Gigasword Review (Xbox): All About Balance

Metroidvanias and Souls-likes, two genres that a wide variety of games have built their foundations upon in recent years. That can be a double-edged sword. If executed correctly, it creates a rewarding loop that players can spend hours mastering. If done poorly, it becomes a much more frustrating slog. With Gigasword, Studio Hybrid has struck more on the former than the latter, presenting a dungeon-crawling experience where the weight of your weapon and your need to use it for puzzles give a new flavor to the genre. While I have some issues with some of the old-school design choices, overall, I found lugging around the massive blade throughout the dangerous castle environments rather engaging, and I figure it should be a delight for Metroidvania fans.

Striking A Perfect Balance

Starting with the most unique aspect of the game, the titular gigasword, which is the tool you use to interact with the world, from combat, to puzzles, and platforming, it becomes the most necessary part of your adventure. 

As the name would suggest, the gigasword is overly large for your character’s form, meaning it’s dragged behind you as you explore the world, but also provides extended reach against the monsters you’ll encounter. The sword serves as the catch-all tool for other combat abilities. As you collect ore from defeating enemies, the sword can be upgraded to heal you, shoot lightning, and fire bolts. The necessity to plant your sword and leave it behind adds some new life to your average hack-and-slash. Stabbing it into a moving platform to send it across a room makes your character lighter, with faster movement, higher jumps, and more mobility to allow for platforming and puzzles you simply couldn’t do carrying the massive blade. You trade off power and protection, but the switch in feel to the gameplay never made it feel like I was lesser; it’s just a different way to engage with the world.

Outside of that unique mechanic, you then engage with the more traditional trappings of a Metroidvania Souls-like. Moving from dungeon to dungeon gives you new traversal abilities, from doing 100-foot high jumps off certain platforms to charged-up attacks that break through walls, all the way to the mainstay grappling hook. As expected, these moves let you access new areas, explore sections of the map you’ve already been to, or even aid in boss fights. Nothing groundbreaking perhaps when it comes to Metroidvanias, but it’s always a joy to add something new to my repertoire to continue tackling the challenges ahead. 

Focusing on challenge, the Souls-like trappings utilize the best parts of that gameplay style, minimizing frustration. Resting at shrines heals you and is where you save, as well as the place to upgrade health and the gigasword, providing safe spaces amongst the castle’s many enemies. You will drop all of the upgrade currency upon your death, and need to get back to your body to retrieve it, but I was already fully upgraded over halfway through my play time, so even that Souls mechanic was a non-issue. The best part of that Souls-like design was the boss encounters, each one feeling unique, utilizing your newly acquired abilities. They were tough enough not to be a cake walk, but instead something I enjoyed working to overcome.

Have I Been Here Before?

I genuinely enjoyed most parts of the Gigasword gameplay, mechanics, and challenge, but one glaring issue I had was the map and the amount of aimlessness I felt traversing it. The map will be familiar to those who’ve played these types of games; a grid-based design that fills in as you move to different rooms of the castle, but it feels like an incomplete tool, and one that had me wandering aimlessly for longer than I wanted. As it fills in, it doesn’t add any markings or clues for what I’ve already encountered, causing plenty of backtracking to double-check I hadn’t missed a passage or necessary key when the trail ran cold elsewhere. 

The door markings on the map can even be misleading, as when I finally made my way back to it, it might be locked from the other side that I couldn’t access yet. I’m sure the inspiration from 90’s games was present here, with the idea of keeping my own notes written down in front of me to keep those memories in check, but in practice, I trusted the in-game map to provide me with the knowledge I had already seen, causing me to spend cumulative hours backtracking. It brought progress to a halt repeatedly and had me taking breaks out of frustration.

Final Verdict

Gigasword is a mix of an old school art style, Metroidvania progression, Souls-like combat, and the addition of a weighted weapon that changes how you solve puzzles and platform. All together it makes for an interesting and enjoyable gameplay feel that I was happy to engage with for hours. I felt less enthused about the aimless backtracking, which could have been fixed with better signposting or a more nuanced map. While those issues did frustrate me, I still would recommend this to folks looking for a throwback to older titles, with an original twist to keep things fresh for the modern day.

Gigasword was reviewed on Xbox with a code provided by Akupara Games. It is also available on Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, and PC.

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