By: Nate
A brand new IP has hit the Playstation Vita and Xbox One. Stranger of Sword City is another Dungeon Crawler, RPG that pits players into darkness as they must maneuver their way out of the depths of the labyrinths. NIS America and EXPERIENCE have created a fun and interestingly new Dungeon Crawler.
In this dark fantasy world, you crash-land through a strange portal. Awakening as the sole survivor, you find out from a mysterious being that you are in the land of Escario, the City of Swords. Also, you quickly find out that you are the “Chosen One,” Stranger of Sword City. In this land that you must traverse, you will find yourself killing monsters and choosing alliances.
As you search for a way back home, you must overcome all the monsters, dragons, and loot that the game throws at you. Coming from the same creators of Demon Gaze and absolutely hating that gameplay, Stranger of Sword City does something different. You must avoid traps, perma-death and Life Points elements in order to survive this world. The gameplay has been infused with the new Ambush system which will challenge you to decide how much risk you are willing take in order to obtain the best loot.
In Stranger of Sword City, players can compete with your friends with the online leaderboards, but something that could be added in future titles from the developers would be to add cooperative gameplay elements to the game. The game also has an easy to learn leveling-up system. There is also a set difficulty meter before you start a new game which can help players adjust to the hardcore style of gameplay. This game’s setup is much better and easier to manage than Demon Gaze. This allows for more enjoyment within the game.
At the beginning of Stranger of Sword City, players are required to create a character. You can change the character’s artwork, name, nickname (this one will be shown throughout the game), stats, class, and more. The biggest negative I had with this section of the game is the lack of customization features to your character and the randomized bonus stats. The game will give you bonus stats based on your character’s age. You must play a randomized numbers game. You may get 3 extra points or maybe 11 if you are lucky. This feature will take you a good half an hour to a full hour to get a good number of stats.
Anytime that you are in the Strangers’ Guild, you can also recreate any type of character you want. These characters work the same as the very beginning, when you are creating your initial character. However, the difference here is that you can change their race to whatever you want it to be.
Towards the beginning of the game, you can only choose the human race for yourself. There is some confusion that may take place here if you are used to Japanese games having the circle and cross buttons reversed. Well, this game had a minor problem with telling me to press circle to continue, but the American version of the game actually did reverse the controls to fit the North American controller standards. So if you hit circle you will be going backwards and not forward.
Finally, the graphics of the game are average at best. During gameplay, the dungeons look bland and uninviting. The characters look good but could use some high definition contrast added to them. The game could just use some improved graphics and detailing to the graphics. The event scenes are good to watch for a little while, but the lack of voices throughout majority of the game can make a player have a need for more. There is also no English voices so the lack of Japanese voice actors had nothing to do with translating.
Overall, the game has fun gameplay mechanics but has flaws here and there. The graphics for Stranger of Sword City could be improved but look decent enough. Storyline content for the game is also ordinary and nothing spectacular.
7/10 – A fun game to play through, but has some mildly boring characters with hardly any voice acting. Stranger of Sword City has lots of little flaws.
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