Steel Sword Story Reviews

A neat pixel-art action platformer, from the creators of 1001 Spikes. The game has its flaws, but is still worth the price tag. When it was over after about two hours I wished there was more. The game has four levels divided into several section, where at the level end a boss awaits. You have your basic sword attack, a magic fireball, that consumes mana and a healing potion, that you can use a few time. All these mechanics can be upgraded by items you find in chests though the game. There are a few other mechanics you can buy, like a double jump. Some technical issue I noticed are button presses, that are not registered sometimes (e.g. the double jump) and some minor slow downs. If you read the forum the slowdowns can be much more serious, as other people reported. Another issue are the settings, which are quite limited (no v-sync, no button remapping) and are presented in an overlay UI, that doesn't fit the pixel style and feel out of place. I hope the developer someday revisits its games, like they did for 1001 Spikes, to turn the "neat" from the beginning into a "great".

Check out my review video here https://youtu.be/-natwTnkTYo This game challenged me. I had fun while getting frustrated and I got better and managed to overcome and 100% the game on the hardest difficulty. More of a souls lite than souls like and easier while still providing a challenge. Did seem to not register me hitting the healing once in a while but nothing game breaking. Didn't experience any unplayable frame rate drobs that some reviewers claim made the game unplayable and controls seemed right on point. A satisfying short game for me

I'm torn on how to rate this, because I don't see it really sticking with me the way my favorites do, but it also was a fun little snack of a game. Caveat: I have not had any of the input or graphics issues reported elsewhere in the comments. Towards the end of the game there is some dramatic slowdown for effect that I mistook for performance issues, but it was only with some very specific stuff at a dramatic fight. In terms of gameplay, the controls were snappy, and I liked the modernizations, like estus flask-style healing and invincible dodge roll, and I had fun. The Casual difficulty is a breeze, I beat it in under 2 hours on my first playthrough, but I felt engaged enough by the challenge that I was never bored. I think the Gamer difficulty just takes out the checkpoints; it didn't feel significantly different to me otherwise. Overall, it was totally with the $2 I spent on it on sale, but I don't know that I'll look back on it in the future the way I would with Touhou Luna Nights or Momodora.

This game is... alright. I almost clocked 2 hours of game play. But half of that was probably me trying to find something to listen to in the background while I mindlessly play this game. I had some input issues here and there. I feel some of the bosses had unavoidable attacks. You also have to purchase the ability to auto attack while holding the button down which they call a "combo attack". The ability to vacuum up gems so you "Don't have to go running after them." takes several seconds to kick in OR you just run over and get them yourself, because you'll forget you bought it. Don't run too far or it just wont work all together. Also, nothing bothers me more, than blatant, "hur hur, lets have a "You Died" screen for the lawlz." It makes me roll my eyes and think this game, is probably going to be trash. I don't think your dodge rolls give you invincibility frames and your dodge roll is so short, you cant use it to bypass an enemy without taking damage. What I do like is the art style. I'm a bit tired of the whole pixel craze that is STILL going on, but its nice. Animations and music was passable. Pretty good enemy variety. I'm struggling to find positives really. It wasn't really even worth the 4 dollars I paid for it. The writing is cringe to forgettable. The time it takes you to read this review, would be about as fun and as long as playing this game.

It's a very simple game. It's recommended for controllers, not keyboard. If you're dead set on using keyboards, the game tells you to click F1 to open the game settings to change the options. When I first started, the controller did not control the character. After a quick turn off and on, it started working fine. Controlling the character feels good. It feels similar to a souls-like. You attack, dodge, and jump. However, in the early levels, the level design is very simple and unfun. It's basically a straight hallway with some hills, pits, or secrets where you go from left to right. Not to mention, the space is very cramped with enemies that damage you on contact. So it's difficult to actually engage in combat without rolling into enemies or rolling off the platforms. I started jumping pass all the weaker enemies and just grab any chests I find and maybe kill one or two enemies that I know will drop a good amount of gems. This game has potential, but it requires some tweaks. I would suggest updating the early levels. Something like make the character drop down a couple feet and make them move right for a bit. Introduce more dead ends and collectables. Maybe introduce some minor platforming. Also, maybe reduce the roll distance so you don't accidentally roll into enemies.

Great little platform action game with very light upgrading. While it's only a couple of hours (maximum) it provides a brisk, enjoyable adventure with very satisfying gameplay. For the price I'd have to say it's worth it.

Steel Sword Story is a short 2d platformer action game. Think Zelda 2, Kid Icarus, or the like. It has basic RPG functions, like levelups, a currency, equipment to find, and more. The story is pretty basic: A Prince in exile on a journey comes home to find his land taken over by an evil Overlord. Time to go kill the bad guy. The game's controls are responsive and work well enough. Nothing ever feels "grindy" as you're levelling up and get new equipment. Your character gets a sword attack that upgrades, a basic magic attack that upgrades, and then movement capabilities and defenses that upgrade as well. Some of these are in pretty out of the way locations that you'll need to actively search for - I was impressed with how hidden some of the areas were. As you go through locations, you come across checkpoints, and ends of levels, and of course the usual bosses. I mention checkpoints specifically, because it's important to note: Checkpoints are where you spend currency at to upgrade your max HP and max MP. I completely missed this until the last 2 stages of the game, and inadvertently made it much more difficult on myself than I'd ever needed to. Enemies are the usual sort of castlevania-style affairs. Melee, ranged, big defensive things, flying things that only exist to swat you out of the air, and so on. Later in the game's last few stages, generic enemies all become mini boss battles in themselves, especially the shielded spearmen, when require thought and reflexes to fight, as opposed to spamming attack. The first two bosses were huge difficulty spikes for me, and later in the game you're forced to go through long gauntlets to beat stages and carry on. These will probably represent the most difficult points in the game for most players - the first boss and then the last 3 stages of the "Castle" proper. Luckily the game overall isn't very long and backtracking through levels if you die isn't too bad. Checkpoints are relatively generous, and the game saves your progress once you get keys or the like and use them. The game doesn't have a high price tag, so you get what you pay for here - a basic platformer hack and slash with a basic fantasy story and alright music. If you're looking for a small game to fill some downtime after a bigger game, here's where to do it. You can beat the entire thing in one sitting, probably two, if you prove relatively proficient at the genre, so people looking for a huge challenge shouldn't expect to get it from this. It's no Dark Souls, it just sort of wants to look like one. IT's more accurately an older-style Castlevania.

Upfront? This will make you pull your hair out, and not for the right kind of reasons. Disclosure: I played up to and beat the first boss. Your mileage may vary. ========== If you wait at the title screen, you get a plot setup: You're the only knight capable of fighting against the monsters. You get kicked out of the kingdom as excessive punishment for what is probably a setup. No sooner do you get a mile from the castle, you notice that it's strangely on fire. How does stone burn like that? Off to the rescue! Instead of going back the probably level path you came from with a horse, you throw yourself off a nearby cliff to start plowing through the wilderness! You won't be playing this one for the plot. It's just a setup for you to be an almost ungeared hero trying to save a fantasy kingdom. --- Graphically, it looks pretty. Even got a pretty neat animation from one of the thrower-goblin enemies when I swatted his axe out of the air right in front of him. The particle effects on fire are nice, too. Visuals can get kinda fuzzy-looking on bigger monitors. --- Music seems fairly fitting, though early play didn't have the headbangers that get stuck in your head like some other titles. --- The game setup is mostly broken down into screens, each represented by a pip on the map. The map is accessible from your horse who apparently has teleportation powers and shows that the game is laid out very linearly. The catch is that you can use the map to travel back to previous areas, allowing you to search for missed secrets or farm up currency to buy upgrades. This is novel. I like this. --- The gameplay itself on the harder difficulty shows it's teeth fairly early, roughing you up a good bit as you are learning the controls and getting used to them. One of the first things you'll notice is that the interface does not accommodate keyboard players. Everything is displayed as controller inputs. Minor annoyance. Another early thing I noticed is you swing a sword and create an anime-style vacuum wave projectile. Not a problem. But it has recoil for hitting walls and blocks and enemies. Huh? The game has opted for the classic "enemy bodies are hitboxes" logic which leads to an interesting interaction. Many enemies don't go poof when die in the air. They fall and poof when they hit the ground. This is normally fine but here they are still considered active enemies with hitboxes until they touch down, so be careful if you're trying to go fast. This is probably what led to a bug where I had an immortal enemy with no HP. I... did not enjoy the first boss. The boss has an attack with a wind-up visual cue that 1) is layered behind the player so it is often difficult to see and 2) sometimes just didn't appear before the attack at that spot. The visual cue is used for an instant-speed strike so it felt rather cheap. I'd say around half of my deaths against this first boss felt like I wasn't being skillful enough, and the other half I felt cheated. --- Directional controls tend to feel rather nice and snappy, but some of the animation locks feel unresponsive. In particular, not being able to attack for the first 1/3 of your jump feels kinda bad. The keybind window only tells you the corresponding controller button, not the actual function. I suspect that the right analog stick is used to aim magics, but I'm not sure because I'm a keyboard user and that would require a third hand. The menu windows also disappears on screen transition. Annoying, but you can set your keys once you're in the first stage without issue. ... And then it starts eating your button inputs. Fairly regularly, about every minute or two. For either action or platforming (or both combined) games that are trying to be difficult through technical performance, this is a grave issue. These games tend to be either hectic or precisely planned at the top-end difficulty, and eating inputs screws with both of those playstyles. I can only tear at my hair for so long for issues like this before I call it quits. ========== Graphics and sound I can do without, but "cheap" difficulty and unresponsive controls are big turnoffs for me, plus a bunch of minor annoyances. Not recommended.

A nice little game that could maybe even be great with a little polish. Suffers from V-Sync issues that I fixed by enabling it through nvidia control panel but the biggest issue I had was with unresponsive controls. On many occasions I had to press buttons multiple times to produce the desired move both in the heat of battle where cool down could be to blame but also in regular play. Despite those issues I still enjoyed the game. It's reasonably challenging, has a charm to it that I dig and the music is excellent at times.

An extremely unpolished small game. Sluggish controls and even more sluggish frame rates for seemingly no reason. Rather easy but there's some amount of exploration you can do though the rewards aren't anything too fancy. If you want a game similar to this one but with much more polish try out the Momodora series.