In fact, it's still awkward once you're good at it. Instead of an attack button that triggers scripted animations, you get a sense for using your fingers to directly control the 3D model. The result is very much like puppeteering. You attack by moving your character so that an opponent is caught in the path of that slash. If you then press the lower left button, the sword moves down and to the left, making a diagonal slash in the process. If you press the upper right button, the sword moves up and to the right. For instance, if you're using the keyboard, the numbers on the keypad control the position of your weapon. Some people swear by the joystick or mouse - there's even support for force feedback joysticks - but I prefer the keyboard. This is an interface in which you use the controller to specify where you want to move your weapon.

To see what's really going on here, you have to enable something called VSIM (which doesn't stand for anything according to its creators). It was a new way to play a fighting game and a remarkable advance in how games could truly earn the description 'immersive'. Uninstall.īut if they had flipped through the little manual or stuck it out through the end of the tutorial, they would have discovered that the heart of Die by the Sword is an ambitious experiment in physics and interface. How many people must have given up on this game after installing it and futzing around with the arcade controls? Swing. It was probably included to make the game accessible to the casual player, but it also made it dull by glossing over its greatest strength. In fact, the great irony of Die by the Sword is its arcade mode. In fact, this is how it plays if you use the default 'arcade' controls. From the screenshots, you'd guess it's a medieval fantasy version of Tekken using a primitive 3D engine. On the surface Die by the Sword looks like an ordinary fighting game.

Die by the sword game