If there was an "in the middle" button for this review, I'd choose it. The game is pretty fun, but somehow the demo is still more fun than the early access. I guess this is because the EA is heavily experimental. Which is fine, but the game has some definite flaws.
The dev team needs to decide between Half Sword being a full-realism medieval combat sim or a fun physics-based fighting game. Some of the "realism" makes me think the game is trying to emulate Getting Over It.
- My character will drop his weapon at any slight hit to his hands, and will also drop it very often when switching hands.
- Full plate armour is VERY effective. Which is extremely realistic. But, that doesn't add to the fun of the game. The demo got this right. It works, but in a "gamey" way. In the EA, I'll hit an enemy in the head directly with the head of my pollaxe 5-6 times, and the guy just gets up and it doesn't phase him.
- Half-swording can sometimes cut your left hand. Which is realistic. Does it make the game any more fun? No. Does it make it almost impossible to use any sword against any enemy past man at arms unless you cheese it? Yes.
There's a few other issues with realism, but I'd be getting into stupid little things that I'm sure will be fixed later on. There's a big issue with optimisation:
- Looking outside of maps, there are MASSIVE mid to high-poly landscapes that will never be seen. Massive shells of buildings that are WAY too detailed, tiny little details, textures that are extremely high quality for absolutely no reason, objects that are barely seen by the player that are fully modelled from behind and on the inside, and so much more. I'm so confused as to why this is kept in.
- Low quality settings are too high quality. I understand the argument of "buy a better PC", but there are plenty of people out here that love Half Sword, but can't properly play the game because their frames are capped at 15-20. It's not that hard to implement a feature where you can play the game in potato mode with minimum graphics. I've had to download two mods and lower the resolution scale to 33% just to play with 40+ fps.
Overall, game just needs a lot of work. It's nowhere near release state. A decision needs to be made to turn the game into a realism simulator or a fun replayable game.
