Wandering Sword, a Chinese RPG masterpiece that Western journalists ignored.

Incredible game, a Chinese wuxia masterpiece that expertly blends JRPG and western cRPG elements. The writing is fantastic, the gameplay is unique, the use of HD2D while not SquareEnix level, captures Chinese water color paintings, and fantastic combat and encounter design.

You level very differently as learning skills and upgrading them upgrades your stats and gives you passive skill points.

With the DLC updates now there are two routes, the original route that should be played first even though it does not wrap up everything, and the expanded route, which wraps the story up but poses more risk things can go wrong. Your choices matter, screw up and things go bad, you miss details in investigations, fail to do side quests in a quest chain, fail to recruit party members and things will go very poorly, especially in the expanded route.

It also does New Game Plus well with its inheritance system and its legacy system allows you to take into a new game martial arts skills and weapons from bosses and characters you cannot get through normal gameplay.

You are aware this game came out last year right?

@davillain: Yes, but the new update came out a week and a half ago that basically completes the story.

Looks like a 90's rpg but not as good, if I want my 90's rpg fix I will stick to Shining Force and Phantasy Star thanks.

Too much uninteresting Chinese lore. The Chinese have the most boring lore.

It sounds good, but I have to admit I find it difficult to get excited about anything in the wuxia genre.

Chinese Octopatch Traveler? I'd rather play Octopath Traveler.

Looks interesting with that HD-2D style. It's the first HD-2D game I've seen that's not from Square Enix.

It is nothing like Octopath outside of the art style.

It plays more like a cRPG and the combat is more like Live A Live.

This game isn't actually in China, but a fantasy version of it. It does go into Taoism and Buddhism heavily though.

That anti-Buddha villain is the best bad guy of the year hands down.

lol :P

Looks like a copy of a modern retro JRPG which is a copy of a modern JRPG in retro guise, which is a copy of a 90's JRPG 😋

I mean, I'm happy if you're happy...but what really sets this apart?

But you know me, I hate JRPG's 😁

Yeah that's what I loved about Jade Empire, the oft-forgotten game from Bioware. It took a lot of really great Chinese mythology and incorporated it into the game. Gods, demigods, villains, heroes...it's a great lore and I wish developers would explore it more.

We get a lot of Greek and Egyptian and Christian (at least in terms of angels and demons, good vs evil) mythology, and a lot of cool cultural stuff from Samurai and Ninjas to Roman Legionnaires and modern military commandos, but China seems to get overlooked a bit.

Loved Total War: Three Kingdoms, though.

That actually looks good ... i wish i had enough time to sink my teeth on this kind of games like i used to ... but i barely have enough time to keep up with SF6 and just a single player game that takes me months to finish, and my backlog is huge. Still going to keep it in mind.

Plenty of popular Japanese media are based on Chinese lore. For example, Dragon Ball was originally an adaptation of Journey to the West and Goku was based on Wukong.

They hate the Chinese because they aren't woke.

Jade Empire is a mess. It shows that its from Western developers. They even have non Asians playing Asians, with the exception of Dawn Star.

@uninspiredcup: dude, I really wish you would go to china sometimes. Its true that you would not find "woke" things, but you would be shocked at the level of censorship for every stupid thing there is.

You can literally be censored for "not looking asian enough" when streaming. (As the streaming services use constant face recognition system that checks if you look ethnically Chinese, if you don't, and the streaming company doesn't have authorization to have non Chinese on camera, then you are immediately censored)

You can be censored for having the wrong kind ghosts in a horror movie, for having the wrong make up, for looking too feminine, for showing an unauthorized map and for a hundred thousands other stupid reasons.

So yes, they are not woke, but they are even worse for forcing a point of view and restricting others.

@uninspiredcup: In fact, if I have to choose I much rather the woke shit.

You can at least mock the wokes without being arrested and loose access to your family and a lawyer.

You can't do that in china. That's for sure.

Is it a turn based RPG? Looks cool. How long is it?

20-30 hours, but it should be replayed. It now has 2 routes.

And yet they can't poke fun at their own president supreme leader for life. Might not be 'woke' but it is certainly censorship to an extreme degree.

Also, I don't "hate" the Chinese, but a criticism I have of Chinese companies is they tend to just copy everything and churn out cheap cash-ins. In all industries.

Would love to see more Chinese developers create something original or inspired than simply a generic "hey this is popular, let's make that".

China correctly understood people are trash and required governing harder.

Look at America and democracy and how that's turned out. Just a meme country now.

America proves Plato was right about Democracy......lol

My favorite moment and battle in the entire game and damn the music is fantastic. Kama was an incredible villain of a game with great villains (he is not the main antagonist and he is optional based on your choices). Great atmosphere as well. Imagine an anti-Buddha who wants everyone to act on their desires and with Joker like intelligence to cause major problems for his foes and your allies. How much damage done is based of your choices, but damage will be done.

Love the names of his Avatars as well. Eye for Joy, Ear for Wrath, Body for Grief, Mind of Desire, Tongue for Reflection, and Nose for Love (who was killed before this battle). The six senses.

I might give it a shot! The setting looks cool!

I massively disagree with this statement.

If anything, China is massively underexplored. In Guild Wars 1, I didn't particularly care for Tyria, but I was very invested in Cantha and Elona. Just because of the chinese, and north african settings.

I'll add it to my wishlist.

It's ironic, as Chinese lore was popular in the West some 20 years ago. I think it was the decline of Hong Kong cinema that killed Western interest in Chinese culture, with the void being filled by the rise of Japanese anime.

@uninspiredcup: have your actually lived in a totalitarian country or you are speaking out of your ass?

Also, what makes your think a totalitarian government would rule according to your views of good governance?

@texasgoldrush: Plato was crizicing direct democracy. A government system that has never been used for any modern state or any state larger than a polis.

Here is a heads up, to play the original route which is recommended first time, skip the quest to fight the golden scorpion.

To play the new route which is the expanded last third of the game (Southern Chronicles, then Echoes of Ashes and Dust), do the golden scorpion quest in one of three ways (doing it the way from doctor from Gusu is more recommended) and then finish the Pili School quest, where your actions do matter later.

You can fail quests badly in this game, miss details or side quests that impact later scenes, and you can fail to pick up key companions. If you do not pay attention, things end badly. One companion quest will actually end badly if your affinity is too high with him. Another will be killed if you follow the quest directions instead of the details of where he is going.

The game will let you fail early investigations without consequence, but they serve as warnings in the future. Southern Chronicles and Echoes of Ash and Dust end badly if you are not careful.

Graphics are really good.

Also, while you do not have to have them in your party to level them, make sure everyone on your roster has their skills and meridians filled out and well equipped. A party member can be forced into a battle, sometimes alone.

However, every martial and meridian boosting item should go to Yuwen as he will duel some bosses and he will have to duel masters from some techniques and cultivations.

Boosting cultivation skills basically levels your characters stats up by giving you meridian points to spend on stat boosts and perks.

That gives me strong Saga vibes. Would you say Saga is a strong influence on this?

Not really.

It feels more like cRPG role playing with a JRPG style in look and combat. The leveling system is unique as well. Enemies do not level up with you as well.

They do look really lovely.