Strength of the Sword ULTIMATE| a Review
originally published on 13/12/2024;
Hello everyone, I am the blademaster G.E.M.Simov, a wielder of swords so skilled I once killed a man, who was in China, by simply taking my sword out of its sheath. I am now going to tell you how I got so good with swords, beginning with “Strength of the Sword ULTIMATE”.
Simple review details - I rank games on an out of 10 basis, granting up to 3 points in 3 categories, as well as a last, single point from my own self, depending on my experience with it.
Gameplay
Strength of the Sword ULTIMATE (henceforth SSU) is a third person action game that’s got a lot of fighting game elements incorporated into it. Featuring an over the shoulder camera position and 11 levels full of action, as well as an endless mode, SSU is a Gameplay-first game, by the looks of things.
So, the Player Character (PC) is dropped into an arena and either singular or groups of enemies appear. The goal is to kill all enemies without dying. To achieve that, the Player needs to move their Character around (I will use a PS4/5 controller) with either the Directional Pad (Arrows) or the Left Analog Stick. The Right one does not do anything.
In addition to the movement provided by the aforementioned buttons, the Player can also press the R2 button to dash in the direction the Left Analog Stick is being pushed. If the Player presses the R2 button after dashing, the PC will roll in the direction the Left Analog Stick is facing. If the Player presses the R2 button after dashing and holds it down, the PC will start sprinting towards the enemy.
The PC can also jump by pressing the X button.
To kill enemies, the PC has Slashing attacks, done with the Square button, Stabbing attacks, done with the Triangle button, and the L2 button for a “special” ability, which by default is throwing a dagger.
Lastly, to defend themselves, the PC also has the blocking ability - the Circle Button - which, while holding down the Circle, makes the PC’s shield take damage instead of the PC. If, instead of being held down, the Circle button is tapped, the PC will perform a Riposte/Parry, or will at least attempt to do so. If a Riposte is performed right before an attack hits the PC, the enemy performing the attack will be staggered for a bit and the attack will be nullified.
Is that all there is to this game, though? No, for otherwise it would be very simple and, perhaps, it would not be very good. SSU features combos, grabs and all kinds of wacky performances. In short, the game might look like Dark Souls on steroids, but it is actually Tekken with swords and a different perspective.
There’s also a lot of resource management involved. Now, I mentioned that there is a shield health bar on top of just a normal health bar. There is also a magic bar - which allows even more combos to be performed, but gets depleted whenever they are performed. It gets filled up by doing damage to enemies and by holding down the Circle button in conjunction with the R2 button, but that gets unlocked at a later stage.
In fact, maybe two thirds of the combos in the game are not initially available and need to be unlocked by beating the Campaign. Though, at the same time, the combos that are available at the start of the game are more than enough to allow the Player to enjoy the combat.
Back to resources - there is also a Stamina bar that gets drained whenever the Player dashes or rolls (essentially whenever the Player presses the R2 button, if they want to dash, they need to have some Stamina). The Stamina bar is really only there to, perhaps, punish Players who are not doing anything other than dodging, because it is quite difficult to deplete it and it also restores very quickly.
Lastly, from among the resources to be managed, is the “special” bar which indicates how many more times the Player can use the L2 button (by default, that would be to throw knives).
Another thing that might see use, but is not explicitly a resource, are stage… Objects(?) Most arenas have something that can be utilized to kill an enemy, but due to the fact that normally the Player is focused on looking at the enemy movements and avoiding their attacks, it could be difficult to spot the stage object.
That coil be construed as a failure of the game’s Presentation, because the intractable objects are not properly highlighted, but at the same time it could be construed as a weird success of the game’s Presentation, due to the fact that the game is not only showing the Player what the Player needs to be looking at - the enemy - but has also so thoroughly captured their attention that they fail to notice these oddities in the stage.
Some stages have the issue of a difficult to discern intractable object, others don’t - it depends on the type of object and the look of the stage itself, though this is a secondary, even maybe tertiary aspect of the game that barely means anything. It’s just neat. Another neat thing is that the special attacks of some enemies can hit, and do damage, to other enemies.
Of course, the Player needs to also manage their Health, but seeing as the goal is, largely, to avoid getting hit through the utilization of the movement abilities provided, most of the time the Health bar is going to not matter. Why?
Because this game has a star rating system. Every level - out of the 11 that are in the Campaign - has a challenge for the Player. Beat it quickly, beat it without taking damage, and beat it by being efficient with your damage done. Upon doing one of those three things, the Player is awarded a star for that level, and each level can have three stars. Thus, the Player will be looking to not get hit at all, otherwise they will not be eligible for the “no damage star”, as a result of which managing one’s Health is not actually part of the goal.
Of course, in PvP it’s an entirely different matter and managing Health is very important, but I’m not talking about PvP.
Now, aside from getting Stars upon completing stages and meeting certain criteria, the Player also gets points for their performance in the stage. Those points are not exclusive to that performance, but, rather, they get added up to a point tally, and can then be used to purchase new Gear.
Before every stage, the Player will be offered to change their gear - which includes their sword, their torso, their shoulders, their legs, their arms, their shield and their special thing (the default throwing knives). Changing gear greatly affects the performance of the PC, making them slower yet way hardier or a lot more threatening, damage-wise, but also a lot more susceptible to being turned into a meatball.
There are many possible combinations focusing on different combos and on particular means of attacking, which, combined with the Endless Mode and the 3 Star ratings of the Campaign allows for an incredible amount of replayability. Not only does the Player need to learn the moves of the enemies in the Campaign - and there’s a good number of enemy types - but the Player also needs to get good at doing combos so that they can finish the job quickly.
With the addition of PvP onto that, it becomes absolutely incredible just how much this game can be played. Unfortunately, due to the fact that one can have different gear compositions, the PvP is inherently a bit unbalanced and a bit unfair.
Even so, the Gameplay is amazing, and even if it might, on occasion, suffer from wonky collision detection, it is still closer to being immaculate than not. 3/3
Presentation
SSU starts off very strong by showering the Player in intense, frankly epic music that I would not have expected out of a game named the way this one is. Not only that, but the sound effects present in just the menu are incredibly impactful, setting up the expectations for the game even higher than just the epic music.
Only to then have those expectations be tempered by the fact that the menu is not navigated by a mouse, nor is it navigated through the arrow buttons, but, rather, the WASD keys, which would not have been my first or second choice. Evidently, though, that is so because of the fact that this game was meant for a controller, due to the fact that the way to select an option from the menu is by pressing K, and the way to go back to the previous menu is by pressing L. JKL and I are the buttons that get themselves situated in the stead of the quartet of a joystick (whether it is ABYX or X, Circle, Triangle, Square).
Unfortunately, there is no indication that the WASD buttons are those that need to be used to go about in the menu, and since the mouse is also not operational, and Enter does not do anything, nor does Escape, the Player is more likely to assume that something is wrong than to consider pressing the unconventional navigational buttons. HOWEVER, the K button is very clearly shown to the Player and they are even told that it is how they select the option that is currently highlighted.
Again, this game leaves a very intense impression, because the menu moves, quite violently, alongside the highlighted option, keeping it centered while everything gets swiped up or down.
With all that said, all of it regarding the menus, does the rest of the game maintain that intense feeling and epic sound? Yes.
Now, the music remains epic throughout, and since every level of the game is a fight of epic proportions, that's fitting. But how come every fight had epic proportions? Well, here come the sound effects and the visuals.
As you've already been informed, SSU is a third person action game. It features a nice arena, which, due to the fact it is not meant to be interacted with, can be very detailed, as nothing in it needs to move, aside from the enemy and the PC.
That arena has a very particular appearance to it, which appearance carries over to the characters as well. Overall, this game has style, and that style is intense and slightly rough, but only slightly rough. It's reminiscent to MediEvil: Resurrection in appearance, and the style that the game goes for is similar to that. Gothic, but slightly cartoonish. Dark, but not dreary and dreadful.
The way things look is more than satisfactory, especially when that comes to the Player Character and the gear wielded by said Character, but those are all very secondary to the real puncher in the room, even if they are good.
SSU is like a very cinematic, very artsy fighting game, perhaps drawing inspiration from Street Fighter IV, maybe not. As a result of that, it amps up the visual effects to insane heights. When the PC swings, steam and wind flies everywhere, the attack feels so weighty and powerful that I'm left thinking that the enemy that gets hit is going to die in just one strike. The movement is also similarly mighty, with the sprint towards an enemy that is locked onto literally introducing black bars that change the resolution of the screen, indicating that the PC is zeroing in on the target, tunnel visioning on the goon in question.
Intense and Epic? Easily. It's so astonishing that I'm willing to end the Presentation section right now, but that's not even all there's to it.
The game also has a very good tutorial, which does its best to teach the Player the controls. Not only that, but the way the enemies are animated leaves clear indications that they are going to attack, allowing the Player to react appropriately. Similarly, some of the more powerful attacks have indicators on the ground, providing the Player with even more information on what's going to be happening.
User Interface like this might have previously been done, but it is still more than satisfactory - showcasing every resource the Player needs to keep track in distinct manners, leaving no room for mistakes.
Ultimately, a fight in SSU looks like something out of Hollywood, a lone hero against a bunch of goons whom he takes out with incredible efficiency, flowing between their frenzied blows like water.
And then the way the story is presented is also quite neat. Whereas one would have expected a voiceover, instead there was nothing but music and sound effects. The cinematics that tell the story do not use any words at all, yet everything is clearly conveyed, managing, through visuals and shape language, as well as colors and expressions, to get the Player all the context that's needed.
Simply put, Strength of the Sword ULTIMATE is incredibly good when it comes to the way it presents itself and how it looks. 3/3
Story
SSU has a story, though it is very bare-bones and only exists as a vehicle to move the Player Character though the levels and to introduce new enemies. It does not have a poignant message, it does not actually introduce Characters, it’s just set-up for the events of the game.
In short, the God/King of the Underworld, the Mechanist, sends an attack wave against the city. The God/King of the Overworld sees the armies of the Underworld assaulting the city and sends a metal man to fight them off. The metal man goes and beats up the Mechanist and saves the day.
The funky thing is that the metal man appears to be exclusively robot, while the minions of the Mechanist are mostly biological creatures with mechanical augmentations, which could be interpreted as some kind of boundary being crossed by mixing nature with technology or something along those lines. Regardless, there is no other story but the thing with the big bad and the big good.
It’s conveyed in a very neat manner, but it’s nothing special. 1/3
Legendary Point
Does this game get the legendary point, so craved and wanted by all and none at the same time? I’m thinking that it does. I’m thinking that this insanely intense, epic game that’s focused exclusively on Gameplay and making sure the feedback from that Gameplay is as magnificent as possible manages to convey such an amazing feeling that the experience is worthy of the Legendary Point. Yes, Strength of the Sword ULTIMATE gets it. 1/1
Conclusion
8/10. This is an amazing game. Fans of fighting games should give it a try, fans of action games should give it a try, fans of fantasy games should give it a try, fans of steampunk should take a look at it - it’s superb. Play it!
I tuck it under my belt, another shining achievement that I proudly display. What a gem!