Sword of the Sea (PS5)
When you set out into the deserts of Sword of the Sea, what might first catch your eye is the way the sand moves. Ebbing and flowing more likes waves instead of sand dunes, you’ll quickly realize this is because the desert truly is the sea once you can restore its original state. Not only will you bring water back to the land, but even before you revitalize the world, you’ll surf across it as if it was the ocean, Sword of the Sea’s gameplay almost a mix of surfing, skateboarding, and exploration, all while using your hovering sword as your tool of travel.
Sword of the Sea sees you playing as a Wraith, a statue warrior that has been animated by a stray drop of water and sent out into a world left barren by an ancient cataclysm. Poetic steles nestled across the land will tell you the story of how the world came to ruin, an almost mythical history told until parts of it start to appear during your work returning the land to the vibrant sea it once was. Doing so isn’t terribly complicated either, there are specific points in the land where you jab your sword in to instantly convert a stretch of ground back into ocean water, and even when you first perform what will become a common task, the visuals tied to it always are splendid. The water is gorgeous, the player now able to see beneath what was once desert with thriving coral reefs under the glistening surf. You might think you’d spot fish and similar aquatic life in these waters too, but Sword of the Sea takes a more exciting approach to bringing them back alongside the water. Since you’ll never plunge beneath the surface, instead the fish are also now above the surface, swimming through the air in schools that often guide you towards the next area of importance or linger in one of the more expansive spaces you have converted from ruin to thriving ecosystem.
Sword of the Sea is a fairly relaxed adventure, only a few climactic moments near the end having time pressure or major dangers. Instead, Sword of the Sea wants to drink in its spaces, even the wider ones feeling like they’re not too overwhelming but containing little things to uncover should you explore. The lore steles are perhaps the most important, your character able to emit a pulse that is sometimes used for activating objects but also can clue you in to a nearby stele, but there are other collectibles hidden about. Seashells reward you for skillful use of your Hoversword, and the sword itself is inherently a joy to use. Its smooth turning and great speed allow the game to create wide open spaces that don’t take long to cover but still give a sense of scope and gravitas, and poking at the corners for extras isn’t a tedious task. Tetra, a type of golden triangle, can be found all throughout the areas you explore as well, a small reward that serves a bit like a currency you turn in to the Mysterious Vendor to expand how you can move. Some of these are less crucial, being able to do new tricks while in the air more a way to increase your opportunities for enjoyable movement, but there are a few trick challenges to find that reward Tetra if you can pull off a good string of tricks. Some upgrades like making your jump go higher though are materially helpful in exploration, especially as you start heading away from sandy wastes and more towards areas with large ruined structures to navigate or even different climates like a snowy mountain.
Tetra is also a great way to encourage the player to appreciate the beautiful environments even more. When you change the world around you, the schools of fish may be pointing you onward, but the space you revitalized has a lot of lovely sights to find and now new clusters of Tetra to encourage you to do so. Different areas will have different fauna appear when the water returns, and should you hop aboard the back of larger ones like sea turtles or whales, you can even ride them through the air for a nice tour of the altered land. The Tetra helps to make you take the time to look back on the change you just caused, but moments like riding atop a large animal have a majesty that makes basking in the moment its own reward. Sword of the Sea isn’t a very long adventure even if you do search around for secrets either and so it’s able to progress at a strong pace if you do remain focused on progress, taking time to linger and appreciate the sights not dragging out or slowing down the experience much either.
Over time, your Hoversword gains a few new crucial abilities as well and you’ll be finding areas that allow you to move in new ways. As befitting the skateboard game influence, you’ll find halfpipes you can use to build momentum and reach higher areas or objects to grind across, the PS5 controller even making subtle sound effects itself to make the actions more layered and satisfying. The main story, told through voiceless characters, even begins to find a bit of a heart that doesn’t need words to be shared well, while the music can suit its meditative and relaxed exploration well. The soundtrack even managed to win a Grammy, it only really demanding your attention during the occasional story moment of higher intensity, but the calm instrumentation and longing vocals work well for moving through desolate areas, trying to find the ways to restore vivaciousness to them. The simplicity of your tasks can make certain activities start to feel a bit samey, collecting more rings of Tetra in the later areas not as compelling as pressing on to see the increasingly ethereal and supernatural sights that come with coming closer to the fundamental elements of this setting, but the movement itself never loses its charms and won’t let you down, Sword of the Sea instead having to erect some invisible walls or make rocks a bit too slippery to try and rein in how effective you can get at crossing spaces in creative ways.
THE VERDICT: Sword of the Sea sees you restoring beauty to a tarnished land, the gorgeous waters and the floating aquatic life a visual treat but not the only tool in this relaxed action game’s belt. The movement is smooth and enjoyable to test the limits of, exploration rewarding because of the goodies and lore to be found in a world built to provide plenty of satisfying ways to move aboard the Hoversword. The music and even the subtle story can add some extra emotion to the experience, the quest to restore the oceans one with many vividly realized sights and standout activities even if the basics do become a little repetitive across the short adventure.
And so, I give Sword of the Sea for PlayStation 5…
A GOOD rating. Collecting Tetra does start to lose its appeal as you progress further, the Mysterious Vendor asking for so much for later upgrades while jumping around a space to gather it in small amounts starts to lose its appeal because of that delayed payoff. However, all the way through Sword of the Sea does deliver on new ways to explore aboard the Hoversword with the story granting new powers that can shake up navigation enough to keep the main course from becoming repetitive. New areas bring in new forms of movement like kelp you can use to float up to higher spaces and aerial movement gets extra tools so you can handle larger vertical spaces just as well as you could surf across the sand and sea. Moving around never gets too complicated and even the trick challenges don’t require much skill expression to overcome, but Sword of the Sea’s world keeps providing new beautiful aquatic sights to uncover on top of still bringing some variety in the spaces you explore before they’re changed. The sandy desert may be the start with some of the greatest intentional contrast between the lively waters and the empty dunes, but later spaces still manage to preserve the sense of beauty in seeing the ocean and life return to spaces by weaving them through ruins or adding them to already lovely locales. Optional activities do add more substance to the journey without feeling too necessary, save the steles that add a good deal of appreciated context to elements the Wraith encounters as the game’s storytelling becomes a bit more direct. It is more a game about a relaxed journey than an involved adventure, one that didn’t let moments of serenity or areas where you are left to appreciate the artistic direction feel like that’s all they have going for them. The movement, the exploration, it all adds a gameplay function to keep the player involved and give them a way to engage with the world rather than just being a witness to the craft on show.
Sword of the Sea is an art game of a sort, but it marries its artistic expression with the gameplay enough that it’s easy to appreciate holistically. The gameplay could be taken further if more explicit challenges were added, but the movement is already gratifying to engage with and enough optional content will encourage you to find interesting ways to use the environment and your abilities to reach the extras. Its story can’t dive into the most complex of subject matter or themes, but it still gets across a message that mixes well with its actual events, all while the art can captivate the player visually and with how it can sometimes intertwine with their movement. It may not hit as hard as a game purely devoted to the art or engross players in the way a mechanically complex and rewarding gameplay system might, but Sword of the Sea skillfully brings its concepts to life and in ways that are easy to appreciate and enjoy.