters you play throughout the game, one named Nariko and the other named Kai. Nariko is the main one you’ll be playing through the game as and she revolves around her sword(s) changing shape. The swordplay here is satisfying and kept the game fresh throughout as the many switching of your blade with various basic combos to pull. Basic as in things like square, square, triangle, etc. Near the end however, I found that it’s best to play the game like it’s assassin’s creed to wait till someone attacks you, counter it for a isntakill, and repeat. You get plenty of points this way too, helpful if wanting to 100%.
As for Kai, her entire gameplay revolves around a bow gun and you get what you would expect from an early ps3 title, motion controls! While yes, you don’t “need” to use the motion controls, but you will make certain segments really really really difficult for yourself. Hell, there’s a point where you’re forced to kill these enemies with headshots only. So yeah, motions controls this whole time when playing Kai, is it good despite this mechanic set back? Yes and no. Yes because it gives the perspective like the Sniper Ellite games where you see the arrow hit the target, but this time you control the arrow right when you shoot it in a direction with the motion controls. This can be a bane of existence for some, but to me, landing a shot feels oh so satisfying each time. I only found the motions control’s annoying like puzzles like I stated earlier. Worth mentioning, Kai’s sections are often short and only get to use her a handful of times. Her stay doesn’t feel overdue.


The world and art direction is outstanding, some areas being so beautiful, I would have them as a background for my pc! Well done for this aspect.

The music in title is unique by going a more Middle-East cultural approach. While there wasn’t a specific track that I felt impacted a scene for better or for worse, it would catch me off guard as to not being used to this style of music in a video game.

Overall, I would say this is the best early gen 7 out there and recommend to try out if want to see what ps3-exclusives have to offer. The motion controls aren’t sufferable either. If you wanna bang out a game in a day or two, this could be an option for ya.

Pretty decent hack and slash that lacks a lot of polish in every aspect outside of the acting. The concept behind the combat is actually really amazing and fun at times but it gets progressively ruined by enemies that just block every attack you throw out. The story is decent but really goofy at the same time. My major complaint is that they try to tell us that the blade used is cursed but nothing bad really happens with sword until like the end of the game and it feels like there was legitimately no negative effects of using the sword.

TLDR its a game that can be fun with its gameplay but its lack of polish makes you feel like it needed a sequel to be amazing

EU copy played on a PlayStation 3 Super Slim.

Is this the kind of game people were complaining about a decade ago where they were super linear, 6 hours long and barely had side content? I cant say I didn't enjoy myself but there was too much reliance on the sixaxis feature and altering control schemes to be a solid effort. Felt like I was playing a rougher Hellblade the entire time but I guess wiping out armies by the hundreds in the endgame was kinda fun.

The villains were pretty enjoyable too - Andy Serkis was a joy to watch as the main bad guy and the others were so over the top it just made their scenes entertaining. Although it was a shame they didn't have a woman of Japanese descent play the main character but I guess standards were different back then for that sort of thing.

If you manage to find this for a couple bucks and have a few afternoons to spare it's alright time, just nothign groundbreaking by today's standards but it's at least fairly coherent and executes it's ideas.