Okay, so this game. Man, this game. I promise whoever gives me the time of day to read this something actually worth reading, and I hope you consider it when or if you bought the game. However, before I get to what I like about the game, as well as my own criticisms, I want to point some attention to a few of the negative points I see brought up in reviews, and how I think a lot of them are unfair.

Now, allow me to preface that this game isn't perfect, and I don't think it's above criticism. Criticism is good actually, when it's constructive and fair. However, many of the negative reviews I see for this game, especially on Steam, fail to actually be fair with their points and/or illustrate ways they think the problem could be fixed.


Multiplayer is bad and doesn't work: Let me start off with one of the big ones, and that's the Multiplayer. A lot of people complain about the multiplayer for the game, and admittedly, the multiplayer isn't the best thing ever. It's run on peer-to-peer connection. Yet, many people disregard the fact that multiplayer is just supposed to be a little bonus on the side. It's not supposed to be the main mode of the game. It's like complaining that trophy rush in Smash Bros is sub-par, so the game is bad.

Okay, but that's not to say that people can't want good multiplayer, so what gives? Well, the thing is, servers are difficult to afford. The development team for the game have been thinking about dedicated servers for the game, but the thing is, that's hard to achieve, especially for a game like this, because it only gets revenue by people purchasing it. It's easy to forget how small the team for this game is, and how expensive servers are in general, not to mention with a game like this, which is physics based.

Despite that fact, they've been continuously working with what they have, and they're trying to make the currently serverless multiplayer run better, and to their credit, it has been getting better, despite the spottiness still there. However, I think that especially for something like this, we need to be patient. I'd feel differently about this if it was supposed to be a multiplayer game, and it was MAINLY advertised for its multiplayer. In that case, yea, the multiplayer should be better. However, multiplayer is far from the main point of this game.

Okay, I mention how singleplayer is the main point of this game, so lets talk about stuff revolving more around that.

The game is unfair or too easy: So, reviews on this game that mention the difficulty seem to be mixed. Some people say it's awfully designed and unfair, and other people say that it's too easy and you can just jiggle your sword around and win. I disagree with both of these. Especially the one about it being too easy, it's not the hardest thing ever, but, like, c'mon.

However, I'll say that in certain cases, there's some validity to things people say. One example I can think of is how much damage bombs do to you. Some of the little goblin enemies can throw bombs. They're quite telegraphed, and admittedly, they give you a lot of time to screw off away from them before they blow up.

...However, they should NOT take as much health as they do. Like, gosh, they take up absolute CHUNKS of your health for what feels like no good reason when you get hit with one. However, this is supposed to be a challenging game. I you can't entirely dislike the challenge game for being kind of difficult when that's basically the point of it.

But, it doesn't mean you can't call it out when it's straight up unfair. But, I personally feel that it's not straight up unfair that often.

Not to mention the fact that the game basically doesn't punish the player at all for simply using the cheat menu you can unlock in adventure mode. The game gives you a lot of freedom with how you approach it in many different areas, and doesn't reprimand you for doing something like turning the difficulty down in the settings and such.

I dislike being that guy, however I feel like a lot of the things people complain about when it comes to the game being unfair is an issue of them not giving it enough time. Which, especially if you're just trying it out, is sort of hard to do in under the 2 hours Steam gives before you refund a product. But the game is actually a lot more fair than people say it is. Enemy attacks are generally telegraphed, and while they can be fast, they're basically always react able by either parrying, or using the dodge ability you unlock. (it gives you I-frames)

Speaking of the parrying/deflecting system!

Parrying/Deflecting isn't good and doesn't work: To quote one of the top reviews for this game. "you would expect a game that requires you to spend most of your time parrying to actually have a functional parrying mechanic." However, it does work! In fact, in my opinion, it's one of the best parrying mechanics in VR. It feels super good. However... I think I know why people dislike the parrying.

It. Is. The. Tutorial.

The tutorial for parrying/deflecting is bad on so many ways that it literally gaslit a bunch of people into thinking one of the best feeling parries in VR isn't functional or doesn't work.

So, first things first, the area it gives you for the tutorial is really small. You'll spawn in, and it won't seem that bad, and honestly, after you're used to the mechanic, it actually isn't that bad, you'll need to parry in tighter spaces if you're in, say, a dungeon while you're traveling the halls, right?

Nevertheless, it's important to remember that this is the tutorial. Meaning in most cases, if you're playing this right now, you don't know how to do this. General defense in this game requires to you space away from enemies. It's a swordplay/weaponry game, so you have to treat your enemies as such. You don't get close to someone with a weapon if you don't have a plan.

But, the tutorial never elaborates on the fact that you should likely space yourself away from the enemy. And you might think "but why would it matter? like you said, it's a sword game, you're gonna do that already, right?" And that's the thing, you likely would in actual gameplay, the game requires it, really.

However, this is an early tutorial. They're not gonna do that. Because of how the human brain works, they're likely to stand dead still in place and try to parry the enemy, not making any effort to space themselves away for a better parry. Not that you can't, since you can totally do that, even with the enemy they give you in this tutorial while standing still.

Parrying is easy, heck, you can parry attacks with your fists if you want to, (it feels good to do too) all you have to do is swing the weapon in the general direction of the enemy's weapon as they swing at you.

This would be more excusable if the enemy made more of an attempt to space away from, the player. So, what gives? Well, you see, the enemy is a skeleton. You might think, "well why does that matter?" But the thing about skeletons is that part of their AI is the fact that they actively press and get close the player more than every other enemy type, getting especially close to you.

To make matters worse, it feels as if for the specific skeletons they chose for the tutorial value their (lack of a) life even less, since they get especially close to you. Again, you totally can parry them when they're super close, but it's a tutorial. You need to expect that the person playing it has no idea what they're doing.

Aside from the stale tutorial though, the actual mechanic is really crispy.


At the end of the day, I think this is a game very worth your time. It's not for everyone, and it can take a bit of time to get used to for some, but you'll be rewarded with one of the best feeling combat systems in VR! There's so much I couldn't get to in this review, but Steam didn't let me type as much as I want to. If you read this, thank you for giving me your time!

After 28 hours in the game I can confirm, it's eh.

Like if you take a break for a month and come back it's pretty fun because you forgot a majority of the bugs and everything.

Game is by NO MEANS perfect, it is far FAR from it. Honestly only good thing I can say about it is the variety in weapons, nothing else really.

The damage is real inconsistent and the bosses need rework because currently their only real difficulty is their health bar, especially the last guy.
Armor is a mad 50/50, like if you hit an unarmored spot is a 50/50 the game will count it as a stab/slice or it will just bounce and what makes it worst is they made some armor unbreakable, found that out while using the oversized orc hammer testing things out.
The sand in the last place just doesn't sand. Also, depending on what you're doing in the last part of the game, the map spams this lightning attack that plays the same exact noise constantly and it is LOUD. That mixed with a lot of other noise can cause some serious sensory overload to some people if the volume is not lowered, weird considering not many other things in the game are THAT loud.

In all honesty I could go one for another 2-3 paragraphs specifying things on why I call this game "eh". Yeah I'll probably come back to it once in a great while but not really something I would want to constantly play. And to those who actually read this far that 28.6 hours is in the span of a year and a half and the same issues persist, except they fixed armor slightly, you can stab the unarmored parts a little bit easier now. Went from 1/10 chance to a 50/50 for me at least.

Honestly can't really recommend it in it's current state.

one of the most unoptimized games I've played, also some of the bosses are way too hard, should have gave slow-mo early just like the beta