After seeing the many reviews of the game, I wasn’t going to buy Heavenly Sword full price, but when it appeared in my local game shop second hand I was tempted to use my hard earned trade ins towards one of Sony’s exclusive titles to see exactly how good (or mediocre) it was.

The first thing that hits you is the graphics.  Even on a standard Definition TV they’re beautiful.  Ok, maybe the hair could be better animated, but in general it’s one of the prettiest games I’ve seen.  Not surprising, as Sony were supposedly using it to showcase the graphical prowess of the PS3, but it really does wow you at times.

Of course, graphics are nothing if not for the game play. After a breathtaking intro, you start the game fighting a horde of soldiers coming at you from all sides, but this is really only to get you used to the controls, so you’re given a lot of power and it only takes a few minutes to defeat them.  After this it’s learning hand-to-hand combat before finally being let loose with the sword of the title.

What separates this from a standard hack and slash game is the thought that has gone into the sword play.  You can use three different stances to fend off the troops and these correspond with the coloured ‘aura’ around the next target, blue, red and yellow.  It all starts off easily, but I found that further in to the game this system can get a bit tiring when you’re facing off against hundreds of enemies and you just end up trying out anything to make them fall.

However, with a nice set of moves and counter-moves at your disposal, it’s still pretty fun however you fight back and the sheer numbers of troops sent to stop your progress is more and more impressive the further in to the game you get.  The game then mixes things up with some archery (using the sixaxis to control the flight of the arrow) and some button pressing (a bit like the quicktime events in Shenmue), though most of the time it’ll be combat, with or without the Heavenly Sword at your disposal.

Although combat is the main strength of the title, I also found it to be the weakness.  Confused?  Well, it feels great cutting through swathes of bad guys, but sometimes it’s all a bit too much and you’ll find yourself dying in the same place each time, coming back to complete the same section over and over.  It would have been nice to have more of those little quicktime events dotted in between (and thereby having a save point as well).  This can be pretty frustrating after a while, though it’s always worth persevering to get to the next part of the story. 

The one thing which sums this game up best is that I’ve yet to finish the game, but will keep at it until I have, because the story and the graphics make you want to push on and find out what happens.  Replay value comes from unlocking all the bonus movies and other material, so there’s more shelf life than just getting through the game the first time.  It would have been good to unlock the arrow sections as a separate minigame though.

So there you have it, flawed by its repetition and sometimes annoying sections, but saved by the gorgeous graphics and novel combat system, Heavenly Sword is worth experiencing, albeit in short bursts.  It’ll certainly be worth it just to show you what your PS3 can handle.