Thy Sword

Genre: Arcade / Action-Platformer

Players: 1-2 Co-Op (Local)

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Review:

Thy Sword is an Arcade-style Action-Platformer released on PC in 2017, then ported to PlayStation 4, PlayStation Vita, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch in 2020. This game has players fighting through randomly-generated rooms full of enemies in a medieval fantasy setting.

The presentation in Thy Sword is delightfully retro in style, featuring some nice (but tiny!) 2D pixel art visuals and a chiptune soundtrack along with a wonderfully cheesy rhyming narrative. While there’s nothing extraordinary going on here, it all does a great job of hearkening back to older, simpler games.

The gameplay here is at its core pretty good too, with players jumping and hacking away at enemies with their melee weapon or taking their time to aim a shot with their limited-ammo bow. In each of the game’s levels, players have the simple goal of defeating all enemies in order to open that level’s exit.

There are a few problems here, though. The hit detection for your attacks is extremely finicky, and I found that it was particularly a crapshoot when enemies were too close. In order to be effective with your tiny sword swings, enemies really need to be standing in a sweet spot where they’re not too close and not too far away, and it’s not always easy to line that up the way you want.

Another issue is just how very repetitive this game is, with players facing the same group of enemies over and over again for multiple levels before moving to a new area, with nothing really changing except the platform layout and which enemies you’re facing in each level, neither of which makes for much variety. The game also shows promise in an upgrade path for players to acquire new and better weapons and passive abilities, but these must be purchased with acquired treasure that comes at such a slow trickle during the game that you’ll get these upgrades at a glacial pace.

It’s a shame that the slow progression, repetition, and hit detection issues dull the impact of Thy Sword, because otherwise this game had all the ingredients to be a really enjoyable throwback Arcade-style Action-Platformer. However, with these issues, this becomes a game that’s merely “okay” instead of something better.

tl;dr – Thy Sword is an Arcade-style Action-Platformer where players slash their way through rooms full of enemies. This game has a lot of great retro-style charm and appeal, but it unfortunately suffers from issues with frustrating hit detection, repetitive gameplay, and slow progression. As a result, what could have been a great throwback game is instead just a decent one.

Grade: C+

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