[B]The Matchless Kungfu[/B] is a wuxia based sandbox RPG. Wuxia is a genre of Chinese fiction taking place in a Chinese medieval world, so heroic fantasy but focused on Chinese mythology. Which means you'll find in this game martial artists, martial arts sects, mythical (Chinese) creatures, auctions where you can make every attendant jealous of you, etc. Although I'm a bit sad I have yet to read the line "You're courting death" . A strange battle system The thing about [B]TMK[/B] is how it uses the RPG conventions. The battles for example. If they are indeed turn based, here they use a rock paper scissor system. You have 5 different types of move: fist, palm, kick, weapon, concealed weapon. Each move is strong against a different move, except for weapon which are strong against palm/fist, but weak against kick/concealed weapon. And how you obtain those moves depends on which skills you have equipped. Let's say there is a skill with this requirement: 1 fist and 2 kicks. Once equipped, you'll add more fist and kick moves to your pool of moves. When you fight, a limited amount of moves will appear randomly on the screen. You'll then have to link them (and you can only link moves of the same type) or use some special moves to change moves or make different ones appear. And if you were able to choose 1 fist and 2 kicks, that means the next turn you'll be able to use that same skill I mentioned earlier. So in TMK, you link moves to activate skills. You can also cancel an opponent's moves by choosing four times a move that is strong against theirs. When that happens, that character will get hit by all of your moves. A unique map system The battles are not the only unique system here: the map is also a hybrid of luck and choice. Here, it is composed of tiles and each one has their own environment, ressources, characters, but they also have their own missions. Completing those is how you unlock more tiles. When choosing a tile, you'll have to pick 1 between at most 6 of them; and most of the time, if you don't like them, you can close the menu and open it again to have a batch of new random tiles. Once you've made your choice, you can now place that tile where you want. Do note that around those tiles, there's only water but your character is able to jump on water. More maps? A really nice possibility here is unlocking the Sandbox mode after placing 5 tiles in the Great Wilds (= the main world). The sandbox mode allows you to create at max 5 different worlds, Great Wilds included. You can also choose to restart or erase any world you want - but you only restart the Great Wilds. If you restart a world, you'll start with only 1 tile while keeping your character. You can also change worlds as much as you want by returning to the title screen. The sandbox mode offers multiple options to customize a world when creating it. So, if you encounter a deadend in one world, you can temporily go to a new world or you can just choose to restart the world altogether. About the characters Each NPC have multiple traits, that defines how they act and they also have a reputation. Let's take the reputation "Flirtatious" for example. One time, a woman with that reputation came to me and asked if I wanted to become her lover. I didn't know her so I said [I]"No" . Unfortunately, that woman also had the "Irascible" trait. So, she attacked me and left me unconcious. Either way, it's an interesting system that can make some unique character. Would you choose to believe someone's reputation of being "merciful" or their trait of being "Ruthless"? Death is only the beginning Here, death is not the end. In fact, you'll need to die to get stronger. If your character can disappear, unless you restart it, the map you create is permanent, so everything you do and create will always be here. However, if you don't load a save after a death, you'll need to create a new character. But there's a meta progression that allows you to unlock bonuses for a new character and you can start with six previously learned skills. Furthermore, a character strength is tied to their parents' strength and your first character is always an orphan. So when you create a second character, you're allowed to pick a random parent amongst the characters that are already present in your world. And if your parents are of a high level, your new character will be far more powerful than your first one. What else? Other than that, [B]TMK[/B] offers what you can expect from a sandbox RPG: you can craft, build, sneak, steal, attack, kill, becomes friend, enemy or lover with everyone. One problem is how the translation can get strange, like asking a woman to become your "sworn brother", which means you become "dear friend" with her. As you can see, there's a lack of consistency on the terms used. There are also some problems, like the balance. First of all, there's no level scalling, so it's totally possible to meet a max level character in the second tile you place. And if that character has "Ruthless" as reputation, you can expect a massacre. Also, because of how random everything is, it's not strange to sometimes meet a farmer who is also a extremely powerful martial artist. All of that can make the world feels artificial and flawed. I could also talk the verbal duels, which is a kind of deck builder mini-game that you can use to bargain or manipulate characters, or the beast battles, that I have yet to try. I'll just say the verbal duels are interesting, it takes some time to get the hang of it and they're pretty long, but it's a nice approach to talking. Anyway, [B]TMK[/B] is full of ideas. Some flaws [*]The longer you play, the lower the FPS get, until you go back to the title screen. It happens faster with a large map. [*]Sneaking: a character can walk up to you in order to tell you something, even while you're sneaking in the middle of a bandit camp for example and you have max stat in sneak. [*]Sneaking 2: as of now, there's no dedicated interaction to stop someone from sneaking and stealing something from you. [*]Crafting and building: here, unlocking new things to create can be a bit of a hassle. So you have to grind your Forge level somewhere, most of the time in a city, by dismantling equipment to raise your forge level, before you're able to forge something. And this is also true with a lot of different skills, buildings, items. [*]The designs: the characters, not the models themselves, but the clothes are bland. [*]Loot: there's 3 levels of rarity, no rings, necklaces to equip, nothing that stand out. Only clothes and weapons and not a lot them. [*]And of course, bugs. I didn't encounter a lot of them, but they exist. [B]TMK[/B] is not a bad game. It's an imperfect one, an incomplete one, but not a bad one. If you want to play a sandbox RPG and do whatever you want with it, then don't hesitate. You just need to know it's a bit of a strange game. To be honest, I didn't like it the first time I played the demo some years ago. The beginning can be intimdating because you're lost, but once you understand how everything works, there's no denial that the Matchless Kungfu can be fun.
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