Alright, excuse the trite headline but I’m tired and it’ll have to do to describe the difficulty of this unassuming medieval physics-based combat simulator. Think Kingdom Come Deliverance 2’s combat but with the realism dialed off the charts. One false move and you’re done. Life or death adjudicated by the accuracy of an errant slash from a grumbling peasant. There’s even a You Died screen.
Truthfully, it’s got more to do with rage games like Jump King, Getting Over It, and, more recently, Get to Work than FromSoft’s tough-as-nails output. It’s less elegant, more at the whim of luck than earned mechanical skill. It’s hard in that same flailing, limby way as these frustration generators masquerading as games. It’s having a bit of a moment over on Steam and amongst masochistic streamers thanks to a glitzy new update, but it’s still just a demo. The full 1.0 version is penciled in for this year. As for the name Half Sword, it refers to a longsword fencing technique where the fighter grips the blade itself along with the handle for a more powerful thrust. Who knew?
Why the fuss then? It’s hard to pinpoint without giving it a go. The fights are these unwieldy bouts of flailing limbs where anything goes. The cheaper and dirtier the shots, the better chance you have of coming out on top. It’s serious but silly and scrappy at the same time. And the controls are as frustrating as they are intuitive with movement conducted by frantic mouse swipes. Imagine every muscle of your body is affected by pins and needles (or paresthesia to give it its posh name). You know that feeling of walking on numb, prickly legs – a bit like accidentally missing a footstep but it happens every time you lurch forward? That’s exactly what Half Sword feels like, except you’re swinging period-accurate arms and constantly worried about the threat of a lethal gash or dismemberment.
Load in Half Sword and you’re met with a medieval choir chanting over a jagged hurdy-gurdy melody. Then there’s a screen asking you to select your displayed violence: gentle, gruesome, or grotesque. It’s brutality as a feature and that choice is no joke. On grotesque setting, realistic blood physics make for messy fights, bones crunch, and severed limbs litter the arena. Even when you’ve ostensibly won a tussle, you can keep hacking away at a corpse, pooling gallons of viscous blood and viscera onto the arena’s sandy floor. Keep Half Sword turned off until after bed time if you have young kids in the house. It’s that gruesome.
New with the demo is Gauntlet, a rogue-like-ish mode where you can progress up nine ranks unlocking fresh threads and ever-tougher opponents as you climb. However, it’s easier said than done. Dying in combat will boot you to a foggy pit similar to the gulag in Warzone for a last ditch attempt at not seeing all your progress disappear. Die there and back to the start you go, a lowly demi-nude slugger with a point to prove.
But, you’ll keep trying, cradling morsels of progress before you inevitably get on the wrong side of a gobby seven-foot-tall, scythe-swinging brute. It’s laborious and frustrating, but bundled into a game that makes no qualms about leaning into the absurd is a brand of chaotic that’s nothing quite like anything else out there at the moment. And when you do finally make some progress, the satisfaction has something of what you get when beating a tough FromSoft boss to it. That shapeless elation of not having let a game get the better of you. If you’re looking for something to keep you occupied for a few hours this evening, try Half Sword.
