THE GRINDSTONE TRIBUNAL:

Ever know you’ve made a bad decision despite all warnings? Yeah… A few regulars show up like Dreskar, Dobar and I, while Tebble gives this a far more fair shake than we do…

Setch Dreskar:
Swordsman is one of those games that just smacks of being shameless from the beginning. Essentially a chinese knock-off of fellow chinese MMO Age of Wushu, we have a product with none of the charm and quirkiness that made Wushu the starting home of Grindstone. Swordsman came out soon after Wushu hit the Western Markets and was proudly marketed as Perfect Worlds wuxia answer to the former. What we have here is a very lifeless game that will frustrate players who want to do any of the moves seen in the numerous cutscenes, and annoy those of us that hate wire-fu and prefer more realistic displays of martial arts prowess.
This is a game that isn’t worth anyone’s time and I would urge everyone to give the game no mind and move on to something far more worth their time. Steer far clear my fellow Tangmen and Beggar’s Sect!
Recommended?: NO

Dobar:
While I do not hate the game as much as others, I find little to like about the game.  The graphics are hit or miss at times, the sound is a mess, whether it is the music cutting out or the sound being really loud at times.  I was not so interested in the story, though I might have been more interested if you did not have a handful of quests before the grind wall hits.  Once you hit the mid to late 40s, and especially the 50s, you might have five to ten story quests that gives you at best 15% of the needed experience to level, and the rest you have to grind, hard.  The combat was nowhere near as interesting as Blade and Soul. which made the grinding even more tedious.  The dungeons were all tedious and the combat did not feel like it works well with the dungeons, especially as melee when you are chasing the boss around the field.
The only thing that makes the grinding tolerable is the auto-cultivation system, basically legalized botting.  While some see this as a negative, and with all the grinding required in this game, I can see why this can be a negative.  But I also like it when I have to be away from home for three or four hours, I can just set up the bot and have to level for me, instead of actually grinding. The problem is there is really nothing to look forward at later levels, except more annoying dungeons and some PVP.
Overall, this is a boring game that offers little to do except grind, and there are many better games to grind in.  If you want a game in this style. play Blade and Soul.  It has problems, but it is nowhere as boring as Swordsman Online.
Recommended?: NO. No way.

Tebble:
While most people would compare Swordsman with Blade and Soul, I’ll compare it to Age of Wushu. I’ll begin by saying this: I’ve had more enjoyment playing Swordsman than I did when I played Wushu with Grindstone, not that Wushu was a bad game, but it seems far too convoluted to enjoy as a casual player, especially since I much prefer traditional MMOs to sandbox ones.
I found Swordsman to be easier to understand and figure out than Wushu, but at the cost of it being more shallow when it came to content and originality. I like that Swordsman uses the traditional EXP and leveling systems we’ve come to expect in MMOs, but it also has a main storyline to drive you to keep going, but if you don’t find the story interesting then you will simply find this to be a very grindy MMO. In a way Swordsman still feels like it’s in beta as there isn’t a whole lot of explanation for mechanics and features, features that still have not been implemented such as the advanced tooltips for abilities and overall a sense of emptiness as there are hardly any players playing the game.
Combat, which is what you will be doing 90% in this game, feels fluid and abilities each have their own purpose along with each school having their own weapon type along with their own style of combat to really differentiate  between the strengths of weaknesses each school offers. But at the end of the day it will still become repetitive, but every game has repetitive combat to some extent.
Recommended?: YES, if you want to play an easy grindy MMO, but in the long term you will want to bring friends or find a guild or you will become bored with this MMO.

ChaosD1:
This is it. This is the game that broke me. This is the worst fucking MMO I’ve ever played in my life. I can’t think of a single redeeming quality in this phoned in pile of shit. I’ve never not wanted to play something so fast and so hard since Divine Souls, and at least that game had to decency to reveal it was pure ass from the start. This pile of shit tried to fool me with a decent start, and some slick visuals, and …well, at least a really good soundtrack. But the minute I got into the real questing, and just saw field after field of cloned enemies all dogpiled onto each other…. Well let’s say it was realization after realization. When I saw the entire game could be played from the quest log. When I couldn’t find a single control scheme that didn’t feel like stiff, clunky trash. When I found out a legal botting program was BUILT IN to the game. When quests encouraged me to spam-vite friends. When cutscenes went from tragic to goofy within the same scene. (One guy kills several people and tries to sexually assault another, then slips on a banana peel. Yes. really.) When I could kill an entire group of enemies by pressing “4” up until level 40 when the difficulty curve took an artificial rocket-jump because the game suddenly decided my gear wasn’t good enough. When I had pile upon pile of items thrust upon me every level with nary a clue of what I was supposed to do with ANY of it.
I have not yet been so frustratingly bored and enraged at a game as I have with this one. I went in expecting little and got so much less. I never thought Age of Wushu would be the pinnacle of this genre. And coming off the heels of another Martial Arts fantasy MMO, Blade and Soul, this is fucking unforgivable… This game feels like a relic from 2002, AND BLADE AND SOUL IS 2 YEARS OLDER THAN SWORDSMAN! How do you fuck up something so god damned simple?!
Is the PvP ok? I dunno. Probably. But this was linear as all get out, and it was one of the few games where I was hoping someone would try to gank me just so I could feel alive inside. This is hands down the worst thing I’ve ever played. I liked Drift City enough. I liked F.E.A.R. Online to a “so bad it’s hilarious” extent.
Don’t even think about playing this game.
Recommended?: FUCK GOD DAMNED NO.