SWORN Steam Charts & Stats

The game play is snappy and fun, i wish there was a bit more story woven in even at this stage.

I've put a lot of time into this game over the last couple weeks and have been having an absolute blast playing it with mates. There are definitely far more positives than negatives, I struggle to understand the mindset of people who have a couple of minor gripes with a game yet consider that grounds enough to leave a negative review. Not saying some of the complaints aren't valid, but with a bit of thinking you can get around most of the issues. Pros: -enjoyable gameplay loop, with a lot of potential build variety (4 classes, each with 16 combinations of weapons + spell) -lots of synergies between fae gods, in particular the "Duo" blessings make for some great build arounds -varied boss mechanics, each miniboss and Act boss feels unique compared to the others -co-op. Enough said. -fighting feels responsive and enemy attacks are well telegraphed. If you screw up, it's usually on you. Whether or not some gamers have the humility to admit personal fault is another matter... -decent hub progression until the endgame, there are a lot of things to unlock and make your character more powerful over time. The flip mechanics in both the skilltree and weapon upgrades are ingenious ways to give players more agency in their builds, huge fan of that design decision. (one node has two potential options for upgrade, you "flip" to pick the option you prefer - can be changed at any time prior to a run) -especially enjoyed how you can unlock certain mechanics in the run itself (like the ability to exchange blessings at alters after Act bosses - eg I could exchange a Legendary Mab blessing I didn't need for a mate who was running base Mab, in exchange for a blessing that he didn't need. The system isn't perfect since there is still RNG in what you can offer but that's what the reroll dice are for!) Cons: -the lock on system isn't great when there are a lot of enemies around, can make it hard to select the target you want on screen. For those who express annoyance that their arcane shield spell would target enemies instead of themselves when locked on... well did you consider unlocking targeting, casting the shield on yourself, then re-targeting the enemy? It's not rocket science mate. -the bosses do get repetitive after a while because there are only 2 miniboss options in each Act (around room 10 of each Act) and one specific boss for the end of each Act (around room 15). This is great for helping players learn mechanics of each boss for the first few runs, but once you're on run 20 it is a matter of "well here we go again old chap". More boss variety (especially Act bosses) in the future would be nice to see. -balancing of bosses is a little off, of the two options of miniboss you get in Act 2 and Act 3 I would argue that each one has an easy one and a hard one. Complete RNG which you receive, however with practice and learning of mechanics they are all very doable regardless of the build. -the fae blessing book could use more information, while it shows all the blessings you have encountered during runs it doesn't specify any pre-requisites the skills may require before they have a chance to show up as a blessing in a run. Showing that the light blue+yellow god Duo blessing requires "freezing chill, bitter frost and any yellow blessing" would be a good step towards clarity for players trying to theorycraft their next run. -there is one particular room type you can only traverse in Act one which is basically a run through a heap of traps, nothing else. Exact same layout every time and particularly unfun if you get a modifier like "-100% trap resistance" (double damage from traps). There is no indication that the next room you select will be this trap room, it's complete RNG. I would remove it entirely tbh, or have at least 5 variants on the layout/traps. You see it about once in every three runs but it absolutely sucks xD -RNG is a fickle beast. You can go in with a build plan and the maximum of 8 rerolls and not get the particular god you want at the first banner. Adapting to the RNG is part of the game but I can see people wanting a bit more agency in their runs. Personally, I would appreciate the option to toggle on/off some of the mechanics we unlock through Guinivere. Going back to the exchange alters I mentioned in the pros section, they share a slot with alters of sacrifice (which let you drop a blessing for resources scaled based on the rarity of the blessing dropped). When playing with mates the alters of exchange are a lot more fun for team-build synergies, so being able to toggle off the sacrifice alters would be a nice change. Overall, Sworn is a hell of a lot of fun, I know I wrote a lot more words in the "cons" section but that was more to provide constructive feedback for the devs than an indication of poor gameplay. I highly recommend picking it up with friends, just don't expect hundreds and hundreds of hours out of it in the current state. At full price you're paying about a dollar per hour of gameplay (that's australian dollars btw, about 40 dollars in that case!)

Very reminiscent of Hades, but honestly surpasses it in a couple places. The co-op works very well. Excellent music and visuals is a plus.

Hades with friends is just a great concept, very fun.

Too many options for "blessings" making it so you cannot on some runs even add all your weapon skills. Some options are useless and adding them makes it so you cannot possibly get a good combo. If they removed all but 1/3 of the bonus blessings it would probably be better. Also the story doesn't grip you as much.

This game is swinging well above its weight. There's a lot to like here, but not enough to convince me that it's really worth it. I try to base any game value based on hours to dollars, and it narrowly scraped that margin before the game became a nearly pointless endeavor to continue. Hades is the obvious inspiration here, and for everything that game does, I can't see a reason to favor this instead, and here's why. The characters are unfortunately lifeless. King Arthur is a big bad evil guy, his knights are all just mute monsters that don't have a lot of reason for being the way they are aside from serving the "plot", whether or not there is one. Merlin ceases being useful the moment you play the game, and everyone else just repeats their lines ad infinitum, providing no engaging reason to speak with them unless you've got an item or upgrade to buy. There is a very clear scaling difference between the characters, and I'm dead convinced that if you play the Monk, you're a masochist who prefers needlessly difficult games. The Rook, the Specter, and the Vigilante all outclass the Monk to an absurd degree. Titania and the Ice Fae (forgive me, I never pick her for reasons I'm about to say), are significantly outclassed by their kin, with Babd, Lugh and Oberon due to this game's reliance on low-damage, frequently hitting damage. Crit, Attack speed, and Backstab are just much better than slowing down your enemy, or dealing periodic, middling fire damage to them. Even for the slower weapons like the Rook's cannon and hammer, doing a little fart of fire damage every 8 seconds is not enticing when you could be face melting them with a blur of furious hammer swings, or critting their legs off with a now and then cannon blow. Dominant strategy is very much the name of this game. You realize that all characters have one for every weapon, and usually it starts by ignoring the Heavy move. The heavy sucks on 75% of the weapons-classes. Ironically, the Monk's mace provides one of the very few strong Heavy moves, and then you realize you're playing the monk and you're just like "yuck". You will be better at this game if you ignore the heavy attack. There are just a lot of fundamentals this game got wrong in its quest to dethrone the champ, Hades, and even the multiplayer, while novel, will not save it for me. I paid the same price for Hades that I paid for Sworn, and I just don't feel like the game is cooked enough to be worth it. If you need something to calm you down after you've spent 100 hours in the Greek Underworld, maybe see if this one is on sale. Otherwise, sorry, it's mid, and has no longstanding appeal beyond being able to say, "hey it's just like that other game". Let me just add as an edit to the entire subreddit of two people who enjoyed the Monk; she is outclassed. She is not as good as the other characters. And Beira is not as strong as the other Fae blessings.

It's bad Hades.... but it has CO-OP so that's awesome. I wish there were more play styles...Lots of characters/weapons/abilities feel similar.. The end game could use more progression. Skins ext.... Enemies feel good with good variance in both mobs and bosses. All this being said my friends and I have had lots of fun! 7/10

Sworn has a lot of potential — the gameplay is genuinely fun and engaging. Unfortunately, it's still held back by technical issues. Multiplayer is especially frustrating right now; I can’t seem to finish a session with a friend without getting disconnected. In earlier versions, I would consistently crash at the final boss, though I haven’t made it that far this time to see if that’s been fixed. I really hope the devs continue improving the stability — maybe even consider using Steam’s backend for networking. Until then, it’s hard to recommend in its current state.

brother.... brother the amount of times ive lost my curser in this game is amazing... please make an option to either make it bigger or glow jesus. great game tho :)

It is high praise that I can comfortably describe this game as "multiplayer Hades" without any qualifying statements. This game is good. The movement and combat are snappy and responsive. The challenge feels mostly fair, and the enemies are relatively varied, requiring different tactics and approaches. There are enough room layouts to avoid them feeling repetitive but you'll have seen pretty much all of them by you 4th or 5th run through an area. Where this game shines the most is in the variety of builds on offer. For each of the four characters you can pick one of 4 weapons, each with two meaningful twists on the moveset, and one of 4 spells. So your starting loadout already has impressive variety. Then, throughout a run, you acquire blessings from gods that interact with weapons, spells, and each other in interesting ways, as well as upgrades to these effects and weapon/spell specific upgrades that further alter the base functions of your loadout. Obviously some combos are better than others and rng can be frustrsting at times if there are specfic options youre looking for, but you'll just as often be pleasantly surprised by the discovery of a synergy you had not previously considered. There are also metaprogression systems that make the first few runs particularly exciting as you quickly unlock new characters, weapons, spells, and encounters however you will quickly finish unlocking all the hub content leaving many currencies without a use. Visually the game is distinct and some areas and backdrops are very pretty. Art direction really carries the day here rather than technical fidelity. Main gripes with the game are that some of the mini-bosses [spoiler](small rat and siren)[/spoiler] feel significantly more difficult and frustrating than their respective counterpart. Game also obviously needs a little polish but i expect this will improve throughout the EA period. Overall Sworn gets a high recommendation.