Customer Reviews for Heavenly Sword

Heavenly Sword
by Sony Computer Entertainment

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Video Game Reviews of Heavenly Sword

Customer Review: Fun, but short and best for Twitchers
Summary: 3 Stars

WARNING 1. This is a short game. Rent it, do not buy it. Despite "2" below, I was able to get to the final boss battle on a weekend (about 14 hours before I quit in disgust, see "2" below). A real Twitcher could complete this in about 5 hours.

WARNING 2. This game has no way to vary the difficulty and if you are not a Twitcher, this game can be very difficult. I am nearly 60 and mostly play computer MMORPG's. This game turned out to be so difficult for me that I quit during the second phase of the final boss battle. There were segments that were quite difficult for me before that.

If the game was longer and if the user could control the difficulty, I would have given it a 4. There are very few games I would give a 5. (Citizen Kabuto for the PC many years ago is one. Warcraft 2 and its expansion would also qualify.)

Now, was the game fun? I gave it 4 stars which is the fun factor to me. There is a huge amount of variety in the game play.

Most of the game is hand to hand combat which works well.

There are a couple of cannon shooting segements that are difficult because there is no decent aiming. You must use a "bullet-time" mode and the Sixaxis capability of the controller to aim the cannon balls to their targets. You do have a cannonball eye view as your cannonball mostly misses the target until you practice, a lot.

The final boss battle is ridiculously hard which is why I quit the game.

There are jumping puzzles, for which you have to memorize the pattern because when the button shows on the screen, you do not have time to click it. Luckily, when you fail, you go right to the beginning of the puzzle and are ready to start again.

When you do fail sometimes you must endure a long cut scene. If the scenario is difficult, you see the same scene over and over until you beat the scenario. All saves are automatic at the end of a segment.

There are some throwing puzzles that are interesting and rather fun once you get the hang of it. These again use bullet-time and the sixaxis controller to guide them.

Far and away the most fun is when you play Kai, the main character's ward, who is an archer. Here you have an aiming capability and bullet-time and zoom and the sixaxis capability. You can literally shoot around walls. You follow the arrow to its final destination where it hits a foe with a satisfying show of blood. Even better, one segment, you use flaming arrows to blow up gun powder to kill enemies. That was insanely fun. At the end of that segment, there is, oh, I won't spoil it for you, but the high point of the game for me.

The animation is great. The voice acting is pretty good. All in all the production values were excellent. There were no bugs or glitches to hamper gameplay and the framerate seemed fine even with lots of characters on screen.

Sounds are well done. The music was about perfect. Whenever you noticed it, it was good and it never interfered with the game play.

The story is adequate. I mean, super sword, birth right, save the world, been there done that. It wasn't Arthurian, but it was OK.

If this game was longer and had different difficulty levels, I would highly recommend it. As it is, I still recommend it as a rental. As exasperating as some of the segements were, especially the final boss fight, I did enjoy the game as a rental and recommend it even for old spazzes like me.

Customer Review: The Girlfriend Review
Summary: 4 Stars

Sometimes, being a good girlfriend means sitting on the couch and watching him play a game or playing a game together. I'm a moderate gamer; the new controls are generally more complicated than I'm willing to commit to. He is a hard core gamer. Some games are easier to watch than others, and some are easier to play. This review is not for the hard core gamer. This review if for the girlfriend (or boyfriend, who am I to judge?) that sits on the couch and watches.

Heavenly Sword has a great story and is beautiful to watch. The animation and cut scenes for this game are exactly right. The characters and scenery are beautiful, but still have enough of an animated feel so you aren't pushing the boundary of realism too far. We finished the game in three sittings, I would guess between 6-8 hours. I'm glad this was a short game, because while the characters pulled at your heart and the story drew you in, there were times when the game was very frustrating to watch. The fight scenes (even with the special move cut scenes that were imbedded in the battles) were long enough to get boring, but not so long that you had time to do too much else while they went on. The weapon guidance with the six axis controller was extremely frustrating to watch, especially in the beginning while you are getting used to it.

If life were a video game, Nariko is the kind of heroine every girl wants to be. She is beautiful, strong, independent, confident, determined and beautiful. (Yea, I know I said beautiful twice.) Her "sidekick" Kai is equally adorable. Her relationship to Nariko is somewhat of a cross between a younger sister and a childhood pet. But don't let Kai's naivety fool you; she is as clever and cunning as she is cute.

As a game, this would get 5 stars from me. But, since I'm doing a girlfriend review, I decided to give it 4 stars. There were just too many points where I found myself bored or frustrated to give it a 5. That being said, it is easily worth the short time investment of playing or, if you're like me, just watching someone play.

Customer Review: Couldn't Pay Me to Beat This
Summary: 1 Stars

This game isn't worth the blu-ray disk it's coded on. Graphics suck, characters suck, story sucks, gameplay is aweful, music sucks, and everything else that makes a game sucked in Heavenly Sword. Not worth your time, trust me. If you want to rent this because it's short, rent Wolverine instead.

Customer Review: #1 Reason To Buy PS3.
Summary: 5 Stars

This by far one of the most perfect games ever made for the PS3. Though it is similar to GOd of War in some instances, the game stands alone in graphis, story, and the mini games with the shooting is challenging but fun. Until GW3 eventually comes out, Heavenly Sword is the #1 reason to buy a PS3.