Bleak Sword Guide: Tips, Cheats, and Strategies

Our Bleak Sword guide will help bring you up to speed with Apple Arcade’s answer to Dark Souls. Using simple touchscreen controls, you have to try and defeat endless hordes of monsters on the way to a series of challenging boss battles.

You’ll block, parry, dodge, attack, and power attack your way through the many hordes. Along the way, you’ll level up, allowing you to increase your statistics, and find a bunch of powerful equipment and consumables that might just be the difference between life and death.

In this guide, we’ll detail how Bleak Sword works, including the finer points of its control scheme. We’ll then provide a bunch of tips and tricks to help you master the later levels.

Bleak Sword Guide – How it Works:

If you’ve played the likes of Dark Souls on console, Bleak Sword will be somewhat similar. They share the same basic principle that games should be so challenging you’ll regularly want to throw your mobile/controller against the wall.

On a more serious note, they also share similar mechanics. You play as a warrior with a sword, shield, and combat skills. Enemies will attack you, and you can dodge roll or block to avoid taking damage. Skilled players can also pull off a parry, blocking an attack and returning their own in quick succession.

Of course, you could also just go on the offensive and either attack or power attack the enemy before they can do the same to you. This is effective when you’re facing a single enemy, but against groups you might want to counterattack.

You can block multiple attacks at once, which is essential when facing groups. Once you’ve blocked a single attack, you’ll also automatically block any further attacks that hit you within a second or so.

You also don’t need to attack the enemy that tried to hit you when parrying. You can fire off your counterattack in any direction, which is a useful tool when you need to finish off an enemy with low HP.

Pulling off these various skills is pretty simple. You swipe to dodge, tap to block (timing is important!), swipe towards the enemy right after a block to parry, and tap and hold before swiping to attack (hold longer for a power attack). It’s an excellent control scheme that’s easy to pick up, yet challenging to master.

Between levels you may collect a piece of equipment, which will alter your stats in numerous different ways. You can only carry two of these at a time, and consumables also sit in that spot, so selecting what you want or need is paramount.

You’ll also level up as you collect XP, which allows you to increase your statistics. You can only increase one stat each time you level up, and can only pick from a choice of two stats at random. You’ll have to plan ahead to ensure you have the statistics you want as you progress.

Bleak Sword Tips and Tricks:

Now that you understand the basics, let’s take a look at some more specific tips and tricks to help you master the experience:

• Parry wherever possible: Parrying attacks provides a safe method of dealing damage without worry of enemy retaliation. When you block an enemy attack, swipe towards them to pull of a parry. Even if multiple enemies attack at once, your block will resist all damage.
• You can’t parry all attacks: Bear in mind though, that you can’t parry every single enemy attack. Bosses, for example, will often wield attacks that can’t be parried. In these instances, dodge roll instead then retaliate when the coast is clear. When an exclamation mark appears over an attack, that’s a good sign that the enemy can’t be parried.
• You don’t have to attack the enemy you blocked while parrying: If you block an attack, you can parry in the direction of another enemy and deal damage to them instead. This is a good technique when you need to finish off an enemy.
• Learn enemy attack patterns: Each enemy has a different attack pattern that you’ll need to learn and exploit. Look out for the telltale signs or sounds of an incoming attack, and learn what you can and can’t parry. Some enemies might attack multiple times at once too, or require you to dodge rather than parry.
• Use consumables when you need them: Consumables hide in your inventory, and you might forget that they exist. If you’re running short on health, go ahead and pop a consumable to give yourself a top up.

Glen Fox

Head of Editorial

Glen has over a decade's worth of experience in gaming journalism, writing for Pocket Gamer, Pocket Tactics, Nintendo Life, and Gfinity. When he's not badgering everyone about the dangers of passive text, you can probably find him playing Wild Rift.