Heavenly Sword has amazing graphics, deep game play, a great story, and is currently one of the best showpieces of what Sony’s hardware is capable of.
Unfortunately, despite developer Ninja Theory’s five year development cycle, the game is so short (between 6-8 hours long) some gamers will feel that Heavenly Sword doesn’t warrant the $60 price tag.
While often compared to God of War (largely because the game’s protagonist, Nariko, occasionally uses the game’s namesake in ways that are visually similar to Kratos’ Blades of Chaos,) Heavenly Sword’s game play actually has a lot more in common with timing-based action games like Ninja Gaiden. You can’t just mash buttons and expect to succeed, and Heavenly Sword is a far more deep and deliberate affair than the early God of War comparisons could have lead you to believe.
Even though Nariko is always outnumbered, Heavenly Sword gives you a wide variety of options for cutting swaths through Bohan’s evil minions
One of Heavenly Sword’s main strengths is that it gives players a lot of choices when deciding how they want to kill the seemingly endless stream of combatants the game will throw at them. There are 3 combat stances that can easily be switched on the fly, and finding the right stance for a given situation is crucial to both defense and offense. Players are required to alternate between Speed stance for basic attacks, Power stance for slower, harder hitting moves, and Range stance for deflecting incoming arrows and keeping large groups of enemies at bay. Enemies will similarly attack from 3 different postures which are indicated by a flash of color just before they strike. Blue strikes can be blocked or countered by staying in the default Speed stance, Orange strikes require Nariko to switch to the Power posture, and Red attacks are unblockable and must be avoided by rolling out of the way with a quick flick of the right analog stick. Although initially it can be challenging to switch into the correct stance at a moment’s notice, as players progress through Heavenly Sword, the color coding system quickly becomes second nature.
As mentioned earlier, the game rewards precision timing. Reversals typically kill enemies instantly. As long as Nariko is in the correct posture, taping the triangle button immediately after being attacked will cue a nifty animation sequence in which Nariko cinematically dispatches her attacker with brutal grace. In addition, landing combos and performing reversals fills up a 3 tiered SuperStyle meter, allowing Nariko to perform one of 9 spectacular fatal moves (3 per stance) with a press of the circle button. The more the meter is charged, the more surrounding enemies will perish as Nariko unleashes her flamboyant death-blow. The game also includes a liberal amount of quick-time-events (called Hero Moments), but thankfully if you screw up a particular sequence the game lets you simply try again rather than being forced to reload from your last checkpoint. The reversals, SuperStyle moves, and Hero Moments are wonderfully realized displays of over the top cinematic action, and their inclusion helps Heavenly Sword instill players with the sensation that they are staring in an epic martial arts movie as the camera dramatically pans out.
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