Strength of the Sword 3 Review

            Strength of the Sword 3 is the long-awaited ending to the long-running trilogy... just kidding. There actually isn't a Strength of the Sword 1 or 2, just 3. The developer says this is because they start by ending their trilogies... or something. This weird kind of humor/ attitude is all over the developer's website and in a few spots in the game, and I know it sounds like it would be annoying, but I like it.      

            This is a melee-based action game that brands itself as a game where you will die a lot and have to learn from your mistakes and keep trying. And indeed, this is true. Any enemy from the simplest grunt to the final boss can kill you in just a few hits, and you will die many times. Fortunately, like many hard games in this vein, the difficulty and gameplay are pretty finely tuned, and the process of dying, learning, and finally succeeding is very gratifying.

            Unlike many other such games, this one is pretty short. There are 11 levels, and each only takes around five minutes to beat. A straight run through is less than an hour. A straight run-through is not going to happen though, due to the many deaths needed to learn how defeat each group of enemies.

            The game has a quite thematic and well-done little story which is told almost entirely through wordless, textless cutscenes that depict simplified, cardboard cut-out versions of the game's characters on this neat rotating map. An underground evil is corrupting and invading the land, so God sends down a mechanical warrior (the War Golem) to set things right. That information is communicated  very effectively through the opening cutscene. It's actually pretty ingenious. A few more cutscenes like this show the War Golem's journey to the source of the invasion. These cutscenes are really amazing, but unfortunately about half of them have noticeable slowdown. It's really weird, because they are pre-rendered movies. The game's ending is also very cool, does something I've not seen done before in a game. I'm really biting my tongue here to not give it away. It's very cool. I've heard the game's creators say that the game has only the most basic story as most of the focus went into the gameplay, but what is here is very well done. Most games that try to have a story would do well to take note of this game's style of communication and interesting ending.

            In each level, you are in a round-ish arena and have to fight a few waves of enemies. Waves usually consist of one to five enemies, and there's usually three or four waves to a level (or just one in the case of boss fights). There is no camera control. You automatically lock onto an enemy and then always keep them in front of you. You can switch which enemy you are locked on to with L1 and R1. The camera will very often go outside of the arena, and when it does the walls will turn translucent so that you can still see what is going on. In general I feel that idea is not ideal, but it's implemented pretty well in this case. Another quirk about the camera is that the game is letter-boxed a bit on the top and bottom. This seems a bit strange, but allows for some interesting ideas. The way the screen shakes when you take big hits is enhanced by this frame. The frame itself also moves around, narrowing even more when you charge an enemy, and even rotating to focus the action in when you do certain finishing moves. The game also employs slow-motion when enemies or the player perform certain attacks. This isn't over-used, so it's actually very cool, especially since the game has really great animation. All these display quirks sound kind of wonky, but each one is actually pretty well-done, and together they give a pretty unique perspective on the action. Because it's so unique, it takes some getting used to, but it's really impressive and functional once you understand it.

            R2 is your dodge/ charge button. Tapping it and a direction makes you roll out of the way. The game handles this in an interesting way. Most of the time, if you are in your dodge animation, attacks won't land on you even if they physically hit you character model. It's an interesting idea and is implemented pretty well. Pressing R2 and forward toward an enemy puts you into charge mode, where you rush at an enemy and are able to perform a bunch of attacks that can only be done while charging. Dodging and charging both drain a meter on the left side of the screen that re-charges rather quickly when you aren't dodging or charging. This prevents you from constantly rolling around as you can't dodge or charge when the meter is drained.
           You move the War Golem with the left stick. Square is your basic slash attack. Triangle is the stab attack, which works a bit differently than in other games. When you stab most enemies with your sword, you also grapple them. You then can repeatedly stab them by mashing triangle. You release them by pressing square. If you wait too long to release them, they will gain the upper hand and knock you off, causing you to take damage. This is visually represented by a kind of arc that appears above the enemy when you stab them. The angle of the arc moves as the enemy prepares to throw you off, and when the release prompt changes to red, you better start mashing square!.

            X is jump. Circle is block. Each shield has two different ratings, its defense and its durability. The higher the defense, the more powerful attacks the shield is able to block. The higher the durability, the more hits the shield can take before breaking. This is represented by a blue bar above your health. If this bar is depleted, your shield breaks, and you no longer have a shield for the rest of the level. For me, this didn't really come into play too much. I wasn't big on blocking for most of my time with the game, and when I was, I only had my shield break on me once. Mashing circle when you have taken a big hit also helps you get up faster or land on your feet if you were knocked into the air. If you have taken a big hit and are on the ground, you can also roll around to dodge attacks with the left stick.

            Moving the right stick pauses the game and lets you select an item to equip by pointing the stick at it on a wheel. Well, actually this doesn't pause the game, it just puts it into super-super-slow motion. You can still get hit if you were a mili-second from getting hit, and you can still see movement, which is really cool. Once equipped, you use an item by pressing L2. Items include weapons, such as throwing knives and grenades, and recovery items like a health pack and a mana pack that refills your mana bar. Certain attacks require mana, which you can refill using packs, executing finishing moves and double-kills (and a few other maneuvers), or by holding circle and up on the left stick. You can't move while manually charging like this, so there is an interesting dynamic of needing to build up mana while enemies aren't attacking.

             The main story mode introduces you to new enemies, items, and swords and shields as you go along. You typically fight a few rounds of enemies and then a boss level, and then you move to a new area on the map and repeat. There are many different attacks you can execute that require a few types of button inputs. Some are done by pressing some combination of square and triangle. Others are executed by pressing a few buttons and then two at the same time. Others are executed only if you are charging the enemy or if you are in the air. Some take mana, others do not. These attacks can be input as fast as you like. You don't have to wait for animations to finish to press the next button. For example, one attack has you press square, square, triangle, triangle triangle, and you can just mash that as fast as you can; it doesn't matter that the first slash animation is probably still going. Experimenting with the game's many moves will lead you to a few favorite techniques to use on each of the different enemy types and bosses. Some of the unlockable swords you get as you go introduce some new types of attacks that add an interesting twist to the gameplay as well. After certain levels (mainly boss fights, I think) you get a choice of unlocking a sword or a shield. There are 4 of each to unlock (plus the starting gear), and you'll only get half of them if you play straight through. You need to re-play the correct levels to unlock the other gear. The shields you unlock include a nice mix of shields of different weights (which effects how fast you are) and blocking abilities, and they are fun to experiment with. 
            The fights are really fun and fast. Whether you're fighting a few minions, a pair of bigger enemies, or a unique boss, it's a lot of fun and great to look at. Much like other great action games (such as Monster Hunter and El Shaddai) the game's animation is really great. Every enemy and the player character all have tons of unique animations and interact with each other in great ways. Grappling enemies looks impressive and the finishing moves you can do on the enemies are very cool. The brutal finishers you use on the bosses especially stand out. There are also a handful of ways to use the environments to damage enemies, but I'll leave these for you to figure out as the game never tells you about them and some of them are shockingly cool when you discover them.         

            Character design is also really well done in this game. All of the enemies have a really evil look to them. They typically have some mechanical element grafted onto them. I wish there were action figures. There aren't a ton of enemy types, but each one is fully realized as a moving character and as a unique gameplay challenge.

            After you beat the game, there are trophies for beating each level quickly, aggressively, and without taking a hit. These are very fun to get. And something strange happens as you do this; you start to level up your items so that you can use them a lot more. Once they are all leveled up fully, you can really start to spam them and massacre levels that used to be very hard. The items are helpful but not over-powered during your first playthrough, but when you level them up by beating different levels a few times, they become extremely powerful. The game feels very different as you level up your items as you can start to just press L2 over and over to take enemies out. This helps you clean up the last few trophies you can get in story mode, and leads into the challenge pit.

            The challenge pit is a mode where you pick a difficulty level and then fight tons of enemies for points. You can use points at any time to buy certain advantages, such as re-filling your health and ammo for your items. You can only buy each advantage once though. Also, a timer ticks down as you go through this mode, and if it runs out, the run is over. You gain time by killing enemies. If you crank the difficulty up to insane, you start to see why the items become so over-powered if you play story mode through a few times. You need every advantage you can get, and you will still die often. That's because challenge mode throws bigger mobs than you are used to at you, and will even make you face off against multiple bosses at once in some cases. For example (mild spoilers ahead in whited out text): In one round you fight two of the last boss at once, and in another you fight 2 of the first boss and 1 of the penultimate boss at the same time. This is the fight I refer to in the next paragraph that I can't beat. Let me know if you beat it, I want to know if it's the last or if there are more rounds!

            Taking out two bosses at the same time is extremely satisfying, and also hilarious due to a great implementation of friendly fire between enemies. Insane mode takes the idea of fighting multiple bosses and enemies and runs with it. I can't beat it. I beat what I thought must be the last round in it only to have a new group of enemies spawn, and I couldn't believe what I saw.... the group that spawned killed me within a few seconds. It was beautiful. I don't know if I have it in me to get past that round... I tried the challenge pit with several different load outs and strategies, all of which were really fun and different. My high sore in the challenge pit is 259,680.
            After failing in the challenge pit for awhile, I decided to re-play the story mode without using items and only using the more lightweight but less powerful sword. This forced me to utilize moves I rarely used my first time through and changed the way I played the game quite a bit. The 2nd playthrough was a blast and was diametrically opposed to the way you have to spam items in the challenge pit. I highly recommend playing story mode again without items and with a weapon you're not used to.

            The game's music is another high point. It has some orchestral scoring, and some tribal sounding stuff, all punctuated by some cool sounds and themes that are all stuck in my head pretty good now. 

            Strength of the Sword 3 is short, but everything in it, from the gameplay to the character design to the way it presents itself are all unique, interesting, and well-executed. It's a short romp through the sub-genre of hard games that make you learn from your mistakes. Those types of game's are usually more epic affairs, but SOTS3 does so much right, it's a great little experience. It's easy to imagine it as a more epic-length affair with lots more enemy, weapon, arena, and attack choices, but as it is it's a stream-lined version of that type of experience, like a Monster Hunter or Dark Souls that you can experience in just a few hours instead of dozens. It's a great game, tier 2.