YMMV / Heavenly Sword

• Awesome Music: The entire soundtrack.
• Complete Monster: The Raven Lord counts in both the game and the film, while each version of Flying Fox does as well:
  • The Raven Lord, or the Raven King, the Ancient Evil responsible for literally all the misery in the setting, was a sadistic warlord rumored to be a demon from Hell who led a vicious conquest in an attempt to dominate the world, slaughtering countless innocents to the point humanity's numbers vanished "like smoke" before seemingly being put down by the Heavenly Sword. Living on in the form of a demonic raven, the Raven Lord facilitates Bohan's fall into evil and the subsequent massacre of countless clans and endless murder, angrily pecking out Bohan's eyes when his pawn fails in defeating Nariko herself. Leagues worse than Bohan himself, the extension of the Raven Lord's brutal sadism and bloodlust is shown fully onscreen despite his limited screentime, and thousands of lives are destroyed in testament to the Raven Lord's endless lust for cruelty and conquest.
    • Game: Flying Fox, the most vicious and bloodthirsty of Bohan's armies, murdered Kai's mother, using her corpse to convince a then-young Kai to come out of hiding before attempting to murder Kai herself. Flying Fox sends waves of his own men to their deaths at Nariko's sword while attesting to how much he loves watching them die, while remaining fully involved in Bohan's purges of all those he decrees "impure"; Flying Fox is indicated to have been the one to have eradicated Kai's clan. Flying Fox mounts and stuffs the corpse of Kai's mother years later purely to torment her, chasing and toying with her before attempting to hang Kai right in front of Nariko's eyes. Utterly psychopathic and drained of even his boss's redeeming qualities, Flying Fox is bar none the nastiest of Bohan's already-despicable army.
    • Film: Flying Fox, just as vile as he is in the game, is responsible for the massacre of Kai's entire clan, described as having made them "bleed" before killing Kai's mother. An unhinged sadist distinguished from even the rest of Bohan's armies, Kai giddily forefronts the genocide and subjugation of entire clans, including Nariko's own, and decapitates Nariko's long-lost brother Loki, intending to betray Bohan himself, and gutting Kai in front of Nariko simply to torture her.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • Hat + Gong = Door opens! Also, Kai loves fireworks.
  • "We may need you to play twing-twang" leaps into mind.
• Les Yay: Kai and Nariko
• Moral Event Horizon: Flying Fox killed Kai's mother, then had her stuffed, mounted and put on display. Years later, he shows Kai his handiwork.
• Once Original, Now Common: Heavenly Sword wasn't the first game with facial motion capture, but it was the first or among the first to push for "full performance" motion capture, creating a cinematic edge to its cutscenes that actually looked like real actors animated in the real-time rendering. To say this was a massive selling point for the game would be an understatement. Technology Marches On however, and within five years gaming would come far enough to usurp its impressive feats. By modern standards, one can see a hint of the Uncanny Valley like with L.A. Noire to see such lively faces on such outdated models, a then-revolutionary feat effectively made commonplace in most of the AAA gaming industry now.
• Player Punch: Sort of. The scene in which Flying Fox, after spending a portion of the game gleefully tormenting Kai, captures her and then proceeds to hang her by the neck from a really big height (apparently killing her in the process), deliberately doing it just as Nariko arrives, giving her zero time to react to save her is just plain upsetting. Nariko's anguished screams at Kai's apparent death really serve to make the moment hit even harder (but don't worry, Kai gets better).
• Scrappy Mechanic: Using the Sixaxis to control projectiles in mid-flight. Yech. Thankfully, you can change it to the control stick by going into Options and setting "Aftertouch" to "Off" under "Motion Sensors". Special mention to Dawn Siege, which has you trying to shoot teeny tiny targets on catapults using a cannon: twelve targets in all between the three of them.
• Tear Jerker:
  • The ending.
  • Also, the moment in which Bohan is lying, helpless and blinded, while Roach runs to his aid, telling him that he's going to take care of him and begging Nariko to "please let me take him home" qualifies.
  • The apparent death of Kai.
  • Nariko's death too.
• Tech-Demo Game: While a decent game in its own right, it's plainly obvious that it was one of the maiden voyage titles to show off the power of the then-cutting edge PS3 console. The game features epic sprawling landscapes, massive armies with troop density usually seen in RTS games, motion controls, and insane visual fidelity all throughout with stunning cutscenes featuring detailed mocap facial and body animation. It also has the performance issues that tend to plague games of this type (particularly Lair, another early PS3 title featuring similar epic landscapes and massive army battles, and the choppy performance that came with them.)
• The Woobie: Roach, a rare villainous example. Kai, as well.

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