Half Sword’s appeal lies in physical, mouse-directed weapon combat and historically grounded equipment. At ≈ $9.09 from GAMIVO, the confirmed low makes this a timely option for players drawn to brutal tournaments and permanent death. Steam lists single-player, so its arena climb is suited to a solo run rather than a listed co-op session.At $24.99 from GAMIVO, its historically inspired arms and physics-driven combat meet a confirmed buying opportunity.
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72%Steam Reviews29.8K reviews
Released: Jan 30, 2026
Gore · Physics · Combat · Medieval · Swordplay
GAMIVOHalf Sword - EN Global·Platform:Steam·-64%from~ $9.09(~ €8.09)ALL-TIME LOWSave $15.90 vs SteamBuy now
KinguinHalf Sword PC Steam Altergift·Platform:Steam·~ $26.95-18%from~ $22.03(~ €19.61)Buy now
Steam·Platform:Steam·United States Steam official price~ $24.99Buy now
Humble BundleHalf Sword·Platform:Steam·~ $24.99Buy now
EnebaHalf Sword Steam Key (PC) GLOBAL·Platform:Steam·~ $29.13Buy now
K4GHalf Sword Standard Edition Steam CD Key·Platform:Steam·from~ $30.32(~ €26.99)Buy now
All-time low ~ $19.99across Steam & third-party storesat the recorded all-time low
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Price History
Past 36 months · Updated daily
Historical Low~ $19.992026-01Current Low Across Stores~ $24.99Steamvs. Historical Low+25%
Prices cover Steam and 39 authorized stores; only legitimate offers are counted. The chart shows weekly market-wide lows and Steam's official price across the past 36 months.
01About Half Sword
Half Sword is a physics-based medieval combat simulator set in 15th-century Europe. Rise from commoner toward knighthood by fighting through brutal brawls and tournaments.Weapons are controlled precisely with the mouse.Historically grounded arms and armor shape combat.You can buy equipment or forge your own weapons and armor.Death is final.Steam player rating: 72% from 29,784 reviews.
Credits
Developer
Half Sword Games
Publisher
Game Seer Publishing
Steam player reviews
72%positiveMostly Positive29,784 Steam reviews
Lowest recorded in 36 months
$19.992026-01-30 · SSteamBase game · same records as the chart above; USD history, not a regional Steam low.
Language support
Language
Interface
Subtitles
Audio
English
Yes
Yes
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Steam PC edition data · 2026-10-22
02Before you buy
Combat and equipment
Combat is physics-based, with precise mouse-controlled weapons and historically inspired 15th-century arms and armor.
Mode and content
Steam lists single-player and Steam Cloud. The description warns of extreme gore, including dismemberment and graphic bloodshed.
03Frequently asked questions
What is the game about?
You fight through brawls and tournaments, rising from commoner toward knight and pursuing the arena championship.
Is death permanent?
Yes. The game description says death is final.
How graphic is the violence?
The description includes skull-crushing blows, severed limbs, and graphic bloodshed.
Selected helpful reviews in this language show both recommendations and criticisms. This selection does not represent the overall positive rating; opinions reflect the version reviewed.
RecommendedSteam player
If you loved the demo for this game and are wondering why Early Access is getting mixed reviews, I think I can explain some of it.
A lot of people, myself included, start out confused about why their character can’t even walk 4 feet without face-planting and leaving themselves open to attack. It feels clunky and frustrating at first. The big difference is that the devs made the early progression way harder than it was in the demo.
In the demo, you could win a few fights, beat the boss, and move up a tier pretty quickly. In Early Access, there’s more going on that the game doesn’t really explain. They added a strength mechanic. When you first start, you’re basically a scrawny beggar with no power because of your flimsy arms and legs. As you fight and burn through stamina, you slowly build strength. And I mean slowly.
Once you build enough strength, things start to click. I recommend sparring and making sure you’re actually draining your stamina during fights so you level that up. After that, winning fights and progressing feels much more doable, and you can start looting the people you take down along the way. (grab them with Q and then hold Q to peel armor/clothing off the enemy)
Another big complaint has been the abyss. I wasn’t a fan at first either. But they’ve added ways to avoid being sent there. If instead of fully killing enemies you can force them to surrender by holding the tip of your weapon to their neck, that way your soul is pure. You can also pay the shady guy in the back of the tavern at night 10 gold per soul you’ve taken. Just make sure you do it before you die.
If you haven’t killed anyone, you don’t need to pay at all. So when you eventually catch a sword to the neck, your soul is safe. Otherwise, the people you’ve killed show up as zombies in the abyss, and in my experience they’re ridiculously hard to take down.
Honestly, what this game really needs is a proper tutorial. A lot of people are jumping in expecting it to feel like the demo, and it just doesn’t. Once I understood how the strength system and the abyss worked, I actually started having a lot of fun progressing through the tiers.
Anyway, that’s just my two cents on Half Sword EA. Thanks for reading.Show moreShow less
11.8 hours at review1,534 people found this helpful
Written during Early Access
Not recommendedSteam player
This game is horribly optimised. I really want to enjoy it but I simply can't deal with how poorly it runs. Once they fix the optimisation issues I am sure it will be amazing but I suggest playing the demo till then.
Edit- I am playing on an ryzen 7 5700x and and an RX 6800.Show moreShow less
4.5 hours at review1,613 people found this helpful
Written during Early Access
RecommendedSteam player
Despite the long lapse of silence from devs... a quality update came through that has genuinely improved the game at all levels. Well done halfsword team, thanks for not making abandonware.Show moreShow less
23.6 hours at review660 people found this helpful
Written during Early Access
Not recommendedSteam player
Wait until the reviews change to overwhelmingly positive, as they inevitably will. Dev is great and the game is amazing but for some reason he decided to release it way too early.Show moreShow less
1.3 hours at review1,205 people found this helpful
Written during Early Access
RecommendedSteam player
Devs are taking the feedback seriously, so I have no doubt the games many issues mentioned elsewhere will be resolved soon. I love the game as it stands on a gameplay level and cant wait to see how it ultimately shakes outShow moreShow less
3.8 hours at review515 people found this helpful
Written during Early Access
Not recommendedSteam player
I'm writing this after having beat the final Tourney on progression mode and slaying the Baron. Proof with Imgur link, you get his cuirass after beating him. I did it over a couple days without using any of the hired muscle. This is just to say I've experienced the full breadth of the game, all the weapons, maps and match types:
After years of playing the demo and generally enjoying it I'd never thought I'd be writing a negative review on full release. But I CANNOT recommend this game right now for two primary reasons I believe are irrelevant of early access staus.
Tl;dr
The game performs like maxed out Crysis running on a potato despite looking like Gothic 1 with a Raytracing filter. The game controls like a 2016 silly physics based rage game despite being very unforgiving and designed around precise combat. Both need to get fixed for the game to be recommended. It has potential.
Below is the MUCH longer full review. You have been warned.
The Big Cons
Performance: The game runs absolutely unacceptably awful. For a game where a single miss-click or shift of a mouse can sever an artery and send you to the abyss, losing you uninsured weapons, money, and time, dropping to the teens on medium settings in the MENU of all things is absolutely not okay. needs to be fixed as this alone is enough to tell people not to buy it. It makes the core gameplay incredibly unfun.
Physics/Mechanics: This one is a bit more controversial as it is the hook that attracted me and others to Half Sword in the first place but it feels much worse since the tech demo and I have other concerns that have presented themselves since its no longer a "tech demo".
The physics that governs the characters themselves is FAR too loose. You don't control like a warrior, a knight, or even a human being. You control like a marionette or character in a 2016 streamerbait rage game. Your weapon gets caught on your character when you switch grips more than it actually switches to the intended grip. Weapons you spend hundred or thousands on can disappear in your inventory. Your arm can get caught between your leg causing you to drag weapons behind you. NPCS can strike the same place repeatedly very easy, but you seem to have an invisible block in front of you and its almost impossible to simply strike up and down with two handed weapons, you will often end up striking away either left or right. This is something the physical mechanics of your arms makes very easy actually. The game has immense potential so I really hope the devs don't disrespect themselves or their work by utilizing a gimmick that makes the core gameplay loop (combat) inherently unfun and won't result in more attention because it's not 2016 anymore and games like Octodad, Qwop, etc. are dead and cringe. It's not fun not being able to make your character behave in predictable ways.
Potential Solution: Adding much more weight and rigidity to characters would make a huge difference. It doesn't need to be Mordhau, but you shouldn't walk like a toddler and literally faceplant on the cobblestone because you walked up a 2 degree incline, or when switching grips your character mindlessly swings their weapon and gets it caught between their legs.
Corollary to the last sentiment, multiple times throughout my character behaved in ways that made little sense and were very frustrating. My character would regularly grip a 10 foot polearm close-grip like a baseball bat, not the standard grip or half-sword grip, resulting in it being so top heavy it becomes impossible to swing and forcing me to drop it to pick it up again. Without my hands being visibly damaged, my character would often refuse to use both hands to grip at random times, making the weapon useless. Intermittently my character would just walk incredibly slow. Full plate, no visible leg injuries, no exhaustion vignette, just slug walking and swinging at snails pace. There are times where I would get clonked on the head and be sent to the ground, and despite minimal color loss and either spamming or holding space and movement keys it feels like minutes until I VERY slowly get up and have to stumble around for a minute more until I'm remotely able to reengage in combat. NPCs however can get up despite being instadropped in seconds. This is just a shortlist but NONE of these are explained and are all things I had to either assume, intuit, or pick up online or from playing the demo over years.
Potential Solution: A tutorial that explains and displays these mechanics. UI that shows when these mechanics are being engaged. A written guide that explains these mechanics and how they work. Or all three. Super simple.
Minor Cons:
> Armor incompatibility should be made more explicit. Certain armor pieces cannot be equipped with other underarmor pieces and this will only be know after buying it. It is mostly intuitive. An arming doublet with chains cannot equip vambraces, tight fitting spaulders cannot fit over full arm harness, etc. Other's are a bit less obvious or make little sense. Pauldrons can and have fit over full arm harness historically, for whatever reason it cannot here for example. On your character armor sections are either highlighted red or tangled with vines and its not clear what the difference is or what piece is causing another piece to prevent another from attaching.
> Weapon customization should have slightly higher limits. I'm fine with the amount of options given for early access, but we should be able to make certain parts bigger, smaller, or handles longer or shorter. We should also be able to choose where we grip the weapon by default. Armor customization would also be neat.
The Pros
The Aesthetics: This game recreates an absolutely gorgeous Late Medieval HRE aesthetic. The menu in progression mode is gorgeous and I actually love the choice of shifting profiles
The Combat: When it works, IT WORKS. The clang and sparks that fly when you manage to intercept a blade, redirecting a falling halberd, hooking and pulling someone's leg, it's amazing when it works and there is nothing fundamentally that prevents those amazing moments from happening more often and even being the bead and butter. The physics just needs to be tighter.
The Physicality: The gore, the cries for mercy, the way people get knocked off balance and how your entire strategy has to change when armor gets introduced. It's so gritty and enjoyable. Despite the flaws it makes the game addictive.
The pros are such that if the two major cons are even just mostly remedied this could be an absolutely solid game. And if given a little regular attention I can imagine people coming back to it, myself included, for years to come. It just needs some work.Show moreShow less
14.8 hours at review958 people found this helpful
Written during Early Access
RecommendedSteam player
Performance issues fixed after selecting dx12.
Love the demo and the game seems to be on the right direction.
Just hoped the hub was a in game thing. Keep the good work guys!Show moreShow less
5.7 hours at review412 people found this helpful
Written during Early Access
Not recommendedSteam player
Unplayable basically, runs EXTREMELY BAD EVEN IN THE LOWEST SETTINGS, to top it off, game and UI is extremely buggy, sliders don't work, constant stuttering.
Game looks great, but jesus it runs bad.
Also, does anyone else feel like the gameplay is, worse? Character is so weak if we compare it to the demo, in the demo, my character could clutch up with a severed hand and half of my face missing, in here, a hammer strike to the leg has me dying and crying, is it just me?Show moreShow less
0.4 hours at review850 people found this helpful
Written during Early Access
RecommendedSteam player
REST IN PEACE WILLIE, ITS BEEN AN HONOR AFTER ALL THESE YEAR BUT HE HAS FINALLY GROWN HAIR.Show moreShow less
0.1 hours at review358 people found this helpful
Written during Early Access
Not recommendedSteam player
i would have rather spent 20 dollars on the demo than this version of the game, they went backwards in gameplay everything handled great in the demo and it seems like they rebuilt the entire physics system and it flopped.Show moreShow less
0.5 hours at review826 people found this helpful
Written during Early Access
Source: original Steam user reviews. Helpful votes are an archived snapshot, not live data. Last collected: 08/15/2026.
