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.

"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.