Bleak Sword is a stylish, polished, simple action game with great feeling combat and a basic but appealing art style.
It's also way too long.
What could have been a simple, 2-3 hour game is instead bloated with far too many levels than it knows what to do with. There's a perfect time in the middle where levels are just long enough to be enjoyable without feeling like a slog everytime you re-attempt them, but the game just keeps adding more and more enemy waves to each stage and it quickly becomes frustrating.
It's also got some bizarre design choices, like a levelling system for increasing your stats - there's no need for it, the game could have just kept enemy and player stats the same since the difficulty comes from enemy combinations and patterns! All it results in is sometimes needing to go back to grind EXP (in one of those super long late-game levels, since older ones won't give much EXP) and it completely breaks any flow you were in.
I was really disappointed in it by the end, and despite starting the game being in love with the style and combat - I felt no sense of achievement when I finished it - more of a "oh finally". All the game had to do was tone itself down and end early, and it could have been an amazing experience.
It's also way too long.
What could have been a simple, 2-3 hour game is instead bloated with far too many levels than it knows what to do with. There's a perfect time in the middle where levels are just long enough to be enjoyable without feeling like a slog everytime you re-attempt them, but the game just keeps adding more and more enemy waves to each stage and it quickly becomes frustrating.
It's also got some bizarre design choices, like a levelling system for increasing your stats - there's no need for it, the game could have just kept enemy and player stats the same since the difficulty comes from enemy combinations and patterns! All it results in is sometimes needing to go back to grind EXP (in one of those super long late-game levels, since older ones won't give much EXP) and it completely breaks any flow you were in.
I was really disappointed in it by the end, and despite starting the game being in love with the style and combat - I felt no sense of achievement when I finished it - more of a "oh finally". All the game had to do was tone itself down and end early, and it could have been an amazing experience.