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Swords & Darkness [3DS eShop]

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    Swords & Darkness [3DS eShop]

    Sooo...is this a portable Demon's Souls? Well, not quite, but Swords & Darkness gives the impression that A+ Games and Arc System Works wanted to create a sprite-based, sidescroller version of From Software's famous game. Incidentally, they tried to do the same with Armored Core in Damascus Gear, but failed miserably...S&D actually seems a much more better attempt at whatever thye were trying to achieve, though flaws are evident even after a couple of hours.

    The story goes that a king uses the power of the Grail of Life to bring back from the dead his knights to fight a war, but then the king goes mad, revises even more knights, and these knights go berserk on the whole kingdom. You, as a young knight just back from some generic duties, undertake the task of bring back peace to the battered kingdom. All of this is told in the introduction movie, told in an hilariously overacting actress that, to me, seemed like she wanted to make a cornier version of Demon's Souls intro.

    Controls are very easy to understand: analog (or d-pad) moves your avatar, Y for normal attack, X for strong attacks, B jumps, R brings up the shield. A...does nothing. L brings up the items menu, arranged in a cruciform pattern and activated by pressing one of the four face buttons...and you've got throwing knives...and the recovery items are green grass bundles...
    Magic is performed through various combinations, one of the first is R plus Y to summon a series of light arrows.

    Beating up enemies will give you experience points, and gaining a level brings a certain amount of skill points to distribute between stats, though curiously upgrading strenght does not give you more hitting power, as that looks like something only new weapons can increase.
    There is a hub of sorts, where you'll be brought after dying. There there's a shop, a girl that restores your HPs and MPs, and a priest that...I don't know, he only talks and dialogues are in Japanese.

    There are no levels per se, but you are in a castle and free to explore it as you see fit, facing bosses when you want to. There are multiple paths leading to various parts of the castle, and very little indication on where to go. Music is very subdued, you face undead knights, one of the bosses is an executioner with a brown hood and a giant axe, the castle is in shambles...yes, there are a lot of Demon's Souls references here, and probably those that, like me, faced Demon's Souls as a knight will have more than one deja-vu when playing S&D.

    Graphics are cute, sprites have few frames but convey animations convincingly. All characters are blocky in their design, and I can draw comparisons to Rondo of Swords (rather unknown DS title) and Final Fantasy sprites on the SNES...the style is peculiar, but servers the game well. Backgrounds are polygonal and not particularly good looking. The touch screen act as map and equip screen, but the game pauses when changing equipment or assigning skill points.

    The problems with the game are manly that there's no enemy variety: so far only three enemy type, two of which are recolours and the third is a recolour of a boss. Everyone attack in the same way and has too much health for standard enemies (a problem shared with Damascus Gear), a fights drag way too much.
    Controls are very sluggish, though this might be linked to the character's stats.

    Sword & Darkness looks like an interesting title, unfortunately right now only available on the Japanese eShop.

    #2
    Nice first impressions, thanks! I already bought this based on the love from the guy who runs japanese3ds.com, but I've not started it yet. Sounds interesting!

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      #3
      I'm liking this game a lot. It's a shame that Arc System Works is reluctant to port their 3DS games outside Japan, I'm sure a lot of players will like it.
      The structure might not as open as I originally though. From the "hub" (a church), you can head in two different ways, but one leads to a (temporary) dead end. The second path has multiple choices, but with a couple of shortcuts, but ultimately leads toward

      two consecutive boss fights, as one path is an other dead end (temporary again, I guess) , and an other leads to a dragon that can one-shot you; you can damage the dragon and its attacks are easy to avoid, so technically you can progress through it, but the "correct" paths leads to a battle against two griffons and then a stronger-than-knight. After that, you encounter a princess and you press a switch that opens something.


      I was able to beat

      the griffons

      thanks to poisoned darts and what I've started to call the "f*ck you jump": you jump, press down and Y, and your character executes a downward plunge that attacks twice, with the second attack being 50% stronger than the first. That skill was acquired by beating...uuh...I don't remember :P and it's like magic, so it consumes MPs. The battle wasn't easy, but surely was fun.
      I've been spending a lot of skill points in dexterity and agility (or as the game calls them, dextarity and agillity) and controls seem more fluid, though not as much I would like.
      It takes a little while, but Swords & Darkness becomes a good title if you give it the chance.

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        #4
        And of course the game had to have its version of

        Ornstein and Smough, in this case a knight and a mage. At the first attempt I was able to kill the mage (and get his magic) but the knight killed me. Groan. And of course they would both respawn at the next attempts. After few unsuccessful tries, I tried the dragon one more time, and killed it. I opened the first deadend (huge shortcut) and the dragon was so kind to drop a sword that doubled my damage.
        Thanks to the sword I was able to kill O&S and, surprise surprise, the game reuses bosses as standard enemies, only that the enemies have an added poison effect to all of their attacks.


        This is getting quite difficult.

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          #5
          Is there any chance that the game will be released on us or euro Eshop?

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            #6
            OK, time to update.

            Since the last time I completed the game once, cleared the second cycle, and got almost halfway with the third.
            The concern of the controls being sluggish vanished, as the sluggishness was due to the character's stats. I would have made base movement speed a bit better from the start, as after 60 points spent in both agility and dexterity, I don't feel any difference.

            The second cycle adds poison to most attacks performed by bosses, and enemies get a bit harder, in perfect Demon's fashion.
            The third cycle doesn't seem to add anything or increase the difficulty, though I still have to find a way to access one room near the final boss. Said boss drops a different item each time, and aside that one room, the game's world doens't offer any other secret paths to unveil with each playthrough.

            Enemy variety is incredibly limited, and the biggest thing is that all knights acting as a boss have their own special move in addition to the previous ones. Standard enemies always circle you, and mages tend to stay as far as possible from you, with soldiers tanking. It's very basic, and once you get certain special attacks enemy tactics fall apart completely, but so far the combat has been fluid and never overly boring, despite its repetivness.

            Overall, I'm quite pleased with Swords & Darkness.

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