Heavenly Sword

Heavenly Sword is an action hack and slash video game published by Sony Interactive Entertainment (originally called "Sony Computer Entertainment" at the time) and developed by Ninja Theory.

It was released exclusively for the PlayStation 3 on September 12th, 2007.

Why It Rocks

 * 1) The gameplay is very fun and offers a lot of variety in terms of combat and level design.
 * 2) Beautifully stunning graphics, especially on Nariko, the main protagonist of the game, even by 2007 standards in a PS3 game.
 * 3) The story is pretty well-written and quite creative. Plus, it even has plenty of emotional scenes in it.
 * 4) Top-notch voice acting, including Andy Serkis as Bohan, the main antagonist of the game.
 * 5) The challenge in the game is somewhat difficult, but balanced enough to make some levels accessible for newcomers.
 * 6) The motion controls in the game are very intuitive, especially in combat where you can recover in the air.
 * 7) The boss fights are engaging and have very cool strategies to defeat them.
 * 8) You get tons of unlockable content as you progress through each level in the game, including new attacks and combos.
 * 9) The music is very pleasing to listen to, especially the theme that plays in certain cutscenes with the titular Heavenly Sword.
 * 10) In certain sections, you get to play as Kai, Nariko's close friend, and she plays different because she uses her crossbow to fight enemies.

Bad Qualities

 * 1) Some of the levels can be pretty difficult to go through without the Sixaxis' motion controls, so using a controller that doesn't feature motion controls is ill-advised.
 * 2) The loading times can be pretty tedious, especially after you restart a mission.
 * 3) Using the Sixaxis to control Kai's bow doesn't feel very fluent at times.
 * 4) The camera feels awkward, because you press L2 or R2 to move it left or right instead of rotating aroung Nariko.
 * 5) Although a cool character, Flying Fox's voice acting was bad, this was resolved in the movie.
 * 6) The game has some plot-holes that were made for sequels but due to the game not being successful enough, it was never resolved.

Trivia

 * 1) This game spawned an animated film of the same name, which came out in 2014.
 * 2) This is the first and only game developed by Ninja Theory to be a PlayStation-exclusive, and after that, every single game made by them are multiplatform until Microsoft's acquisition of the developer.

Videos
YUPQURzTM1o XI9w576NQss