Heavenly Sword demo impressions

by: Chuck - posted: 7/26/2007 10:26:00 PM

Just to give you fair warning, the demo is short...very short.  I was able to play through the demo twice in the space of about fifteen minutes or so as the demo features two battle arenas for you to fight through. Why did I play the demo twice?  I played the demo twice because the gameplay is actually very solid and I wanted to see what other combo's I could pull off in the short time you're given with the game.

I have to admit that I was expecting God of War with red hair and ovaries but Heavenly Sword is a little more tactical and you do have to do a little planning before attacking.  Sure you've got swords on a chains but you can do a lot more with Nariko than you could with Kratos.  The big break through for me was figuring out that you use the L1 button to launch distance attacks with the swords and R1 to do heavy attacks and that you can do some combos that flow from one to the other.  The character animations are spot on and the visible tell when someone is about to attack you is a nice touch.  The voice over work for Nariko is decent without being too over the top.  I do worry about the sister character who's only onscreen for a few minutes but already managed to annoy me just a bit. 

The demo does give you a good taste of some of the combat from the game, I just hope that the final product is more than one set arena combat piece after another.