30 mintues cutscene. 5 seconds play. 2 minutes cutscene into another 3 minutes cutscene.
you fight 3 wolves. cutscene.
you enter a temple. cutscene.
you pickup something in the same room in like 2 seconds. cutscene.

can i f*cking play this game?

So, this game is a Chinese folklore RPG retelling of Pinocchio, but instead of a wooden puppet, it's about a frail girl named Xiang who has a near-death experience. With the power of magic, her soul is separated from her body and placed within a wooden mannequin. The plot is okay, but the translation can make it hard to follow at times. The journal does a good job showcasing the lore from Xiang's perspective. Unfortunately, nobody gets swallowed by a whale. I was hoping for something like being eaten by a giant frog.

Xuan-Yuan Sword features simple action RPG combat. There are five martial art stances to learn, each with unique basic attacks and a special move. Your party of three can upgrade their equipment through a crafting system, which also offers nice cosmetic effects for the weapons. You can also craft armor, accessories, and soul protections to become the most powerful Pinocchio in town.

There are a handful of side quests, but they are basic fetch missions and feel short and incomplete. For example, you might have to run 100 meters north, kill one enemy, and then return to the quest giver. However, the game includes a simple but engaging chess/match-three mini-game that is quite enjoyable to play. The AI in the game lacks fluidity and often makes the same moves in every game of chess. Xuan-Yuan Sword offers a fast-paced RPG experience that takes around fifteen hours to complete. Thankfully, you don't spend more than 30 minutes in the same area, which is a nice change of pace for the genre.

I saw a random youtube gameplay clip of this game which initially caught my eye. It was gameplay of a boss battle that I thought looked pretty interesting. After finishing Xuan Yuan 7 I've come to realize that either the boss was omited from the game or I got the name of the game mixed up with something else.

Regardless XY7 is a pretty mediocre 3rd person action game that takes place in ancient China, where you play an adventureer on a quest to save his sister from death. A quick glance at the game and you might think "Oh man this looks like a low budget adventure game, that while graphicly looks better than the average low budget game and seems to have decent combat, at the right price point this could be harmless fun inbetween a bigger release" and while that is true to an extent, even with this mindset I ended feeling disapointed by this game. First it took two years to come to an acceptable price point IMO. Then after starting mid way through the real problems of the game start to sink in for me.

The biggest issue for me is pacing. There are lots of moments in XY7 where you are constantly being interupted for a cutscene that seems to go on forever where it's just straight character dialog about them talking really about nothing only to take a few steps and start another scene. It honestly felt more annoying than even MGS4. At least there I liked the actual scenes and felt like I actually gained something from them. About half way through the game I honestly just started skipping cutscenes, which is something I NEVER do on a first playthrough even in games I dislike because I hate the feeling of missing out on something but here I never really did. Added on top of the constant interuption there are long periods of running around empty maps for what seems like an eternity to go pick up something only to have to travel all the way back in empty corridors to return a quest item.

As for the gameplay it's as basic as it gets. One strong attack and one quick 4 hit combo. Mix and match ect. I'm okay with simplistic combat if the tools feel good and actually test you defensive and offensive abilities but every thing here is so stiff and easy. Enemies are either card board cut outs or damage sponges with no strategy. The block with the sword seems useless as you still take damage and it locks you in place. The dodge looks and sounds fast when you see it but in practice it's really clumsy and enemies seem to track it too well. So if it's not a perfect roll it doesn't help. Too many times it puts you in a more dangerous path or hits some background item and stops. There are some weapon upgrades for you and your auto attacking party members but weapons, armor and accessories cost a pretty penny and materials for just a minor stat upgrade. Never felt like it made a difference either way. Plus an annoying thing was the healing items cure so little health and they are on a cooldown timer. So if I need to stop and heal in a battle I have to stop attacking and just concentrate on healing a fraction of health and waiting for the cool down timer to use it again cause it gave me so little. Plus there are attack damage and defense buff that go on the same cooldown meter. So if I wanna buff myself up for a tough looking battle it takes forever before I can actually play use the damn things. Plus a lot of enemies on the story path deal poisen damage in the scripted battles. So now I have just healed waiting to heal again as my health ticks down pretty much negating my first potion useage. Great. You know what just fuck it and go all out, health be damned and ride or die and you will win most battles.

XY7 felt overly long and didn't have a whole lot to say. It's story was boring and uninteresting. Weird lore and background materials really don't help it at all either. Do they want a realistic backdrop or magic monster nonsense. Other games have done but much better. XY7 just seems like it does what it wants when it wants. Even with low expectations I still found my self disappointed in it. As for any positive comments for this game. Yea sure, for one it was an easy platinum and two the zhou lou chess mini game that you can play throughout was pretty damn good and was I think my favorite part of it unexpectedly. XY7 isn't the worst game I've played but it sure doesn't do anything to really meet the average baseline in similar games. Plus it really does feel it's budget at times with so many reused animations. Man just the amount of times you see that jump up a wall and hang with one arm on a ledge animation. The one time in the game where the character didn't do it I actually was legit shocked and jumped up for joy.

Platinum # 169

An enjoyable but flawed game. A surprisingly good main cast of characters with a genuinely great sibling duo with great voice acting and dialogue (the strong protector sibling with the weak younger sibling is a trope I usually hate, but it's done fantastic here), flashy combat with lots of fighting styles, a good variety of enemies, and a fun mini-game (Zhoulu Chess, which numbers among my favorite minigames now, alongside the Witcher's Gwent, and Kingdom Come's Farkle Dice). If you want a simple action RPG where you can have fun fighting monsters and humans alike this is a pretty good option. The story is nothing special and honestly the final act of the game feels like it is speedrunning the story. But there is a soul here. A great combat-system, fun moments, developer passion, and more makes it worth your time. Just don't expect a perfectly polished experience. This is jank, but good jank. (A note, if playing on console and the lighting flickers or looks bad, check and see if your TV has the option Game-Mode enabled, if so, disable it, I had to do this and once I did the game looked way nicer). Getting 100% trophies was very easy, so achievement hunters, this is a good buy too.

Xuan Yuan Sword VII is a very linear and story-driven action RPG. The gameplay, level design and overall structure of the game reminded me a lot of The Witcher 2, but in a Chinese high fantasy mythological setting.

This was an interesting experience for me because I have very limited knowledge of Chinese tropes so the story felt pretty interesting and fresh. The story follows our protagonist Taishi Zhao on a quest to restore his sister's soul to her body so Taishi goes on a massive adventure across a whole continent while getting tangled up into a war between two rival political factions among other things.

There weren't many characters, but the few characters there were are pretty solid with fairly realistic personalities and good backstories, but the translation was a bit dry and direct at times and I feel like I could've gotten more emotionally invested if it was a bit better. Also you just have to have a bit of suspension of disbelief due to all the characters being ridiculously powerful for no reason despite supposedly basically being normal humans.

The character animations aren't the best and feel very low budget, but the actual visuals and cut-scenes were great with some really cool Wuxia styled action and lots of really beautiful set pieces from snowy mountains to lush forests, plus I really liked the dungeon and monster design too.

The OST was great, it ranged from traditional Chinese folk to bombastic orchestral music and it always fit the tone and setting of the scene.

The voice work acting was honestly really well done despite sometimes being a bit overdramatic and the extensive dialogue and cut-scenes made me feel like I was watching a Chinese drama at times.

You might be asking, why is the game only solid? It sounds like you thought everything was great? Well if we were just talking story, characters, music, visual etc the game would get an 8 or an 8.5 for sure from me.

However here's the problem, the game's biggest negative is the gameplay which just wasn't the best. It either felt extremely easy and autopilot button mashy or insanely hard with bullshit artificial difficulty spikes. There was no in between. Some bosses would literally practically one-shot you and just didn't feel fair at all. Whenever I finally won, never felt rewarded like I actually got better, it was just a battle of endurance and luck. Also I have to mention the ridiculous amounts of technical difficulties, frame rate drops, lag and bugs. The game was just horribly optimized, at least on PS4 (I have a PS4 pro as well) and that definitely dampened my enjoyment some. Mainly what kept me going aside from the story and characters was I liked the exploration and Uncharted styled platforming/puzzle sections.

At the end of the day Xuan Yuan Sword VII is a great piece of Chinese Wuxia high fantasy with an interesting story and world, solid characters which are voiced well and great visual and audio presentation that is unfortunately brought down significantly by its poor optimization, gameplay balancing issues and slightly dry translation.