Support NeoGAF

[Gnar Kill]

Your opinion is valid and that of someone who pays attention to these things. But do you think the average person who is playing it and digging it would say that? I have played this a bit and never has the framerate taken away from the experience nor annoyed me. It never even affected my timing.

I guess that's true. I guess the reason it stood out to me so much is because I don't generally notice things like frame rate. That's why when I did notice it I thought,"Shit, the frame rate must be bad if I'm noticing it." Other than that and the freaking auto block, I thought this game was awesome, can't wait for the next installment.

 

[tribal24]

Kai can't be a main character, IMO. she's just too goofy, and, uh, "special." You can't take her seriously.

The trilogy will probably be about the sword. It will circle around the mythology of the sword. Maybe we will be transported to a different time period with a different sword holder.

Ninja Theory's artists are second to none, so I am really excited to see the concepting for their next game.

You look at Kung Fu Chaos and then you look at Heavenly Sword...the development studio has come so far. I'm reversed wahjah'd for them.

i really hope then can pull off a part2 about the sword aswell but i want them to connect it with nariko and her story aswell

 

[Chromax]

Just beat chapter 1, aftertouch is so hard to control for me...

But loving the game right now and love the main menu even more!

 

[LiquidMetal14]

Just beat chapter 1, aftertouch is so hard to control for me...

But loving the game right now and love the main menu even more!

I bought Heavenly Sword for the menus


OK, ok ok ok........

Spoiler

Or did I buy it to use the disc as a coaster? Maybe I can use the case as a snack tray.

 

[Uncle AJ]

I bought Heavenly Sword for the menus

I weep for humanity.

 

[~Devil Trigger~]

jesus christ, Bohan is cheap as hell

 

[Belfast]

jesus christ, Bohan is cheap as hell

Really? He's kind of tough, but I enjoyed the fight a lot. He and I were almost always at the same level of health, which made things very tense.

 

[Lefty42o]

ok so i just beat it. here are my impressions

this game is good but falls short of great. the graphics are insane and some of the battkes just crazy but at times the game slows way down and its tears alot in the cutscenes. i think they really pushed the hardware for the cutscenes and the gpu struggles at times. same thing when in the menus for the chapters. sometimes her clothing will completely flip out. get all artifacty and shit. shadows completely spaz out .


the gamplay is awsome but the boss battle could ahve been muich better. the interaction with the story and the bosses is awsome but the way you can't mess up the button presses in the finished insures it will likley be 2 try min. which brings up a major negative. loading times. if you die or mess up and have to redo a section like a boss battle it takes a solid 2 mins tog et back to the action. very frustrating in the latest parts of the game.

no block really sucks cause at times later in the game with mad guys attcking you no matter hwat you resort to easy combos or staright button mashing. which alwasy works. triangle is your friend.

and the length of the game is a major rip casue right when the gam,e gets going, and you start to understand the power of the sword its over. i think they could carry the last 2 chapters out and squeesed a couple more solid hrs out and some epic style battles. i thought that was commign and felt very let down with the later chapters. except the last boss fight. onhe of the first times i felt cell might be all that was the last 2 chapters.


over all very solid game. i felt good actually having a game to play in my ps3. i am mainly a 360 guy but been dying for some ps3 love. uncompressed pcm man heavenly sword sounds fuckling amazing. ps3 need mopre games like this. i give it a buy and say go get it. i hope they fix some issues for heavenly sword 2. maybe befor halo 3 comes out i will takcle hell mode.

sorry bout the typos. tired. been playing heavnly sword all day. beat it in roughly 9-10 hrs. i give it longer than prey and in the gears of war length time frame. maybe shorter. i could have beat it in 6 hrs but i relaly struggled with the last boss. i kept hitting the wrong cutscene animation button and had to keep restarting. i was very upset lol

hope you enjoyed my review

lefty

 

[Systems_id]

jesus christ, Bohan is cheap as hell

Bohan's a pushover. You don't even have to use any melee attacks against him. Actually it's better not to.

 

[Lefty42o]

Bohan's a pushover. You don't even have to use any melee attacks against him. Actually it's better not to.

i roll-canceled when ehr fired, anything, i canlt block worth shit, and used a combo of speed and power stance attacks and wore him down. i could ahve beat hime a few times but i alwasy messed up the button presses at the end. i was to busy trying to watch the damn beautifull scene than it be like 'X' and by time i relaised i messed up he had half his life back and i had to fight some more.

damn addhd lol

 

[~Devil Trigger~]

Really? He's kind of tough, but I enjoyed the fight a lot. He and I were almost always at the same level of health, which made things very tense.

he pokes too danm much, and blocks EVERYTHING,

i just dont get the fight, i still cant tell what can break he guard. Just throw shit at em, hope you get hits.

and very repetitive

 

[Belfast]

hope you enjoyed my review

lefty

To be honest, I don't even understand two thirds of what you said.

 

[Riddler]

i really hope then can pull off a part2 about the sword aswell but i want them to connect it with nariko and her story aswell

Going through the game again in Hell mode I think..

Spoiler

You'll play as Nariko in Hell cause alot of characters keep saying things about Hell is waiting for you & Raven Lord is from hell, nariko saying she'll would go through hell to make sure this doesnt happen,etc.. or maybe there is an extra ending once I finish Hell mode?

 

[Lefty42o]

he pokes too danm much, and blocks EVERYTHING,

i just dont get the fight, i still cant tell what can break he guard. Just throw shit at em, hope you get hits.

and very repetitive

when he is using his wings speed stance. triangle triangle triangle combo. stick and move. do the combo than roll. or wait for him to attack usually with a power move than roll and cou8nter with the speed combo


when he lands and his wings go away use power stance and i tend to hit square 2 or 3 times than roll. triangle will help block and give you good option to kick than slash and knock him down for a good chunk score.

sometimes he starts to learn so switch it up. speed stance square and triangle back and forth messes him up as well.

 

[Lefty42o]

To be honest, I don't even understand two thirds of what you said.

]

thats cause you didn't read it :lol

 

[mr_nothin]

ok so i just beat it. here are my impressions

this game is good but falls short of great. the graphics are insane and some of the battkes just crazy but at times the game slows way down and its tears alot in the cutscenes. i think they really pushed the hardware for the cutscenes and the gpu struggles at times. same thing when in the menus for the chapters. sometimes her clothing will completely flip out. get all artifacty and shit. shadows completely spaz out .


the gamplay is awsome but the boss battle could ahve been muich better. the interaction with the story and the bosses is awsome but the way you can't mess up the button presses in the finished insures it will likley be 2 try min. which brings up a major negative. loading times. if you die or mess up and have to redo a section like a boss battle it takes a solid 2 mins tog et back to the action. very frustrating in the latest parts of the game.

no block really sucks cause at times later in the game with mad guys attcking you no matter hwat you resort to easy combos or staright button mashing. which alwasy works. triangle is your friend.

and the length of the game is a major rip casue right when the gam,e gets going, and you start to understand the power of the sword its over. i think they could carry the last 2 chapters out and squeesed a couple more solid hrs out and some epic style battles. i thought that was commign and felt very let down with the later chapters. except the last boss fight. onhe of the first times i felt cell might be all that was the last 2 chapters.


over all very solid game. i felt good actually having a game to play in my ps3. i am mainly a 360 guy but been dying for some ps3 love. uncompressed pcm man heavenly sword sounds fuckling amazing. ps3 need mopre games like this. i give it a buy and say go get it. i hope they fix some issues for heavenly sword 2. maybe befor halo 3 comes out i will takcle hell mode.

sorry bout the typos. tired. been playing heavnly sword all day. beat it in roughly 9-10 hrs. i give it longer than prey and in the gears of war length time frame. maybe shorter. i could have beat it in 6 hrs but i relaly struggled with the last boss. i kept hitting the wrong cutscene animation button and had to keep restarting. i was very upset lol

hope you enjoyed my review

lefty

Wow...you fought Bohan for 3-4 hours?

 

[Belfast]

]

thats cause you didn't read it :lol

You're right. I completely forgot that I didn't have my glasses on! Silly me.

 

[Lefty42o]

Wow...you fought Bohan for 3-4 hours?

more like 1-2 hrs but i had problems with the first catapult battle till i got the motion controls down.

and it wasn't the battle with him it was the final cutscene animation. my addhd self kept messing it up. i had the button presses down i always hit it to late or something. trust me it was very frustrating but at the same time i enjoyed it. was throwing some mad combos during that battle

 

[Lefty42o]

You're right. I completely forgot that I didn't have my glasses on! Silly me.

its ok. i am sure people do that all the time

 

[fronn]

Just curious... why isn't this stickied?

I haven't read the whole thread, so maybe it's been answered... it seems like a game like HS should have a sticked thread though -- it's been long awaited, looks beautiful, plays beautiful, gotten good reviews overall (besides some wtf reviews like IGN) and has a compelling story and wonderful voice acting/script. If this game doesn't deserve a sticky, I don't really know what does, apparently.

 

[Dante]

Beat It.

Loved it.

NT coulda artificially extended the length with back tracking, and fetch quests, I'm glad they didn't as the whole thing felt fresh. Could it have been longer? Sure, but that doesn't mean I didn't enjoy the hell out of the game.

One of the best game stories ever.

Wish list for part 2:

More creature type enemies a la GOW

More KAi

Fix the framerate.

Great game, on to the Ratchet demo now

 

[icechai]

The biggest complaint I have with Heavenly Sword is it basically takes the newer conventions of disc loading and seamless cut scenes from GTA and other genre evolutionizing games and THROWS IT OUT THE WINDOW. It feels like I'm playing one of Square's games... but with a lot more emphasis on real time action fighting. Load... fight fight fight... load.. cutscene... Its done well but am I the only one who feels like this is a STEP BACK in gaming technologies in some ways?

 

[Rhazer Fusion]

THIS GAME IS AMAZING and I am only on Chapter 3. I am loving it. Anyone who has a PS3 owe it themselves to check this game out. Killer app IMO.

 

[KTallguy]

The biggest complaint I have with Heavenly Sword is it basically takes the newer conventions of disc loading and seamless cut scenes from GTA and other genre evolutionizing games and THROWS IT OUT THE WINDOW. It feels like I'm playing one of Square's games... but with a lot more emphasis on real time action fighting. Load... fight fight fight... load.. cutscene... Its done well but am I the only one who feels like this is a STEP BACK in gaming technologies in some ways?

Lots of streaming occurs when you're looking at the vistas, and loading usually is masked by cutscenes.

 

[Forsete]

Damn, my copy didnt make it. I'll have to wait till monday. URRGH.

Game looks great, cant wait to play it.

 

[icechai]

Lots of streaming occurs when you're looking at the vistas, and loading usually is masked by cutscenes.

Usually, but loading each chapter takes quite a long while, and the cutscenes aren't seamless, they take a bit to load too... The whole process just feels so unsmooth, like they rushed it out the door Like many reviewers have said, this is a good game with the potential to be great, and the letdown is just so disheartening when it is so close to being great

 

[acklame]

just got the game and played chapter 1.

WOW. this game is heavenly sex. love it love it love it. btw the cutscenes are so amazing that this game should win an oscar.

 

[bycha]

Can anybody please upload game finished on medium? I wanna start on hell.

 

[wotter]

Just bought the game, can't wait!

 

[antiloop]

This game got reviewed in my local news paper today.

The reviewer didn't like the game at all. The headline is "Is "Heavenly Sword" the last brain dead big-budget game?"

He describes the game as being "Generic" "Somewhat fun" "Crazy good graphics". He also call it a button-masher that has borrowed most of it's ideas from God of War, 99 nights and Xena:the Warrior Princess. "Since when should we care about the story in a action game where the focus lies on hammering the action-buttons?".

"The brain dead action games age is to an end, and Heavenly Sword may as well be one of the last big-budget games in the genre."

2/5

It made me mad. He also reviewed GRAW2 PS3 (4/5) and Stuntman Ignition (2/5). I hate this guy

 

[nofi]

This game got reviewed in my local news paper today.

The reviewer didn't like the game at all. The headline is "Is "Heavenly Sword" the last brain dead big-budget game?"

He describes the game as being "Generic" "Somewhat fun" "Crazy good graphics". He also call it a button-masher that has borrowed most of it's ideas from God of War, 99 nights and Xena:the Warrior Princess. "Since when should we care about the story in a action game where the focus lies on hammering the action-buttons?".

"The brain dead action games age is to an end, and Heavenly Sword may as well be one of the last big-budget games in the genre."

2/5

It made me mad. He also reviewed GRAW2 PS3 (4/5) and Stuntman Ignition (2/5). I hate this guy

Yeah, this game is all about the story and the production, which is where it shines the most. I'd just stopped playing it last night, turned on the TV and saw an amazing advert for it, and then started playing again.

Brilliant stuff.

 

[llTll]

He describes the game as being "Generic" "Somewhat fun" "Crazy good graphics". He also call it a button-masher that has borrowed most of it's ideas from God of War, 99 nights and Xena:the Warrior Princess. "Since when should we care about the story in a action game where the focus lies on hammering the action-buttons?".

what?

 

[neorej]

just finished it, clocked in at 5,5 hours (for comparison: I finished God of War 2 in 13 hours). It's a bit on the short side to say the least, but the 5,5 hours are a lot of fun if you like the combat-mechanism being used here. The cutscenes are out of this world, normally I couldn't care less if a sidecharacter would die, but these characters portray emotion which really gets you atached to them in a way.
There's a way you can cheat your way through the Bohan-battle, which makes the final battle kind of lame. If you choose to fight regularly him though, the battle is intense and pretty much fun.

For those who are saying "it's only 5,5 hours so I'm not buying it", fine, be my guest. I think the 5,5 hours are worth the $60, not in terms of length, but in terms of quality cinematics and fun gameplay.
I'd also like to add that I spent $30 buying thr DVD of Blood: The Last Vampire, a movie that lasts (only) 45 minutes, but in terms of productionvalue is way up there, above most the Hollywood-shit that they call blockbustermovies.

 

[typhonsentra]

Just curious... why isn't this stickied?

It's nowhere near large enough by the standard set by the current big three games, and then there's Halo 3 in 2 weeks so... yeah.

 

[Doc Evils]

I think everyone who has played this game can agree it is not 'average' or generic'.

We need number twooooooooooo Ninja Theory.

 

[Awntawn]

I think everyone who has played this game can agree it is not 'average' or generic'.

We need number twooooooooooo Ninja Theory.

Seriously. Hito, can you change the thread title to like "NOT ACTUALLY HORRIBLE" or something. Still seeing ignorant posts around the forum with people going "PS3 fanboys hyped LAIR and HS and look how they turned out" makes me cry. What damage one early review *coughIGNcough* can do for a public image, and the critical response for this game isn't even bad. Now I understand some people may like LAIR, but the general consensus is that it bombed from a critical standpoint. The thing is, one game is on average sub-60%, and the other is on average above 80%... people need to stop lumping these games together as "one big failure." Raise the public awareness 3;

 

[MightyHedgehog]

what?

The PS1 Xena action-adventure game featured a partly user-controlled chakram attack where the camera follows it from enemy to enemy.

 

[Mau ®]

It would be nice if Sony bought these guys. It could really improve their performance. The guys at guerilla certainly stepped it up after the buyout.

I cant find the game anywhere! Arghhh

 

[krypt0nian]

Finally picking this up today. Pre-ordered but haven't got around to picking it up yet. This thread has me re-hyped!

 

[antiloop]

what?

Sorry, my fault for not making an exact quote. He actually meant the TV-series.

Exact quote (with my translation from Swedish ):

The adventure is borrowing keenly from a number of different directions, which contradictory gives it a rather original expression. For a start it smells like God of War and 99 Nights, on the other hand it's hard to miss the developers special fondness for the TV-success Xena the Warrior Princess.

Don't ask me what he means.

 

[methos1975]

I would kill to see Kai as the main character in a future HS game, she is by far the best character in the game IMO. She just seems so looney and out there at times, and then bam she does something that makes you really wonder how far the rabbit hole goes with her. She will go from being seemly half retarded in one scene, to being truly dark and distrubing in the next, and some of her actions points to her being much more cold, effecient, and intelligent than she puts on most of the time.

 

[methos1975]

It would be nice if Sony bought these guys. It could really improve their performance. The guys at guerilla certainly stepped it up after the buyout.

I cant find the game anywhere! Arghhh

Lets wait to see how Killzone 2 actually is before saying that, Lair looked godly the first time it was shown also you know.

 

[gofreak]

Just finished the first chapter...

The cutscenes, acting etc. are simply great. Perhaps the best I've seen. Worth playing for that quality alone, IMO.

The game itself is enjoyable, liking it sofar Nothing revolutionary, but enjoyable.

Oh, and Bohan..quite the comedian

 

[drohne]

finally sat down to play chapter 1 -- my love affair with the combat system continues. it's just really enjoyable to slowly punch in combos, vary your stances, and throw in counters --- all methodically and reactively, as opposed to the haste and aggression of something like dmc. it's amazing when everything clicks and you just take out a crowd of enemies in one fluid series of actions. and so much the better if your enemies taunt you beforehand -- 'kill that wench' -- and then a perfectly timed counter.

i like the way it's broken up into scored subchapters -- i've been replaying the combat sections if i don't get three medals the first time through. i like the whole cinematic momentum of the thing. it seems to have dispensed with the vestigial adventure stuff that weighs down dmc and all its clones. the cutscenes are great -- i guess i'll say more about them when i've played more. but suffice to say that i find myself watching them attentively, whereas cutscenes are usually just an opportunity to rest my thumbs.

so yeah. i'm liking it.

 

[dark10x]

Lets wait to see how Killzone 2 actually is before saying that, Lair looked godly the first time it was shown also you know.

No it didn't. Lair looked and ran like shit when it was first shown running in realtime. There was an original CG trailer (fake) and a tech demo that looked nice, but when the game surfaced, it was ugly (and I think it looks nice now).

Killzone 2 has been played by journalists and looks incredible while running at a perfectly solid framerate. The ORIGINAL Killzone had one of the worst framerates this side of Advent Rising, yet they've risen to the challenge.

Hopefully NT can really improve themselves with their next game.

 

[ThirstyFly]

I'm planning to pick this up on Tuesday when I head over to Best Buy for some new release DVDs. Glad to hear you guys that have finished it have enjoyed it, it's making me look forward to it more.

Quick question though, in the demo you could turn the motion controls off and do air combos with the X (I think?) button. Can you turn off the motion controls for everything in the game, like Kai's attacks and such? I'm not a huge fan of the way motion controls work with the shape of the sixaxis.

 

[Tiduz]

During a presentation and Q&A at last night's Warhawk tournament at 3Rooms, Tameem Antoniades (co-founder of Ninja Theory) was asked what his response was to the criticism that Heavenly Sword was too short. He replied that Ninja Theory are definitely interested in extending the experience via downloadable content - but only if it sells well.

HOLEE SHIT

 

[methos1975]

No it didn't. Lair looked and ran like shit when it was first shown running in realtime. There was an original CG trailer (fake) and a tech demo that looked nice, but when the game surfaced, it was ugly (and I think it looks nice now).

Killzone 2 has been played by journalists and looks incredible while running at a perfectly solid framerate. The ORIGINAL Killzone had one of the worst framerates this side of Advent Rising, yet they've risen to the challenge.

Hopefully NT can really improve themselves with their next game.

Just saying, this gen seems to be filled with games that are hyped up and look good, but are crap upon release. I just cannot give anyone the benefit of the doubt no more, pre-hype isn't enough no more.

 

[ThirstyFly]

He replied that Ninja Theory are definitely interested in extending the experience via downloadable content - but only if it sells well.

Oh god. I don't even want to know how big those downloadable packs would be considering how friggin' huge the demo was for about 2 minutes of gameplay.

 

[tribal24]

>< i feel like playing it again for a bit just to get medals then do hell mode tommorow>.>
damnit for having to be busy