Start with a 10 and then subtract...
This could be a really sweet game, but it has some pretty fatal flaws.
1. The scrolling kinda sucks. The cursor at the edge of the screen is a bad idea. I'd much rather be able to scroll the screen with the directional buttons so I can keep my cursor free for the stabby-stabby.
2. The attacking is kind of slow, once you draw the slash line, waiting for the entire animation to play out, while enemies may have moved or new ones have entered the screen. The animation should either be breakable by a new line, or stack moves into combos (think: the most recent iteration of Shinobi).
3. Lame having enemies attacking from off-screen, especially when it's off the side of the screen that you can't scroll to (especially the ones that enter from the left).
4. Bow and arrow kinda suck. The arrows don't really seem to reach the tower, so sometimes you kill a guy, but a lot of the time you're missing because the arrows are apparently made of lead.
5. The instructions on the catapult level don't make sense. Something about hitting them back in the balls? Wha-? I tried to hit the balls and just got walloped.
6. And this is the biggie... CRASHED on the catapult level after I killed all the enemies but not the catapult. I got a mission completed message, but then it just froze up and wouldn't let me do anything. The animation of the catapult started to run in the background, though.
A couple other things that I would have liked to see. One is a wider screen, so you have room to kill one group without getting pushed to the edge of the screen and blindly shoved into the next group. The other is more variety. Wait, I thought of more. It would be awesome if you could draw more kinds of slashes and have them have an effect. Like those dicks with the shields, if you drew a zig-zag over them, he could attack them like mad and get around their defenses. And personally, I would have liked a more Japanese sounding soundtrack over the relentless orchestral loop.
I probably would have given a 9 or 10 based on what the game should or could be, but with all these glaring flaws, I just can't, which is a pity, because this could be a kick-ass game. The art and concept are outstanding.