REVIEW: ‘GIGASWORD’ Swings Big, Yet Weighs Itself Down

Finding a fun and unique metroidvania that tries to bring something new to the space is hard to come by in today’s day and age. GIGASWORD, by Studio Hybrid and Akupara Games, flashed brightly at 2025’s PAX East. A metroidvania where you had to abandon your weapon to explore and solve puzzles, but had to return to it to fight enemies, was an excellent concept for the genre. That novelty held firm after playing the final version, yet still had moments that fell short of excellence. 

In GIGASWORD, you play as Ezra, a human who’s known little besides fending for himself or dying trying. But Ezra is not entirely alone in this bleak world. He has formed a close bond with one of the members of the bird-like Nocturne race who live in the elusive Nestrium tower. A Nocturne friend who’s promised to do the unheard of. Bring a human to the Nestrium tower to join the Nocturne.

As things finally start to look bright for Ezra, the unthinkable happens. The rest of the humans of Thoenhart decide to invade Nestrium, kill everyone inside, and seize their precious crystal to restore prosperity to their people. All the good intentions in the world could not have stopped the destruction caused by human actions. Ezra must take up his friend’s sword, the GIGASWORD, and prevent the ever-growing threat before the entire world is lost to the unleashed evil that corrupts all… except Ezra for some reason.

For a game with a straightforward premise, GIGASWORD’s story is shockingly deep and dark.

For a game with a straightforward premise, “little guy carries big sword,” GIGASWORD‘s story is shockingly deep and dark. From the jump, the tone is incredibly bleak and never lightens. Through the darkness, a story of hope and accepting one’s role in the world brings lightness and levity to the situation. Ezra is a very flawed, human character who borders on being annoying at times.

But the way that Ezra overcomes his own demons in GIGASWORD, and remembering how far he’s come in such a short time, balances it all out. Heck, he just witnessed his best friend dying. Even worse, he learned that the actions of the residents of Thoenhart were leading to the entire world being corrupted by an evil entity that transformed all living beings into Lovecraftian monsters. That’s a lot for one young, hungry kid whose only dream was to be saved by his best friend’s people to take in all at once, especially when he learns that his destiny may be to be the only one who can save the world from this darkness.

As we all go through increasingly darker times in this world, playing as someone who perseveres in their own way sends a motivating message. However, all this is told in an unusual manner through very long cutscenes in GIGASWORD.

Once you are given the GIGASWORD and enter the Nestrium tower, it’s hard to put the game down.

Especially early on, getting to the point where you are finally given the sword is surprisingly long, full of minutes-long cutscenes, and short gameplay bursts in between them. Once in the tower, those get further and further apart and feel earned as Ezra reflects on what he’s discovered and learns what he must do next. Initially, there’s more telling and showing than experiencing going on. 

Once you are given the GIGASWORD and enter the Nestrium tower, it’s hard to put the game down. Having a small human wield such a massive sword isn’t played off like it’s just another sword. Ezra is a starving young human. He’s going to have difficulty wielding something that you’d expect Guts from Berserk to use. Swinging the sword is slow, and having it on you greatly limits your range of motion.

This is where GIGASWORD shakes things up. At any time, you can stab the sword into the ground to jump higher, run faster, and grab onto ledges that you couldn’t before. But doing this does expose you, as Ezra can’t attack without his sword. This mechanic underpins a significant portion of the game’s puzzles and challenges. 

Exploring Nestrium in GIGASWORD requires you to find new ways to get the sword to areas you couldn’t reach with it on your person. So, the use of blocks, moveable platforms, and lifts made explicitly for the sword is tantamount to helping you on your quest. The level design really shines by building on the sword’s limitations. GIGASWORD visually tells you quickly what you need to know through its pixel art style, and you can read pretty easily what you’ll need to do to interact with certain obstacles.

Exploration and finding all of the tower’s secrets are a blast, for the most part.

The sword, especially, ends up being way more helpful than just a weapon. It’s Ezra’s key to doors, to interacting with the Nostrium’s mechanisms, and his means of moving particular objects around. Plus, as Ezra explores Nostrium’s depths, the GIGASWORD becomes more and more powerful, including unlocking new interactions with the more mystical contraptions in the tower. 

Exploration and finding all of the tower’s secrets are also a blast, for the most part. Many of the game’s secrets are hidden behind breakable walls. These walls have a key indicator, with a crack present. Yet in some areas, those cracks are tricky to spot. The way forward isn’t reliant on finding every secret, but it does make your journey much easier. These are where you’ll find carrots and rabbits to upgrade health, feathers needed to upgrade your health even further at save points, and hiding chests full of geode, the game’s currency, to buy specific upgrades for your sword. 

Given the subtlety of the cracks, some players will have a much more difficult time spotting them than others. Even when sitting close to the screen, there are times when you’ll barely notice a crack unless you look at it just the right way, thanks to how the wall’s composition makes it appear or how it blends well with the background art. 

GIGASWORD balances puzzles and combat well, but the amount of precision needed for some parts is a little too exact.

Another issue in GIGASWORD arises from the punishing nature of some deaths. Whenever you die, you are sent back to your last save room. But interacting with the save point isn’t enough. You need to physically select the save option for it to be registered as the point you want to return to if you die. This is such an annoying decision since interacting with the save point already heals you, and you are kicked out of the menu after choosing to upgrade your sword first. 

So even when all signs are there that you’ve touched the point, that’s not enough to set your spawn. Forgetting to do this could set you back much further than expected, such as back to a save room several areas ago, rather than the one you touched five to ten minutes prior. Similarly, GIGASWORD does have some souls-like elements to it. Every time you die, you lose all your geode. Whatever you had on your person is stored in a chest that supposedly spawns where you die. That regularly wasn’t the case. 

Going back to where Ezra died, the chest had been moved elsewhere in that room. Like a floor several below that, or even just to the start of the room. Not the worst thing in the world, but finding your chest tends to be more of a game of hide-and-seek rather than just fighting your way back to where you were before. 

Plus, for a game that balances puzzles and combat very well, the amount of precision needed for some parts is a little too exact. Several jumps need almost pixel-perfect movement. Not only to make the jump (or have Ezra grab onto a ledge), but to even avoid enemy attacks in the process. Even in combat, there are times that Ezra’s attack is just slightly slower enough that enemies regularly recover from being staggered and land a cheapshot on you mid swing, canceling your own attack. 

Bosses in GIGASWORD are challenging but never overly difficult, and the fights are visually stunning.

Other times, like with some puzzles, you’d have to reset at least ten to fifteen minutes of setup because you executed everything a pixel off. Or didn’t place your sword in the exact correct location for when you return to it. Some later game puzzles that require precise flying of a bird-like spirit form for Ezra also needed near-perfect execution of dashes through rings, or you’d be seconds late reaching a goal.

These things slowly added up to be more frustrating than anything because they just required you to execute them at a basically perfect skill level. A level with next to no wiggle room for error, or even pressing a button half a second too slowly, will lead to failure. 

But GIGASWORD balances enemy variety and boss design exceptionally well. Bosses, especially, are challenging but never overly difficult. Even with a glitch that made the last couple of bosses spawn with one health (which has been confirmed as being patched) the fights were still visually stunning with grungy dark macabre creatures to overcome. Nothing felt like a cheap shot in any of the boss encounters, and losing was only a result of not knowing how to react to different attack patterns.

Sadly, my experience was marred by even more game-breaking bugs than those mentioned so far, such as maps for newly accessed areas being automatically completed. Another was the magic rooms, hidden rooms that were needed to improve Ezra’s unlocked magic via sword upgrades, which were impossible to complete due to visual bugs. At one point, the death chest just stopped spawning as well.

Even with all these game-breaking issues, GIGASWORD was still a lot of fun to explore.

Or the screen ends up being visually broken, as seen with the cutscene black boxes that never go away. Numerous times, I had to reset my game hard to progress, and was locked out from finding some collectibles due to visual bugs, such as a broken breakable wall still being impassable.

Thankfully, the devs did share patch notes, and all of these issues for the Xbox Series X|S version should be fixed. But to find out for myself would require a new playthrough, which I’ll gladly do. Even with all these game-breaking issues, GIGASWORD was still a lot of fun to explore, beat up baddies, and solve its numerous puzzles. The devs also confirmed that the PC version of GIGAWSORD was not experiencing any of these issues either. 

GIGASWORD is a fresh 2D metroidvania that balances puzzles and action quite well. Yet similar to the massive sword Ezra wields, the game at times weighs itself down with hyper-precise controls, grueling platforming sections, surprisingly long lore dump cutscenes, and punishing mistakes by resetting lots of precise setup.

Even if my personal experience with the game was hindered by game-breaking bugs, when it worked, GIGASWORD was a joy to play. And with patch notes that read like they’ve fixed all those bugs, a second playthrough through this enjoyably dark world is inevitable.

GIGASWORD is available November 13th on Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch, and PlayStation 5.