“A colossal blade has pierced the world of Armorial, unleashing a storm of enchanted swords from the heavens. Collect and wield an arsenal of these spellbound blades, turning them against the very force that summoned them. In this roguelike ARPG, you will defy the Celestial evil consuming the world!” – Steam Description

Swordcery is an ARPG with a lot of swords. Like a lot, a lot. You can get short swords, dual swords, katanas, greatswords, and they plan to add daggers soon. You go room to room in this roguelike 3d game. If you’ve played Hades or Binding of Isaac, you’ve seen the formula. You see the reward for the room before you select it, you go into the room and clear it/complete the challenge and you get the reward.

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Testing Your Blade

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The meat and potatoes of a game like this is combat. You can hold up to 4 swords at a time and you can switch between them with a radial menu on the fly. You can decide to use 4 of the same weapon type, but different elements or maybe different status effects. I really liked the Katana weapon type, so at one point I had a katana that inflicted bleed and another that did shadow damage. I was able to find perks and upgrades to synergize with that playstyle. The combat feels slow and clunky, like you’re underwater. There is a lot of animation lock with the weapons and it feels so bad to play which is a shame for a game where.. combat should be the focus right?

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Sharpening Your Sword

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Throughout your run you can get upgrades to add perks to your weapon types. These can range from augmenting your light or heavy attacks to adding elements to your weapons to interact with weaknesses more. You can find a shop room to purchase new weapons, new augments, or health potions.

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The Hub

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There is a hub where you can build up your meta progression between runs. This can range from the Sword Alter giving you talent points such as “More Max HP” or “Bosses drop more Gold” or “Shields recharge faster”. They are all very lackluster for upgrades and none of them really improve the core problem that the gameplay feels like it has. You can also unlock the Blacksmith which can let you unlock new weapons and test out weapons that you have unlocked already.

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• Graphics– Low poly graphics but in a less than charming way, almost playdoh but not. It’s not a vibe.
• Gameplay– Hack and Slash combat SHOULD feel satisfying but it doesn’t. The moves feel like they don’t come out when you want, the heavy attack is abysmally slow and for some reason that is by design because one of the talents you can unlock increases the speed by 0.1s as if that would do something? The devs seem to acknowledge it feels bad but gives a meta progression of “Hey play it enough and maybe you’ll get a smooth moveset”
• Sound– Sound was okay, sound would loop at the end of a run sometimes with a death groan which was annoying, but more so that I let it go for a couple minutes in the background before I realized it was just a looping death groan.
• Controls– The controls feel just off. It’s a mixture of I’m underwater and I’m also swimming in molasses. It’s water molasses and I don’t like it.
• Story– The story is silly and the level of whimsical the devs were going for. This combined with the puns was the highlight of my time with the game.