Swords of Gargantua VR Review

Swords of Gargantua VR Review on the Oculus Rift

Last week gumi Inc. and Yomuneco Inc. launched the VR-based action title SWORDS of GARGANTUA for the HTC Vive, Oculus Rift, Windows Mixed Reality and Oculus Quest. We tested our own sword-wielding skills against Gargantua’s minions and this is our review of the game on the Oculus Rift platform.

Swords of Gargantua is now available for purchase at $19.99 from Steam or from the Oculus Store. Although we received a review code from the publisher we feel that the price is fair compared to much higher pricing of many other new VR titles. Swords of Gargantua swordplay is incredible and is perfectly suited for VR. The harder you swing your sword, the more damage you will do. There are single player “quests”, or really challenges, but it is not an RPG although you unlock better weapons as you progress. Swords of Gargantua is a wave fighter with a Dark Souls vibe.

Swords of Gargantua can be played either single player or in cross-platform co-op play so that players can engage with three other friends or strangers in multiplayer action regardless of their head mount display (HMD) choice. Oculus platform offers play with players either on the Oculus Quest or Oculus Rift HMDs.

We were able to play both single player and multiplayer, and we were happy to find that matching up from Quick Play only took an instant before we were thrust into the action with 3 other players as we fought to protect our station from attacking NPC minions.

Performance

Unfortunately, the Swords of Gargantua single player campaigns didn’t go as smoothly for us as multiplayer. After completing about 13 or so challenges successfully, we encountered some serious bugs, and the Rift tracking failed us so that as an NPC approached closely for combat, we got turned around and around, and we were thus unable to fight back effectively.

We searched through user comments on multiple forums but we could not find anything that resembled our issues, so perhaps it is specific to our PC’s configuration. Updating the drivers, changing out multiple video cards, uninstalling and reinstalling the game, resetting tracking, and deleting the saved games made no differences to single player. This event immediately happened after the Oculus Rift platform updated itself, so perhaps our tracking issues are related to a Rift bug that doesn’t affect other games or even Swords of Gargantua multiplayer.

We feel that we were able to progress far enough to give our impressions of the Swords of Gargantua gameplay. Normally BTR gives performance data for each VR game using FCAT-VR frametime measurements and unconstrained framerates (i.e. performance of a video card: what it would be able to produce if not locked to 90 FPS). However, using FCAT-VR prevented the game from launching, and starting it after launch immediately crashed the game. NVIDIA was unable to give us any immediate suggestions after we reported our FCAT-VR issue to them but we will update this review if/when we hear back.

Instead we used the Oculus Debug Tool to view the performance in the HMD overlay of our three test cards, the RTX 2080 Ti, the GTX 1080 Ti, and the GTX 1060-GB. There are no graphics options that we could see in the in-game options for Swords of Gargantua as it appears to be developed on the Unreal Engine and optimized for smooth multiplayer gameplay. It can be run as recommended on a GTX 970 or a RX 290. Lighting, effects, and graphics are very good.

The game just looks great, and the only graphics option would be to set the pixel density higher (akin to SuperSampling) using the Oculus toolset. It also ran butter smooth on a EVGA GTX 1060 SC with a performance headroom of above 60% in worst-case Single Player scenarios with multiple NPCs attacking at once. We would say that Swords of Gargantua is well-optimized for the Oculus Rift platform compared with many other VR games that we have played, and a high-end graphics card is unnecessary to really enjoy the game

The Story

There isn’t much of a backstory to Swords of Gargantua. You are told in the introductory scenes of a time when the gods nearly destroyed their worlds and are now destroying yours. You have been resurrected by a goddess and chosen as her hero, and although you have few memories of your earlier life, you are considered essential to battle Gargantua to reclaim your world. You actually face Gargantua in the opening scene and are immediately smashed by him. This sets up being resurrected over-and-over as you relearn battle skills to become the hero you are destined to become.

Gameplay

Each battle feels great because there is some real depth to the fighting including blocking, parrying, and attacking, and you need real strategy and knowledge of the game’s mechanics to survive. There is also great haptic feedback from the Touch controllers, and it just feels right when your sword connects or as you block with your shield. The audio is quite good and the sounds of the swordplay are excellent.

It is absolutely necessary to pay careful attention to the short tutorial since flailing wildly will get you nowhere. Swords of Gargantua reminds me a bit of the fighting strategy necessary to succeed in the pancake games like For Honor or Kingdom Come: Deliverance. The big difference is that you are in VR and are inside the game swinging your arms. You attack, parry, block, back up, and even turn and run when it’s necessary just to survive. Timing is everything. You also have to attack specific weak points on the stronger enemies to damage them more quickly.

Certain enemy NPCs also have strong counter attacks that you must learn to defend against. Sometimes it is better to run or dodge as certain attacks appear to be unblockable and you can easily be stunned. Your weapons have stamina and they deteriorate with use, but can only regenerate when sheathed, making it an important gameplay mechanic. You can also grab a new shield, sword, or other weapon placed strategically around the battle room when the old one is destroyed in SP mode, or stoop down to pick up a better weapon from the ground in MP.

It is important to be aware of multiple things at once. You must safeguard your sword and repair it by sheathing it at critical times by keeping an eye on your simple HUD. If you fail to do so and if you lose your weapon by having it knocked out of your hand, or if it is destroyed, you have a choice of turning your back to your enemy and running (using the controller) – making you extremely vulnerable – or you can back at half-speed toward a new weapon, continuing to block attacks with your shield and a secondary weapon that is more akin to a little knife.

Parrying is just as important as attacking – multiple parries at a critical moments will stun a NPC rendering it motionless for an instant, and you can also use your shield and your sword together to block a huge enemy NPC’s weapon swing at you. If you are successful, there are enchantments available to strengthen your sword for a limited time period.

By completing quests, you’ll also gain stars which progress you toward unlocking more powerful weapons of which there are about 30. There are goals with additional objectives in each quest that encourage you to replay it which will gain you a higher score with additional stars. These quest challenges encourage you further to becoming a master swordsman and they add to the game’s replayability.

There are also healing orbs scattered about the room where you can partially heal yourself – all the while timing and coordinating your strategy, defense, and attacks against the multiple enemy NPCs attacking at once. Some more stationary NPCs fire off destructive energy orbs that you will have to get used to dodging or blocking. Occasionally, there is a friendly NPC that works for you in singleplayer as a meat shield to distract the larger opponents, while you sometimes can sneak up behind them for a strong attack. As in multiplayer, if you have a few seconds, you can revive your downed ally so he can live to fight on with you.

As a mobility-limited player, I really appreciate that Swords of Gargantua may be played seated. We found it a bit difficult to use the dash function because it requires that you move your head as there is no button press or controller function for it as there are for turning.

I used a gaming chair and found that turning physically was unnecessary as the same thing may be accomplished by using the Touch controller’s sticks. But that doesn’t mean that we weren’t occasionally caught up by the excitement of the realistic swordplay, and we often found ourselves physically turning.

We occasionally smacked some furniture just outside the Rift Guardian’s limits. Swords of Gargantua is that realistic and that much fun! It is also exhausting and I could barely play it for more than one-half hour at a time. You can get your exercise and fun at the same time.

Swords of Gargantua is also a difficult and frustrating game which is a part of its fun. You can play it on easy, but unless you really learn the mechanics and exercise the patience required to win each round with maximum stars, you may see “play again?” quite often. One thing that we didn’t care for is that the game doesn’t appear to support smooth turning. So your view changes in steps which may be adjusted by the in-game settings. This is one reason why we preferred to turn physically at times (which sometimes got us into trouble with the furniture and with the HMD’s tether).

As a player progresses through the game, more powerful weapons unlock, and at an early stage you have a choice of a small and fast sword that breaks easily, or a heavier and slower sword which is much more sturdy. You can also choose and dual-wield a couple of swords or pick a mace instead of using a shield. Your main weapon hand can be either right or left.

Multiplayer

When you enter a room for co-op you very quickly join 3 other players. Swords of Gargantua seems to be well-populated at the time of writing. Although the game features native voice chat, it didn’t work for me, and I didn’t enable Discord which is also available. As a single defense wave or hoard fighter, the idea is to work together to protect your mana station which is under attack from progressively larger groups of up to 16 enemy NPCs which also include some larger bosses.

After each wave completes, higher difficulties unlock, and you will finally get to fight Gargantua himself. Hopefully, by then your allies will have developed a good team strategy to take him down.

There isn’t a lot of multiplayer variety as you will fight in the same room to protect the same mana station but at increasing difficulty. It’s the same with single player. Although there are over 50 single player missions and with 30 weapons to unlock, your mostly large monochromatic battle room itself doesn’t change. Hopefully, this will be addressed by the developer with additional maps as it’s easy to see that the game can just become a grind to get better weapons.

Conclusion

Overall, we rather like Swords of Gargantua. Since we have to score it, we will give it a 7.7/10 for all things considered – but not counting the issues we have with the SP bug that prevented us from progressing. We feel that Swords of Gargantua is a refreshing change from the usual as a unique VR wave fighter game with excellent mechanics. We can appreciate that it costs $19.99 which bucks the trend against very expensive VR games. It may take a player a lot of work to learn the mechanics of the game to be successful, but it is well-worth it in our opinion. If you just want a pretty but shallow hack and slash game, look elsewhere.

Swords of Gargantua has its flaws, most notable being the lack of variety in the map design, and we feel as it is, it can just become a grind for better weapons. To commemorate the release of Swords of Gargantua, the publisher has a campaign in which players can earn a special unique Red Sword. Each player who purchases and launches the game at least once will unlock this special sword at the end of the event. This event runs until Friday, June 21, and the unique Level 2 red-tinted sword (forged in the player’s virtual blood) will be delivered in-game in an update shortly after.

Happy VR gaming!

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Swords of Gargantua VR Review