Firstly I will preface this by saying that I have been waiting this game for a very very long time (20+ years). Ever since the original trilogy (yes yes I know this isn't technically a continuation of the previous games but it might as well be) I have been praying and hoping that this will get made. This hope was completely dashed when Dynasty went bankrupt and this IP got bought by another company. Therefore I am writing this with some very rose coloured lenses. Do I recommend this game - YES (with a very big caveat). Let me get in to the specifics. THE GOOD Story telling Firstly lets talk about the plot. While this games plot is pretty good it pales in comparison to its predecessor. This is a very typical young man going on an adventure and finding out there is more to him than meets the eye story. Not to say there's anything wrong with this type of story (indeed the original trilogy used this troupe to great effect) but there's very little twist and turns which is a shame because there was a lot of potential in the story to be told in a much more effective way. However I would still list its plot as a positive point as it was solid overall. Music Music is also pretty good and for those of us who have played the previous games will definitely recognise a number of themes (ah the nostalgia). This is also a really good introduction for anyone interested in chinese music or chinese instruments as this game gives a really good selection of the typical instruments you here in ancient chinese music. However the music does get repetitive quite quickly and it seems they reused a lot of old songs from the previous games. Dialogue I put this in its own category as it is amazing! Unfortunately if you don't understand chinese this game will be very difficult for you to understand. Actually, even if you do understand chinese (I was raised in Australia but my chinese standard is pretty high) this game can be quite difficult to understand. This is because it uses a lot of old chinese phrases and axioms which is just not used in the modern language. Some of the chinese characters you probably won't even know how to pronounce them without a dictionary (thank god for the voice acting as it saves me time to look up some of those ridiculously difficult words). But if you enjoy reading and admiring the ancient chinese language, this game probably does it better than any other chinese games out there. Voice Acting For the most part the voice acting was actually pretty good. I was initially a bit worried about this but I think overall the cast did a great job. The only actor that I wasn't a big fan of was the older general character as his line delivery always felt awkward to me but he was fine whenever he needed to be more emotional so I think this was more of a directly misstep than anything. THE BAD Combat This is a very old ATB style turn based battle system. Now don't get me wrong, turn based system is not the reason why this was bad. In fact I'm a big fan of the old turn based battle system. What made this system bad was the speed. I think in an effort to make the battle more exciting and quicker paced, the dev actually forgot that they need to balance the game out properly. This means that the ATB bar actually takes next to no time to fill up and most of the time you haven't even selected your moves for one character before the previous character's ATB has already filled up. This makes the tactical side of things get really out of whack. For example, there is a move that one of the casters can use which instantaneously fills up all the ATB for every character. However, because the speed is so fast already, this moves bascially becomes useless. And there are a number of other moves which are equally affected by this. Again I look at the old trilogy which used the same system but to a much better effect (I don't understand why and how a game that is 20 years old can do the same thing better in early every aspect). I also had a lot of issues with its used of elementals as spells never seem to do much difference even after they are upgraded. Again I hope the devs will continue to work on this to fix some of these issues. Difficulty I couldn't help myself when I wrote this sub heading. For any of the old fans, they would remember how frustratingly difficult those games were. In an effort to appease the current gamers (read young people :P) they made this game infuriatingly easy. After having finished the whole game I had died twice. Contrast this to its predecessor where even a random encounter might kill you if you didn't plan properly. This games is waaaay to easy and I hadn't really even need to think about tactics for a fight until the very very last fight and even then it was just simple buffs and debuff strategies which gamer should know by now. I get that its nice when you just want to follow the story but this game definitely needs a bump in difficulty level. Also because you don't have random encounters anymore (you can see the monsters and try to walk around them or confront them like FF13), this means that each battle should in theory be more deadly as you get to choose when to engage or not. In the last dungeon I just skipped pretty much every battle, not because it was hard but because it got tedious. Upgrading and transmuting In the game there is a system which allows your transmute things to upgrade and get better equipment and allows for some customisation. I basically ignore this because the game was so easy I never even bothered with it. It was also immensely confusing on some of the nuances which the game doesn't really give you any help or guidance on. As a side note, never EVER sell anything unless you have a duplicate copy. Since money is extremely easy to come by I would argue you shouldn't sell stuff unless absolutely necessary. This is because (again those of us who are old fans would know) some basic equipments or non-flashy items can become instrumental in getting the best equipments in the game. If you accidentally sell it or transmuted it without thought than say bye bye to some of the best equipment the games has to offer. Although again, I didn't really care in the end because the game was so easy. THE UGLY Graphics There's no getting around it, this is an ugly looking game. Even through my very rose coloured eye, I can't ignore the fact that the 3D models looks like something made 10 years ago. I really wished the devs would just go back to what they were really good at which was 2D models. Yes I expect amazing graphic models and 3D realistic scenery from a AAA game. But given the money and time constraint this company had, it would have been much better for them to just do what they know. Given that I would argue most of the people who play this game are old fans, this would bring back even more nostalgia. Additionally, I would argue that in this day and age, a 2D game might be even more attractive among all the crappy 3D games (looking at you Gollum). There also wasn't enough variety in each town which again comes down to them reusing a lot of resources. Dungeons Oh my god the dungeons are so repetitive in this game. Especially the final dungeon, you literally go through the exact same route 3 times in order to progress to the final battle. I don't know if the devs were just burned out by then but that just felt cheap and little effort was made to it which was a shame. Final thoughts Ultimately I still think this is a decent chinese RPG that you can try out if you have time (and you can read chinese to a high level). My main reason for hoping this does well is that I really really want a final game to the original trilogy. Anyway hope this review can help you decide whether to buy this or not, meanwhile I might try my second play through now.
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