Reviews from

in the past


An all-time classic with a beautiful story, but the gameplay is seriously outdated.
The Legend of Sword and Fairy can be considered the most influential game in China. It even creates a unique fantasy genre we call XianXia today.
But from the perspective of a modern player, I don't think it's that good. The dungeon design pursues complexity but lacks challenge, and the encounter battles are too monotonous. And as a JRPG imitation, there is no large world map to explore is also a major shortcoming.
If you want to learn more, this video made by Lunamos describes in great detail the background and specific content of this game

CWs for The Legend of Sword and Fairy: sexual assault, kidnapping, blood, drowning, falling from great heights, getting crushed to death, fridging women.

Despite finding out about the franchise less than a week ago, it is unsurprising how familiar The Legend of Sword and Fairy feels. It may sound extreme given the very small footprint the game has on English language internet, but I think we don't arrive at FFX or the general modern tradition of cinematic RPGs without this game.

The maze dungeons overstay their welcome and a lot of the love triangle beats are deeply unpleasant to sit through given the ending, but the scale of the world and the way the cast members rotate as witness to each others' lives is so so so compelling. Sword and Fairy makes very delicate moves within the usual genre tools (skill progression, forced party changes, one-way map connections) to express loss and a general lack of control amid a magnificent, tumultuous, and reserved magical tragedy. An absolute must and a likely missing puzzle piece for RPG fans young and old.






This took me a while to finish, as I got stuck midway, as due to the age of this game it has a lot of archaic and cryptic elements. The dungeons are massive mazes and can get tedious and frustrating, but as a whole, the game is oddly enjoyable. The scuffed translation really helps with this in my opinion, as it's quite funny and helps the enjoyment of the game.

It's a bog standard gameplay-driven JRPG experience, but one that while I can't recommend, was decently enjoyable, if a tad long.

If you need a guide, you can translate this webpage: http://m.pc.tgbus.com/tuwen_180/72766_2/