This game now has a complete English fan translation available here: https://steamcommunity.com/app/724970/discussions/0/3855581793666247699/?ctp=22#c4040355933295865258
I only got into Chinese RPGs in 2020, but took note of this game right away, however I couldn’t play it, since it didn’t have English language. This changed recently, as a fan translation got finalized a few months ago.
In a world inspired by Chinese mythology, our story follows Feixing, a talented lad living in the mountains near his village. He is not allowed to enter his village, because he is cursed – everywhere he goes things break and strange things happen. Very early in the game, we learn that he is in fact blessed, as all the mountain gods and deities love him and follow him everywhere, causing all his troubles unintentionally, but this realization is overshadowed by a tragic event that befalls his village. This starts him on an epic journey of saving the world, filled with unexpected and sometimes haphazard twists and awkward scenes, but more on that later.
The game takes place in a Chinese fantasy setting, one that is very high fantasy, where magic and sorcery are abundant, and gods and divine beings regularly interact with and are even present in the mortal world. We also have all kinds of races, the equivalent of elves, dwarves, giants, and even a tribe of half-human half-robot beings, which might sound weird for the unitiated, but bronze/wooden machines are actually a Chinese fantasy trope that goes way back.
The presentation of everything is top notch and I think it holds up absolutely well even today. The locations are inspired by Chinese architecture and environments, but dialed up to eleven befitting for the fantasy setting. Later in the game we visit royal palaces and residences, which are just stunning with so much detail and spectacle. I also loved the costumes and clothes, which are a mix of traditional Chinese clothing and over the top fantasy designs. The game also has excellent mocapped animations. I don’t think there are many games that have dance coreographies, but this one even has scenes like that, and I loved them. The only thing that brings the whole visual experience a bit down are the facial animations, which often are very rigid. Even with that, this game would be perfect for virtual photography, but unfortunately it only has a half baked Ansel implementation, where the camera movements are very limited and you can’t even take Steam screenshots while in the Ansel interface.
The gameplay is built on the JRPG framework. We wander around with a party, and explore the locations, talking to people, doing tasks, fighting things, and going into people’s houses and pocketing everything that isn’t bolted down, as per classic RPG tradition. This basic gameplay has some awkwardness to it. You have to hold the mouse button to move the camera in 3rd person view, which is tiresome. Movement is janky and you can get stuck on things, or have trouble getting into position to pick up items. This makes the parts where you have to avoid environmental dangers a bit annoying. You also don’t have any minimap or quest markers other than a 3D glyph within the game world for the main quest, which is sometimes hard to find in bigger areas. The game gives you a list of sidequests, but no indication on where you can pick them up, so you just have to talk to everyone in an area. I’m not for games being very handholdy, but a little bit more would’ve been nice here.
Combat is a big part of the game, and it’s actually quite interesting, as it’s a combination of turn based and real time combat. When you get your turn, your party members perform their actions the moment you press the corresponding button. Most attacks apply a debuff on the enemy called Weakness that lasts for a few seconds in real time, and if another attack lands during this time, the damage you deal increases. So you have all the time in the world to think about what you are going to do in your turn, but once you start issuing commands, timing your button presses well results in greatly increased damage. You can build combos with certain attacks and then use specific combo finisher moves for greatly increased damage. Enemies can be in formations that can be broken by taking out the leader, you can trigger divine interventions on your side, your attacks have different timings and properties, etc, resulting in a pleasantly deep combat system. There’s one more mechanic, where you can reposition to the left or right, which is used to avoid enemies’ massive AOE attacks. You trigger this with the [ or ] keys, but there’s a problem: you can’t rebind the controls, and this one just didn’t work for me. I tried setting my keyboard to English or Chinese, nothing worked. I was playing on easy, so I could tank these big attacks, but eventually ran into fights that were unwinnable without this move. The only solution I found was to simply plug in a controller. This might only be an issue with regional keyboards, and I guess this won’t be a problem for most people, since they play with a controller, but it’s a big negative for me, especially in a PC game. Even with all this however, I think the combat is one of the strong points of the game. It has depth, it’s spectacular, it’s fun. I was actually looking forward to fighting things, even if the endgame enemies and bosses were a bit too damage spongy. Actually, the final stretch of the game was quite challenging even on easy difficulty, can’t imagine what you have to do to get through it on harder ones.
I would easily overlook the minor issues with the gameplay if the story was good, but unfortunately it’s a mess. The writing is all over the place and feels haphazard, with introducing plot points and then abandoning them, presenting twists that feel random, or resulting from the main character being an idiot. The game also really tries to be dramatic and tragic with scenes so overdone they almost feel emotionally manipulative. And it does it too often. Sometimes someone dies tragically then brought back to life through some convoluted plot mechanic, only for someone else to die so everyone can be sad again. The writers really wanted to make the characters cry for some reason, but often these scenes were just awkward. By the end of the game I had a hard time taking any of it seriously, which is pretty bad for a game that’s so heavy on story and cutscenes. It’s not all like that though, there are some characters I liked, some interesting story ideas and twists, but for every good scene there’s two that just leaves you scratching your head. It’s a shame, because I think the world had potential, it was pretty interesting even compared to other Chinese fantasy settings.
Kudos to the voice actors though, they did a good job, certainly did what they could with this script. Speaking of the audio, the soundtrack for the game is excellent too, if a bit repetitive. I had no major tech issues, although there was a part where the game consistently crashed. I could only solve this by lowering graphics and setting the CPU priority to high. I have a low end PC, but the game came seven years ago, so I don’t know which is the culprit here. It should also be noted that the game has an always online requirement as its DRM. The fan translation is pretty good, there are some minor issues, but pretty much everything can be followed and understood. It’s actually better than some official translations for Chinese games.
So, do I recommend this game? I guess I do, since in the end, I don’t regret playing this game, I had fun with it for the most part, and I kind of want others to play it, even though I can’t deny its flaws. For every good idea in it, there’s a bad one, for every high, there’s a low somewhere. It’s absolutely a mixed bag. Well, for what it’s worth, it can now be played in English, so people in the West can play it and decide for themselves.
