2 hours ago
3
Amazingly, the thing that's sold me on Sword Sage: Awakening potential isn't the adorable red panda deity who poofs out of thin air to serve you restorative tea whenever you rest up at its cheery Soulslike bonfire equivalent - although I'll admit it comes close. As its silly tea-stop interludes suggest, Sword Sage - which joins the rising swell of China-developed Soulslikes drawing inspiration from the country's rich folklore - is doing things a little bit differently. But its most interesting ideas go deeper than mood.
That said, its cheerier tone is probably the thing you'll notice first. Compared to the sombre stylings of your average Soulslike, Sword Sage feels - in my hour-or-so hands-on time, at least - positively buoyant. That starts with its effervescent, pinwheeling protagonist Pei Sanniang - a novice disciple of the Yuangong Sect who, as the demo begins, is returning from a year of wandering. She's an endearing presence, enthusiastically animated, as she bounds up ladders, launches into furiously elegant attacks, and turns bogstandard jumps into silly mid-air twirls.
Pei and the sect specialise in the disposal of yaoguai, malevolent entities from Chinese folklore. And wouldn't you know it, there's a whole bunch of them knocking around as Pei begins her trip along the Cypress Path - a misty mountain pass of verdant greenery, rickety wooden walkways, and, later, cloud-swaddled pagodas skewering bright blue skies. Here, it's gentle birdsong rather than discordant moans that accompany the sound of swirling limbs and dancing blades, and, honestly, it's refreshing to play a Soulslike that isn't so obsessed with perpetual gloom. Whether that lighter tone persists, however, remains to be seen.
As I chart the Cypress Path, I'm funnelled along yaoguai-dotted pathways whose occasional branches afford a brief exploratory detour. Sometimes enemies amble out in the open, other times there's a bit of FromSoftware-style cheekiness to their placement - dogs tucked inside shadowy cavemouths that tempt passersby with glistening treasures, or yaoguai hiding under ledges so you get a surprise sword in the back as you drop on down. Every so often, I stumble upon a shortcut I can use to loop back to an earlier area of the otherwise fairly linear path. And at irregular intervals, a glowing kettle lantern indicates a place to summon Rosy Roundhound's impromptu tea shop, where I can rest, restore my limited elixirs, and reset the world.
So far, so Soulslike (tea panda aside), but it's a pacier sort of action-RPG too. There are no runbacks, for instance: XP is earned by completing quests and defeating yaoguai. And as you accrue enough, it's automatically turned into merits you can spend on upgrades sprawled across a busy skill tree. Nor is developer Sword Panda Games pitching its difficulty toward relentless punishment. Players who struggle to adapt to Sword Sage's idiosyncratic combat rhythms, or who find themselves at a boss-shaped impasse, will, I'm told, be granted various reprieves. And while we're talking combat, it's here I'm properly intrigued.
Pei's basic attacks comes from her exuberant swordplay; a rapid succession of slashes that gradually drain an enemy's Vital Energy until their defenses are down. This opens them up to a powerful Vital Strike capable of significant damage. She can also break enemy shields and cancel their defensive stances with a swirling kick, or block incoming attacks to negate damage at the expense of weapon durability. Weapons break quickly in Sword Sage, and when they do they can no longer block and only cause minimal damage. But before you roll your eyes, this isn't anywhere near as wearying as it might sound. Weapons can be reforged and restored to full strength, with a satisfying clank and whir, near-instantaneously at the press of a button. As such, weapon breakage is a minor inconvenience, but, crucially, adds an unusual secondary rhythm to a combat system that already has a distinctive flow.
And it's all about that flow. Sword Sage's big differentiator is its evasion system. Familiar rolls are replaced by Evade Cyan dodges and Strike Red counters. Hold the block button and tap the right stick at just the right moment and you'll escape harm. But match your evade to the direction of an enemy's attack - pressing up to avoid a high strike, tapping left or right to slide around mid-level attacks, or flicking down to avoid low ones - and Pei performs a dodge followed by a powerful follow-up counter.
But there's more to consider. You've got boon-granting talismans, craftable consumable relics including throwing knives and supernaturally enhanced firecrackers, and you can switch between two equipped weapons at any time (these appear to consist of a pool of standard 'types' that drop with randomised skill bonuses and stats as you play). All together, it makes for enjoyably balletic carnage with a satisfying rhythm of its own.
Basic grunts don't, admittedly, require Pei to flex her abilities too much, but that gradually changes as my demo goes on. One memorable encounter, for instance, involves two yaoguai; one with a massive shield and the other with a fondness for springboarding off it into a powerful dive, requiring a complicated bit of crowd management to keep them separated long enough to defeat them. Elsewhere, a red-headed mini-boss with a big sword, a love of booze, and the gut to prove it, highlights the importance of Strike Reds as you attempt to whittle down his Vital Energy gauge so you can properly open him up to attack. Still later, I stumble upon a monk-like mini-boss that tosses out throwing projectiles and frantic follow-up slashes so fast, my evade-counter-reforge-attack timing gets its first real workout.
But it's not until the demo's first big boss that Sword Sage's combat elements really start to coalesce and I get a clearer sense of how encounters might evolve. Like Pei, the towering Fangxiang Exorcist is a wonderfully characterful bit of design, jigging from toe-to-toe as he waves around some sort of spooky rock. Sometimes he swings from the side or grasps with his claws; other times he'll do a powerful overhead pound sending shockwaves across the floor.
He's also got a sizable Vital Energy pool to deplete, and goes big on the unblockable critical attacks - meaning directional evades are essential for survival, while follow-up counters are necessary to prevent the battle dragging on so long your restoratives have entirely depleted. In other words, he's a formidable adversary; a proper test for my fledgling fighting skills and the first time I'm really forced to observe and respond at speed, to adopt a more instinctual approach to evasion and reforge timing. And it makes for an enjoyable dance.
Fangxiang Exorcist feels like a strong place to end my demo then, piquing my curiosity for the adventure to follow. And on that front, Sword Panda says Sword Sage: Awakening should take between 12-18 hours to complete, depending on a player's thoroughness, as its three chapters unfold. Each chapter promises four bosses between the various branching routes forward, while the third, intriguingly, is said to switch things up with a more open, go-anywhere sandbox style of play. There's no release date for Sword Sage yet, but when it does show up it'll be on PC and PS5 - and Sword Panda hopes to eventually add Xbox and Switch 2 to the list too. I'll be keeping my eye on this one, and not just because of the panda.
This preview is based on a hands-on presentation at Gamescom in Cologne, Germany. 4Divinity provided flights and accommodation.
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