Sword of the Sea Review – Gorgeous, Fluid, and Gone Too Soon

Sword of the Sea Review

I don’t play a lot of short, artsy games these days. Too often, the mechanical end of the experience feels lacking. Not so with Sword of the Sea. The whole game is built around this incredibly rad surfing/skating system that takes you all over a quiet, ruined world. Everything you do hinges on this fast, fluid movement. You slip through sand, snow, and water like a bullet on a silk sheet. It’s absolutely delightful. The story has a host of twists and turns, and the music takes you on its own remarkable journey. I only wish the whole game were a bit longer.

To be fair, this is a greedy desire more than a genuine complaint. I recognize that games like Sword of the Sea can’t overstay their welcome. This is a sharp, focused experience built around a single brilliant mechanic. If it were much longer, I’d likely have gotten sick of the whole idea. Even so, the game is good enough that you end up wanting more. Which you can have, to a certain extent. Wait, I’m getting ahead of myself. We have to surf to save the world first.

Sword of the Sea starts with your resurrection with a single drop of water. From there, we’re unleashed into the larger world, a vast desert in desperate need of hydration. Your job is to revive the magic that provides this hydration, through the power of sick board tricks. You surf to various vistas, triggering magical macguffins that bring water to a dying world. Halfpipes, huge jumps, and speed boosts also factor into the equation. All the puzzles are intuitive and perfectly fluid. Your progress through this incredible world is mostly pretty seamless.

A Relaxing Ride on Sandy Waves

I’m of two minds about this idea. On the one hand, smooth gameplay means you can really bask in the art of it all. There are a lot of amazing vistas and fabulous environments that benefit from some extra attention on your part. So an easier experience is beneficial. Conversely, you’re likely to blaze through the whole thing pretty fast. To that end, the length and the difficulty self-select for people more interested in taking that gentle tour of a slowly reviving world. Plus, the game is brief and beautiful enough that you’re more likely to dig into that new game plus, just to get a little more time on your sword.

This is a game built with repeated runs in mind. Sword of the Sea rewards you based on how fast you complete the game, but also based on the number of awesome board(sword?) tricks you pull off. I started a second file immediately, just to see what else was on offer. For people dedicated to the raw data, you get access to a speedometer as well as a scoreboard. So you can get downright granular with it. I’m confident that we’ll see some pretty amazing runtimes for this game before very long.

Short But Sweet

Even though the story is fairly short, it still managed to surprise me more than once. I was sure that I knew where certain characters were going to end up, and yet! Sword of the Sea is very light on explicit narrative and exposition. Instead, we’re given a healthy dose of environmental storytelling and wordless cutscenes. It all comes together beautifully. If you see enough dolphin statues and cryptic poetry, you better believe there’s gonna be a satisfying payoff. There’s a steady stream of seemingly nonsensical text logs sprinkled throughout the game. I made a habit of checking out every one of them, a habit that paid off nicely.

I love games with this kind of laser focus on good mechanics. Sword of the Sea is all about how amazing it is to surf over sand, seas, and stone with liquid ease. Every subsequent mechanic, every environment, and every plot development springs from this one idea. But because of this, the game is also quite short. You can surf through the whole thing in a handful of hours. This also makes it perfect for speedruns and repeated playthroughs. Frame perfect freaks and other obsessives will be thrilled. But more than that, this is a beautiful world to explore, to simply live in. The music is chill, the vistas are fabulous, and the vibes are immaculate. If you’re looking for a short, singular gameplay experience, Sword of the Sea will be perfect for you.

***A PS5 code was provided by the publisher***