Game Critique 1 - The Legend of Sword and Fairy 4

I have been a fans of the game series The Legend of Sword and Fairy, also known as Chinese Paladin, since I was about 8 years old. This RPG series developed by Taiwan's Softstar Entertainment has long remained one of the most popular games in China, and the latest sequel, The Legend of Sword and Fairy 5, was released in July 2011. Anyway, I picked The Legend of Sword and Fairy 4 as the object of my first critique and will discuss the reasons why I love it so much.

The Legend of Sword and Fairy 4 (to be written as T4 below) presents to players a fantastic magic world in an ancient Chinese setting. Traditional Chinese culture, widespread folk stories, and supernatural immortals and monsters are integrated perfectly. During the adventure of the avatars, they fight against foes, interact with people they meet, and develop emotions. At certain times, one of them may gain a significantly overturning understanding of himself/herself, or enable a major change in his/her character. All these are presented in a subtle Chinese style, which strongly caters to my tastes, as I am such a devourer of traditional Chinese story elements.

What is so fun about T4?

• Narrative

Who can deny the charm of its roller-coaster and mysterious plots? Actually, I fell into pondering and even burst into tears for several times during my gameplay. Also, the characters' names, the lines, and the names of items and magic skills are so delicately and poetically designed that they make you feel satisfied by simply reading them.

• Expression

Subtle emotion expression requires the player's wholehearted devotion in order to obtain an all-round comprehension of the characters' complicated emotions, which I suppose is, unfortunately, difficult for those who do not understand the Chinese-style introversion. But T4 surely did a good job in the eyes of we modern Chinese who cherish but not necessarily follow this tradition.

• Discovery

T4 involves a plethora of labyrinths, which are quite intricate but not extremely hard to solve. Instead, their charm lies in discovering treasure, hidden plots, beautiful or horrifying settings, and of course, killing foes.

• Sensation

The 3-D effects of T4 cannot be praised as wonderful compared to games developed by EA or Blizzard, but it wins with its background music. As a traditional music appreciator myself, I have always been thankful that there is a game which combines this type of music with modern gaming experience.

• Fantasy

An ancient world with somewhat superstitious settings (e.g. the 5 elements Lightning, Wind, Water, Fire and Earth, similar to Wu Xing in Chinese philosophy; or the overall world view of 6 Parallel Worlds: Gods, Immortals, Sirens, Demons, Humans and Ghosts) provides incredible adventurous experience.

How are the funs created?

A brief discussion of the mechanics and dynamics utilized in T4 can address this question.

Mechanics

• Items such as weapons, armors, potions and those intended for special purposes.
• NPCs or monsters everywhere in towns or labyrinths.
• A wide-range set of attacking methods and magic skills.

Dynamics

Since the game world of T4 is pretty huge, it makes more sense to analyze its dynamic behaviors. Also, only by this way can we obtain an understanding of its elaborate embedded small game systems which undoubtedly enhance the player's overall experience.

• Basic dynamics of almost every Action-RPG game, such as fighting, level-up and various points-up, consuming items, conversing with NPCs, buying and selling, are all well integrated.
• Fighting system: T4 adopts semi-turn-based fighting instead of a turn-based or a real-time one, which ensures considerable time intensiveness without too much nervous pressure. After all, T4 is basically for relaxing and appreciating, not for a stressed gameplay. In addition, after winning a battle, the player's performance will be graded automatically and given extra bonus items, encouraging not only winning but winning as impressively as possible.
• Weapon and armor upgrading system: There are numerous strengthening effects that can be added to weapons and armors, e.g. higher critical hit rates, stronger defense against lightning-attributed attacks, etc. The player must first buy the corresponding tutorial in a certain shop, and then collect needed items from certain types of monsters, some of which can be extremely difficult to obtain! Finally, the weapon or armor can be upgraded with a certain possibility of success. If it fails, the weapon or armor along with the items will disappear, no matter how precious they are. So the player must deliberate before doing this!
• Puzzles and small games: Sometimes passing through a place requires certain tricks. If the player is not that intelligent, the only way for him/her to figure them out may be searching for solutions online...

Summary

The core concept and the biggest selling point is the Chinese traditional beliefs prevalent in the whole game. It may still be a little immature compared with those excellent world-renowned games, but it means a lot to those who cherish ancient Chinese culture and wish to see its expression in modern techniques.

Finally, I would really like to recapitulate that I love T4's extravagant nomenclature so much!