I’ve been saying it for a while now: lately Chinese and Korean games are coming out with top quality and production, which have nothing to envy to the most expensive AAAs of American, Japanese or European manufacture.
Excellent looking titles, like the next ones BLACK MYTH: WUKONG, PROJECT EVE or PROJECT MAGNUM, and others that have already reached our hands and we enjoy a lot like FIST: FORGED IN SHADOW TORCH either XUAN YUAN SWORD VII, whose reviews can be found on our page. SWORD & FAIRY: TOGETHER FOREVER It is also the seventh installment of a saga that is not very well known in the West, but that also arrives to settle comfortably among the best that the industry of those countries is offering us.
SWORD & FAIRY: TOGETHER FOREVER It is available for Playstation 4, Playstation 5 and PC.
INSEPARABLE TOGETHER
The story is quite complicated and convoluted because it mixes many elements of fantasy with Chinese culture and religion, full of names, gods and complicated ranks for people from this side of the pond, but I will try to explain it in the best possible way.
In a fictional kingdom there are two sects known as Tianshi and Mingshu, which used to have a legendary rivalry but has long been paused due to the fact that the Tianshi sect is almost completely finished, currently having only two members: the young Yu Qingshu and his grandfather. On the other hand, the Tianshi sect is stronger than ever, with hundreds of members, and they are also in charge of maintaining peace and security in the kingdom, applying a protective barrier over it with their powers. Outside this barrier thousands of powerful monstrosities swarm freely, constantly threatening the lives of the peaceful villagers.
On one of his training walks through the forest, Qingshu finds an injured deity in his path. This is General Xiu Wu, a God sent from the Heavenly Realm to the Demon Realm on an assassination mission. Wu not only failed to fulfill his mission, but he is about to die and also in the battle in hell he lost his Chunzi sword, a very powerful weapon not only capable of facing demons, but also of opening portals between realms. of Humans, Deities and Demons.
Qingshu manages to save the God’s life with her healing powers, but inadvertently causes a symbiosis with him, which means that now Wu has to always be near her to stay alive (Hence the name of the game, “Together Forever It is for this, and also to recover, that Wu ends up joining the Mingshu sect as a new disciple, and being a “student” of Qinshu, despite being a very powerful God.
Of course, things are going to get even more complicated very soon. The demons use the Chunzi sword to enter the human plane, in search of the Chosen Child, a child who harbors in his body the power of Aoxu, a Supreme Deity with the power to stop demons. Both sects must put aside their differences and unite to stop them.
DEVIL MAY CRY MADE IN CHINA
SWORD & FAIRY: TOGETHER FOREVER is an action RPG. We control our characters in an Open World environment, and we see the enemies around us, so we can decide whether to face them or not. The combat is very fast and frenetic, very much in the manner of Hack ‘n Slash. During battles, we have two punch buttons, one fast and one hard, which we can toggle for physical combos, a jump button, and a dodge button. Also keeping R2 we open a window of magical attacks, which are also performed with the same buttons as before while that window is open, and which we can configure to our liking.
In addition to Yu Qingshu and Xiu Wu, two other characters will join our team as the story goes on: Bai Moqing, a very powerful young magician, and Sang Yo, the typical canchero petty thief who takes it hard but ends up being very noble. In combat, everyone will participate at the same time, but we will only have control over the character that we have assigned as leader and the rest will act on their own. Of course, we can change the character we control at any time.
Despite the speed and the large number of elements on screen, the combat is always very entertaining and satisfying, especially for fans of real-time action, and ends up being almost the best thing about the game. Even in some important fights we will have QTE sequences, fast button sequences in a short fraction of time to perform some important action, mechanics much more typical of action/combat games and not so much of RPGs.
Another important element in the combat and that also has a fundamental weight in the story are the Spiritual Animals. Beasts that we will find on our way and that not only have great abilities to help us in combat, but can also serve as transportation or help us to overcome certain obstacles, and which we can feed with magical fruits to make them increasingly powerful. A small section of “monster hunting” that we like so much.
How could it be otherwise, we will also find dozens of secondary missions that will reward us with experience, items and money, there are sections on platforming, vehicle handling and even a very interesting and addictive collectible card game, which can hook us almost completely as if it were a separate game, in the manner of the Gwent of THE WITCH or the Triple Triad of FINAL FANTASY III.
HOW BEAUTIFUL WAS MY VALLEY
And if we start to analyze the technical part of the game, everything is still even here. The graphics, both in character design and in the settings, look really nice. VERY beautiful, dare I say. All the settings are beautiful and full of details, such as enchanted forests, desert plains, frozen plains, great temples and cities, and the truth is that it is a visual feast to walk through them. The characters all look very attractive, and the care and love put into their clothing is admirable. The combat, as I said before, is super fluid and runs like silk. Perhaps the only very small “but” here comes from the side of the cutscenes (something that happens to me with all Chinese games), that although they look super well choreographed and striking, the characters usually have little mobility in their faces and sometimes even in the bodies, which gives a bit of an appearance of being puppets. Nothing too serious, but it subtracts a little bit of immersion in those moments.
In the sound department the game holds the line. Pleasant melodies fill the room, changing tone and intensity according to the situation. The game’s voices are entirely in Chinese, which is a bit “hard” on the untrained ear, but the excellent voice acting gets us comfortable with the language faster. Oh, beware, because it happened to me that I have my console configured in Spanish and the game, not recognizing that configuration, put all the texts directly in Chinese, which I could not solve until I put the configuration of my machine in English.
Gameplay is very entertaining, there is always something different to do and it never feels repetitive. If we’re not fighting, we’re gathering items for subquests, platforming, sledding down a frozen slope, hunting and feeding bugs, or playing cards. In addition, despite the fact that there is a wide variety of things to do, the title is not too long, in about 20 hours we will be able to complete all its objectives, which seems to me a more than adequate duration to never get bored.
SHOCK FINAL FANTASY
Yes, the title may be an exaggeration, but it must be recognized that both SWORD & FAIRY Y XUAN YUAN SWORD they are quite long-lived sagas in China and that here they are (or were they?) practically unknown franchises, and that the seventh installments that finally came to us gave us quite solid games, which do not have much to envy the, and sorry if someone offends, latest installments of world-renowned sagas such as FINAL FANTASY, more precisely speaking of iterations how FINAL FANTASY XV either STRANGER OF PARADISE: FINAL FANTASY ORIGINS.
With a striking story, interesting and varied gameplay, and a perfect length, it’s hard not to fall in love with the title. It has little flaws here and there, of course, but nothing too terrible and the overall experience ends up being more than good. Looking forward more than ever to the titles I mentioned at the beginning.