Swordash: Hunter Rise

We tapped into Swordash: Hunter Rise and hit a wall at the thirty-second mark. The screen opened on a girl holding a katana, the loading bar got three quarters of the way and stopped, and below it was exactly one yellow button that said Google.

No guest button, no name field, no other way around. Tapping it brought up Google's panel with the line "to continue to Swordash:Hunter Rise" and a single option: add an account. This is the first thing you need to know, before even asking whether the mod works.

Before we talk mods: the game demands a Google account

VipMod gives each game its own space, and that space starts out empty, without the Google account already on your phone. So to open this game, you first have to add a Google account inside the box.

We deliberately didn't do that on our test phone, because a real account shouldn't live inside a modified game. Instead we unlocked it through a technical route to play and grade the mod, and we're saying so plainly so you don't assume you can just install it and jump in.

To be fair, this sign-in gate belongs to the publisher; it isn't a flaw in the mod. But it's still the highest fence between you and the first stage, higher than anything else in this article.

People remember it as Sword Hunter

Reading the reviews explains why a game this new already has over eighty percent five-star ratings. A lot of people aren't there to praise the gameplay; they're there to welcome back an old name.

Two different players called it by its original name, Sword Hunter, a title that was once pulled from the store, taking with it the accounts they had grinded for years. Their tone is easy to recognize: the legend is back, the childhood game finally found again.

That also explains the odd shape of the ratings. Eighty-one percent gave five stars, 8.4 percent gave one star, and there wasn't a single two-star review. People are either thrilled or annoyed; almost nobody is in between.

Drag, tap, dash, and a hand of cards mid-battle

The controls are just three gestures, and the game teaches exactly those three. Drag your finger to run, tap anywhere to slash, swipe quickly to dash, dodging attacks or slipping through gaps.

Each run is a chapter of linked stages, with more stages as the chapters go on: chapter one has three, and by chapter five it's fifteen. The top of the screen shows the current stage, the right corner counts your combo, and the bottom corner holds a percentage ring for your ultimate; when it's full, tap to unleash it.

After each wave the battle pauses and fans out three cards for you to pick an effect, ranked by letter grade, with a timer that auto-picks after six seconds. Effects stack within a run and vanish when you leave the chapter, classic roguelite.

Early on, normal attacks deal just 22 to 29 damage; after merging a weapon it's around 150. Each chapter ends with a named boss with its own health bar.

Outside battle: a gear closet and a talent tree

The main lobby is a map you flip through by chapter, each chapter card stating the combat power required. Chapter two wants 100, chapter four 354, chapter five 654, so you can't skip ahead; you have to build up your character.

The character, Sally, has eight gear slots and starts with 101 damage and 440 HP. Equipping the first sword raises damage to 130, and each item upgrade costs five hundred gold.

The most interesting part is the forge. Collect three identical items and merge them into one of a higher grade; we merged three white swords into a green one and combat power ticked up by twenty.

There's also a talent tree you spin randomly using crystals, which regenerate at four hundred per hour up to a cap of one thousand. And the chest cabinet has a pity counter stating outright that within ten more pulls you're guaranteed a purple item.

These tabs open gradually rather than all at once. The talent tree unlocks when your character reaches level two, while the chest cabinet and challenges require clearing chapters three and four.

Twenty minutes for one stamina point

The stamina tank holds twenty points and every chapter run costs five, so a full tank gets you exactly four runs. We read the regeneration rate straight from the running game's data: 1,200 seconds per point, or twenty minutes.

Do the multiplication and the problem is obvious. One run costs a hundred minutes of waiting, and going from empty to full takes six hours forty minutes. That's the game's real brake, not the difficulty.

There are two ways to buy stamina. The first takes sixty diamonds for twenty points, up to three times a day. The second is free: ten points for one video, up to twelve times a day.

We tried the free option with a stopwatch: the clip ran forty-five seconds, followed by a screen promoting five other games that you have to close with the X, about sixty-two seconds in total for ten stamina. Quit a run midway and you lose everything: we bailed out while holding 1,439 gold and the lobby wallet didn't move by a single coin.

The mod builds its own counter so you can check it

The MOD menu here has twelve switches, and not one of them is about money. That makes sense, because the game's gold and diamonds are kept on the server's books, not on your phone.

The best switch is the one that sounds the driest. Turn on "Show verification panel" and a small line of text sprouts in the top corner, counting how many times each switch actually stepped in, along with the current battle speed. Thanks to it, we could grade each switch instead of guessing.

With the damage multiplier at ten, the numbers over monsters' heads went from about 120 to between 1,200 and 1,600, and a seven-stage chapter was done in one minute eighteen seconds. With God Mode on, the hits-taken counter stayed frozen for two whole minutes even with the character planted among four or five monsters.

No ads works as advertised too: tap a watch-video button and the reward goes straight in, with no clip popping up. This switch also has a wait-time slider so the game has time to register the reward before paying out.

Switching off doesn't always mean off

There's one thing worth knowing ahead of time to save yourself some frustration. Switch something on mid-battle and it kicks in within a few seconds, but switch it off midway and the mod doesn't let go: we turned off the damage multiplier and the counter kept running; we turned off the speed-up and the next battle was still fast. Only the restart button in the menu truly puts the game back the way it was.

The second thing: a stronger mod doesn't always mean faster grinding. Combine "Auto attack" with "Endless ultimate" and the character gets stuck casting its ultimate over and over; a ten-stage chapter dragged on for fourteen minutes, while the same effort with just the damage multiplier on took under a minute and a half.

As for "Self-protection", we've marked it as not graded. It starts off like every other switch, so turn it on in the MOD menu. It shows signs of running, but within a play session there's no way to see its effect, so we claim nothing beyond advising you to keep it on.

So who should play it?

If you played Sword Hunter back in the day and still miss it, this is almost certainly what you're looking for, and the feel of those three old gestures is fully intact. The hand-drawn art is clean, battles are fast, and each run wraps up in a few minutes, so it suits those moments of waiting.

But weigh two things first. The language list has only English and two forms of Chinese, and the English version still has a few lines of untranslated Chinese. And you still need a Google account inside the box to open the game, even though the mod lifts the stamina brake and the forty-five-second ads for you.