Wandering Sword is infuriating in the worst kind of way. The gameplay is fine, it's a really enjoyable menu simulator with a xianxia filter. My main gripe is the HORRIFIC railroading of the story that will waste so much of your time.
There is a common genre of Korean manhwa where a martial artist in murim regresses to the past. Typically they have regrets and are set to "do right" and make a better ending for themselves and others. If you play this game, this character will be you, the player. I am telling you right now: you are going to *blow it* on your first playthrough so badly that you will regress to your second one, then probably your third one for good measure.
Something that isn't really advertised about the game is that there are multiple endings and storylines for each chapter of the story. This is a good thing in theory, since it would make each playthrough unique, but the issue is threefold: it has very strange and esoteric requirements to trigger certain *KEY* cutscenes, the quests outright lie to you about what you should do, and if you ever get a single thing wrong (or miss any tiny step) in the 30+ hour campaign then you are instantly locked out of any future good endings.
I should specify that "good endings" are for the story arcs, and not the actual ending, which is always the same (unless you stumble into the old storyline (yeah don't worry about it)). You could be a drooling moron with no companions and drag yourself to the end, but it wouldn't be easy or fun.
This game has many, many party members. However, you will not recruit them. Why? Because if you accidentally miss one (which is very easy because the map is huge and sometimes they just... go and die on their own), you miss the majority of future opportunities. If there wasn't a list posted on the steam forums detailing every companion in the game, I bet 95% of players wouldn't realize that there are 21 PARTY MEMBERS instead of like, 7.
This storm of stupidity truly flourishes in the Ninjiang arc. Never in a videogame will you ever feel like you have wasted hours upon hours of your life for absolutely nothing. In order to get a good ending in that arc, you truly need divine intervention, or to be on your 3rd or 4th playthrough. To top it all off, it has some truly egregious difficulty spikes that you could never see coming on a first playthrough, forcing you to load a save from hours before and grind stats.
I will probably keep playing because of stockholm syndrome and spite, and eventually have a playthrough where I do everything right. If you have hobby, job, a life, or if you are a perfectionist, you really will not like this game. You are looking at negative reviews so you're probably going to buy the game anyways, but heed my warnings. There is quite literally zero margin for error; truly the asian childhood experience.
