At first glance, Ninja Blade looks to be a clear success. The title plays like a hybrid of Ninja Gaiden and God of War, which is really a solid mixture. The game’s cinematic, stylistic violence is extremely representative of what fans of games like Ninja Gaiden and Devil May Cry have come to love, and seeing as this appears to be an off year for both of those franchises, it looks like Ninja Blade might be able to gain some footing in the realm of giant sword toting, magic wielding badasses.

Players take on the role of Ken, who slashes through demonic forces in what seems to be an effort to save the world. The demo didn’t really go into the plot much and felt a bit disjointed, but after all it’s just a demo. The gameplay is really straight forward. Using a combination of weak and strong attacks, magic, blocks, and acrobatics, you take on your foes and attempt to bring them to their knees. Peppered in between these moments of combat are dozens of quick time events. Nearly every interesting moment in the demo build was a quick time event. For many that might be a clear turn off, but for others it’s something they can move past.

The quick time events were very forgiving compared to other titles. It’s not a simple binary result of pass or fail, but a solid range of possible outcomes: fail, good, excellent, perfect, etc. This allows a decent sized window that is much friendlier to a newer player in the genre. Should a fail rating happen on a quick time event, the game rewinds and lets you try again. It’s a very forgiving system, similar to the one seen with Prince of Persia. The game also consistently uses the same button for each type of move done via quick time. This makes it a tad easier to guess what will be coming.