4/5 ★ – RawMetal's review of Heavenly Sword.

System: PlayStation 3 Started: 2013 Ended: 2013 Flashback Review Heavenly Sword was one of the few original games that I enjoyed on the PlayStation 3. The first time I got to know this game was playing the demo at a local department store and this is one of the last few games that I played at a PS3 demo kiosk before Demo games are now being released on home consoles digitally. Eventually, I got this game at a bargain bin at a local GameStop for just 5 bucks. I think I wanted to play this game because of the controversy of DmC: Devil May Cry since it was made by the same dev company, Ninja Theory. Aside from that westernized Devil May Cry game, Ninja Theory did put out one of the most overlooked games in the PlayStation 3 and it deserves better despite its minor flaws. This game plays similar to God of War but stars a female protagonist. You play as Nariko, a female warrior who wields the Heavenly Sword, a powerful sword that can switch into different forms and almost every faction in this setting is fighting over trying to claim that sword. So it's pretty much an influence on Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy. That explains why Ninja Theory casted Gollum himself, Andy Serkis to voice as the antagonist, King Bohan. For a game that has movie-like qualities, it retains its gameplay qualities as it jumps straight to the action immediately and you won’t be able to just sit and watch a 30-minute cutscene like what most games are currently doing. After all, 2007 was the same year that Uncharted, Halo 3 and even Call of Duty 4 were released. The Voice Acting is superb. The fantasy world-building looks great with its East-Asian/European mythical influence and the CG aged fine and still better looking than most games today. The Gameplay is similar to God of War when you can switch the Heavenly Sword into three separate forms: Speed, Range and Power with some minor button combinations of holding L1 and R1 buttons. The Range Stance would make a blade with chains like the Blades of Chaos and there are Quick-Time Events during combat and boss fights to keep it interesting. The most I can remember about this game was the epic final battle sequence that went all Dynasty Warriors. First of all, this game is short. It could take one whole day to finish it unless you want to be 100% completionist by collecting all the glyphs which you can unlock behind-the-scenes, concept art and combos. There are a few frame rate drops whenever there are so many enemies on the screen as you're hacking and slashing your way across the levels. This game also forces you to use the Sixaxis feature on your PS3 Controller when you play the side character, Kai where you have to use her Crossbow and guide the arrow by using the Sixaxis, it is gimmicky and I do have a bit of trouble with it, but it was pretty cool. Heavenly Sword was almost everywhere from GameStop to Department/Electronic Stores, and even to Brick-and-Mortar Game Stores, but I say it’s overlooked for the PlayStation 3 as most people would skip this game for other games to play. You might consider this a God of War clone next to Dante’s Inferno, but I like this game for what it is. I would love to have a sequel, in fact there was supposed to be one, but Ninja Theory canceled it probably to invest the dev time for DmC. If there is going to be a sequel to this game as of now, especially during this era in gaming, I say that ship has sailed. At least the character Nariko was a selectable character for PlayStation All Stars and we all know how that game turned out. As well as there was an actual CG movie for this game that was released in 2014 and almost everyone forgot about it completely. I would not ignore this and check this out if you are planning to play any Single Player PS3 exclusives and looking for affordable games on the system.