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Young masters! This week, my tireless solitary cultivation was disrupted by an unexpected qi deviation; it seems the ambient Fieryheart Miasma I had carelessly suppressed before chose this inconvenient time to manifest as a physical tribulation. Alas, my grasp of the dao proved insufficient to halt this invasion. No choice had been left to me but to descend from the mountain of daily toil and enter a healing trance, conserving my strength and consuming lots of
ibuprofenFive-element Spirit Suppression Pills prescribed to me by my faithful healer. Until my qi is once again flowing freely as a shallow stream, I have chosen to meditate; as I did, a new frontier has opened itself to me, and from my ailing body I released my unyielding spirit to roam the rivers and lakes of the jianghu....This is a long way of saying I came down with a fever and put some suddenly-freed time into Where Winds Meet this week. This game is... weird; part Genshin, part MMO, part Elden Ring, and ALL wuxia, painfully so. I was always an uncultured gweilo with no experience of cultivationslop and weak understanding of dao, initially skipping most of the dialogue due to chatbot PTSD and inability to differentiate Chinese names, they blend together way too much, I am already bad with names my entire life but god damn Chinese names are on another level. It's also not really an MMO as I'd expected it to be, the solo mode is entirely playable as a proper game, and the core game itself is quite literally Chinese Skyrim x Elden Ring with a dash of Sekiro, with all that entails.
Despite the uh, novel (for me personally) setting, I am very impressed with this game so far, and it blows my mind that AFAICT almost no attempts at marketing the global launch were made (this game is apparently out in China for like a year already), and I learned of this game entirely at random from the usual suspects. This is absolutely an AAA-tier game (in fact calling it AAA almost insults it, Western AAAslop wishes it had this level of pure sovl) that is incredible graphics-wise and completely free to actually play, monetized entirely through battle passes and boatloads of cosmetics as Asian MMOs are wont to do.
A big draw of this game is IMO the combat, the Elden Ring/Sekiro comparison above is not an exaggeration. You can choose difficulty for single-player at the start, and being the "god gamer" I am I chose Legend difficulty, which juices up enemy hp/posture bars and damage; you can also adjust difficulty as you go, but once you lower the difficulty from Legend, you can never return to it again, and the flaming-red HP bar and little neuron activation badge counting how many bosses you killed on Legend are stripped from you in disgrace. It was not too bad over the course of the campaign, the high damage incentivizes you to actually git gud with Sekiro-style deflections, but eventually one of the chapter-end bosses filtered me hard; after 2-3 hours I kowtowed in shame, swallowing my pride and switching down to Expert just to get an actual chance (and progress the story at all). It became painfully apparent that I am but a carp that thinks himself a dragon, yet cannot fight against the stream. This junior is still leagues away from Mt. Tai.
In hindsight I might've gotten overleveled and scaled the world too hard (which you can roll back but it only occurred to me after accepting my defeat), you're probably not supposed to be 52/55 at the end of Qinghe, but monkey see side quest, monkey do, main story who? Just like Skyrim and its ilk I spent like 80% of the time getting distracted and doing random side shit, and boy there is a lot of side shit. If Kaifeng was not gated by MSQ I might not have ever bothered with it, though I must note that the final chapter of the first area is absolute xinema from start to finish and I regret nothing. I think I'm starting to get the appeal of hilariously over-the-top powerscaling and aesthetic overload, might actually pick up a novel at this rate.
I have not tried PVP but it exists, I hear you can even get invaded if you have a bounty on your head, but this young master is an upstanding citizen. Looking forward to trying raids and dungeons with pugs, it's been a long time since I last raged at DPS retards from the backline.
Anecdotes in no particular order as I flip through my screenshots folder:
yetbut 4chan provides (this villain was later summarily punished for his crimes; truly there is justice in the jianghu)TL;DR even as an uncultured gweilo I kowtow before the sheer magnitude of unadulterated SOVL put into this game. From how this game blindsided me, I expect the enjoyment goes up tenfold if you're actually into wuxia/xianxia; I heartily recommend it to others with a passing interest/literacy in the subject, and just straight up ping @self_made_human @sodiummuffin. My only complaints so far are no staff/unarmed weapon style (like really, I can't beat ass with a stick or throw hands in a game entirely about martial arts?) and the horrendous mess of an UI, navigating the menu hell is still far from instinctive even after ~20 hours in the game.
If any mottizens play this my UID is 2038686834, ask for "Skysong" Xian.
You almost said it all. I have zero exposure to Wuxia or whatever so it all is pleasantly fresh.
The inclusion of the squeeze-between-rocks sequences was hilarious to me. Anticipated the "AAA? Do you have a $TROPE?". I will be bigly disappointed if at high breakthrough levels the animation for opening those comically heavy stone doors is not replaced by swinging them open with ease.
I'm guessing you mean the red-white lady. Great visuals. She filtered me so hard I had to drop it to recommended difficulty. Funny for you to get that other fight with her earlier, and it does not prepare you at all for how ruthless her move set is.
The story-driven sequence before that was very uneven, tho. Martial arts exchange on the cliff over the decision to descend and save the village? Nicely animated, decently real stakes and dialogue. Minute later a 5m fall is somehow very dangerous again and it's raining catapult fire for some retarded reason, very distracting.
lmao yeah, I kinda glossed over the doors since I've seen that too many times but the first time I saw the narrow passage I thought "oh yeah, now we God of War up in this bitch". The relative absence of yellow paint is refreshing though, I actually have to pay some attention when exploring.
That said, so far it seems you will be bigly diaappointed, the doors are heavy as ever even on level cap. You'd think for how many excessively detailed minor mechanics there are in this game, they'd consider upgrading your dao of stone doors a little.
yyyeeeaaahhh
Absolutely, flipping through the screenshots I took this is some real cinematic shit, the shots of the two figures crossed in particular look like movie posters straight out the gate.
As a dishonorable fan user I was eventually able to scrape by a win on Expert, mostly due to being able to slightly recover and stall out via deflection posture damage. On Legend I never even got to the second half of the 2nd health bar - something about the spinny scythe attacks is fucked and I could never reliably deflect them, always taking a graze or two, and on Legend this just kills you straight up with no recourse.
The rivers and lakes of the jianghu are treacherous, young wanderer. The
plot armorfavor of the divine ebbs and flows as the roiling river. What is risen, must be stomped: what is brought low, uplifted; all at the fickle whim of fate...Which is to say I agree, yes, but the "it's over / we're so back" rollercoaster almost seems like the point, reason and coherence be damned. The last fight cutscene after beating the scythe lady is probably the perfect denouement; my honest reaction was "wait so the wine, they're just gonna like- yyyeeeppp, just chug it down while surrounded by glowies, and so- oh and of course they're roflstomping them now, Qianye who? who cares where she is lmao, mook slaughter time". By the time [redacted] picks up a huge flaming log to fuck shit with I mentally checked out and was firmly in "shut up and enjoy the VFX" mode. I'm sure the "never showed the body" rule is firmly in effect for most characters involved anyway.
I only now learn I hit the level cap (until ~today I think?). Merciful of them to cap it lower than whatever the Chinese release is at, looking at my playtime so far.
By itself, the drunken brawl was fun, but you need to properly write the witch out of the picture for a minute. I'm still on the edge of my seat after the fight, you directly beat into me that she is explosively dangerous - a minute later, safe to ignore. Jarring, dev self-sabotage.
There is a silly brawl cutscene when you make it to Kaifeng, reasonable stakes, very enjoyable.
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Can proudly confirm I have (although by utilizing similar unworthy fan methods) beaten Qingye on Legend. It took quite a bit of cursing the seven generations of her ancestors.
Given that most of damage to bosses seems to come from Sekiro finishers after depleting their poise, I'm not sure what's the point of using a weapon that doesn't heal you.
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