2021's most underrated gem.
Wow, just wow. To think that I almost let Xuan Yuan 7, also known as Xuan Yuan Sword 7, pass me by. Equal parts RPG and Action game, the game oozes with quality from the very first cutscene up 'til the end of the game. It's nothing you haven't played before, but it's done oh, so well.
You play as Taishi, a hunter for hire that has a few tricks up his sleeve and is trying to restore his sister's real body, as he had to extract her soul and place it in an automata. Yeah, the story is kinda crazy, and I love just how nobody bats an eye at how weird some things are. You get to fight ugly giant monsters as well as an army of fellows that enjoy making weapons out of clockwork. I love it. I also found the story surprisingly engaging, as I enjoyed the main trio and their chemistry quite a bit. The villains were quite nasty too. The Chinese-to-English translation was acceptable, as the subtitles had a few typos or grammatical errors here and there, but nothing that made the plot hard to follow. I also enjoyed the character designs, for an Eastern game there's barely any fanserive. There's this female character near the end that takes her clothes because reasons, but it was a singular outlying case.
For the most part, the game is a pretty linear adventure. While there are optional sidequests, if you don't partake in them you won't be doing much backtracking. The game world is basically made up of linear roads that connect every town with every dungeon, a bit like Final Fantasy VII Remake but more immersive, so you don't notice as much that the game is made up of corridors. In a way, it almost feels like Half-Life 2 or Dungeon Siege, in how the game is a continuous trek forward. Sure, you can go backwards, but you don't need to, and you rarely lose control of Taishi. It feels cozy, it feels like an adventure. Plus, monsters and enemies only respawn if you rest at a bonfire.... kinda like the Souls games.
Combat is fairly simple. You get a stamina gauge, because of course, and you get a weak attack, a strong attack, a super attack and a dodge. The strong and super attacks is where it gets interesting, as you'll unlock a variety of stances as you advance through the story, and each stance changes your Strong attack and your Super attack. You could opt for hand-to-hand attacks that deal little damage but fill the critical gauge, which turns into a one-hit kill on basic enemies or a very strong attack on bosses, or maybe a Stance that grants you a wide slash, or maybe a super strong piercing stab. You can equip up to two stances at the same time, and swap them with L2.
You get two CPU allies, Taishi's sister, Xiangce and Taishi's love interest, Hong. They are unplayable, but you can use L1 + square or L1+Triangle to have them use their special attacks, both running on cooldown. They also serve as invulnerable bait, as they'll help in combat and can't die, so they never become a burden. You have two other cooldown abilities, L1+Circle slows down time for a while and L1+X triggers a capture area that, if an enemy dies while standing on it, lets you capture their soul... which you can then fuse with other stuff to get more stuff.
As with most modern games, there's a crafting system. You'll collect materials in order to upgrade 'buildings' in the Elysium sub menu, and you want to upgrade them in order to allow you to upgrade your equipment. While I don't think I ever felt like I absolutely needed to grind, if I wanted to upgrade every character's equipment the moment it became available I did have to grind, either for money to get the materials or to get the materials themselves. That said, that was only because I wanted the upgrades NOW, as eventually you'll get everything you need as you go through the game.
There's an original chess-like minigame that is part of a lengthy sidequest that was actually kinda fun. I usually dread these minigames in these kind of games, but I enjoyed this one. Oh, and there are QTEs in the game, but they are incredibly lenient and give you ample time to take it easy with the inputs, so I wasn't too mad about them.
There's one big complaint I have.... even on the normal difficulty setting, some boss fights can be tough, and I don't mind retrying them, however... loading times are too long. During the game itself, unless you fast-travel, you'll rarely, if ever, have to sit through one of them. However, retrying a boss fight means having to sit through another loading screen, and that wasn't much fun. Eventually I said screw it and went to the lower difficulty setting, because I really didn't care about sitting through the loading screen a again. But hey, I did most of the game on the Normal difficulty setting!
I really, REALLY enjoyed Xuan Yuan Sword 7. It had an interesting plot, a bunch of likeable characters, a solid even if somewhat simple combat system, and a great sense of adventure that kept me invested in exploring the game's world further. It's easily the best game I've played so far in 2022, which might not be saying much considering it's just February, but hey, the game is fantastic, and you can tell that the budget wasn't Triple A high, and yet it feels just as good as some of those over-bloated and over-funded games, playing just as well as them but showing an amount of love and care that most of those games lack.
9.0
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