Sword Fight is an idle game where you slog through sword fights while training apprentices and buying upgrades. It's a pretty solid delivery of a manager idle game, but like several I've played lately, there isn't enough going on to really keep me entertained.
I will, however, begin by pointing out that this game tried. There's a mechanic of switching fighting stances during fights to improve your performance. Each fight is carried out across a series of parries, thrusts, jabs, and so forth, all the while reducing health and stamina of the competitors as necessary. To game that system, you can utilize defense stances early to retain your stamina, then strike with offensive once the enemy has lost their own stamina. And an upgrade actually increases your stats when you do this. That functionality should work like a mini game, giving players a reason to stay glued to the game.
But alas, that didn't really pan out well.
I'll tell you why it didn't work: This game, like lots of upgrade based games, suffered from a severe difficulty wall. And no amount of careful stance-switching can save you if you're too low level. And once you're too high level, that switching is meaningless. In any game where the skill is not directly related to the task at hand, it's tough to strike the right balance. And since I wasn't the one swinging the sword, this mechanic really almost never became useful.
And that brings me to why I think the title of the game is a bit off. I'm not really doing the sword fighting. I'm managing several disciples as they sword fight. My first go around, sure, I was the guy. But after that, it's all about teachers and upgrades and scrolls, and before you know it, the game has very little to do with sword fighting and far more to do with waiting for my masters to finish researching this upgrade so it's cheaper.
At any rate, as a Sword Fight Manager, it's delivers a good "tune in every hour or so" kind of idle game. I enjoyed letting it run to level some stuff up, then coming back to go around again with some incrementally better stats. And I enjoyed the fighting animation thoroughly, although it got old fast. Certainly compared to a game like Groundhog Life, at least this was pretty to watch and look at.
I also did very much enjoy the mission nature of this game. There were achievements to strive for, and those had in game rewards. So at all times I had clear direction for what I was trying to do. And it helped that some functions were hidden until they were relevant, so you weren't bogged down in complexity right away. It had a solid progression and I felt like I was striving for something real basically the whole time.
So, if you're a goal oriented person who is okay with running this game in the background and checking in every so often, this will be great fun. If you want more minute by minute interaction, a more clicker style game with faster turnaround or more meaningful mini game style action would be better for you.
Let me know what you think of Sword Fight in the comments!
Until next time,
Ryan
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