The Legend of Sword and Fairy (1995) Review
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- čas přidán 5. 11. 2018
- Game -www.romhacking.net/translatio...
Intro( made some mistakes so I advise to skip) 1:37
1:37 -12:20 - the rest of the video
Felipe blog- www.gamasutra.com/blogs/Felipe...
From wiki- " Li Xiaoyao, the protagonist of the game, is an orphan who lives with his aunt in a small fishing village near Suzhou, China. When his aunt falls sick, Li travels across the sea to a mystical island in search of a cure for his aunt. He meets a maiden Zhao Ling'er, whom he falls in love with. Although he was forced by Zhao's nanny to marry Zhao and remain on the island forever, he manages to escape with the medicine and succeeds in healing his aunt. However, he loses memory of his encounter on the island because he was tricked into consuming a memory-erasing drug earlier. When he meets Zhao again, he does not remember her but still saves her from a group of enemies, who have destroyed her home and murdered her nanny. He then decides to accompany her to southwestern China in search of her mother, who might still be alive."
"he player guides the characters through China in landscapes consisting of cities, mazes, dungeons, cave tunnels and wilderness. The game has no overland map; entry points to subsequent locations can always be found on the current location's screen. The story is mostly linear. Once the player completes the quest associated with a particular location, there is usually no reason to return there. In most cases, return is impossible, because either the entrance is destroyed or the player travels to the next location via a game mechanic. Hidden items and quests are available, but they do not affect the story's progression.
When the characters engage in combat, they are taken to a separate combat screen. Battles are purely turn-based. Certain ability scores of the combatants determine which party acts first, and then actions alternate between the player characters and the enemies. The actions taken during battles mainly consist of normal attacks and casting spells. The players may also defend, throw and use items, and steal from the enemies. Once the appropriate equipment is obtained, the player may also capture monsters to later turn them into beneficial items. The magic system contains the five elements of wind, lightning, ice, fire, and earth, which form the descriptors for the offensive spells, each type able to counter another. There are also spells of no elemental type.
The player's equipment is primarily upgraded through treasures gained in mazes and acquisition from shops. Defeating monsters usually make negligible contributions to the player's inventory, but it is the primary source of money. Healing and combat support items can be made from captured monsters as well as bought. The player can also make poison-based weapons using certain types of venomous insects as raw material." - Hry
2023 update - I've been looking back at some of my older reviews.. sometimes as a creator I get the urge to edit stuff out such as my 1:37 long intro where it I over explain that I was confused where this game was developed cause I read different sources ( 1 of them being wrong) it was developed in Taiwan .. I believe its important to leave the mistakes in your earlier videos because it is what it is ..mistakes and all and I liked what I did with the review I just wish i could have made it longer ..maybe ill revisit it because it is a game worth revisiting so yeah .. enjoy the review and if you cringed at the intro.. I understand .. have a good day
OMG I never thought you would ever cover any Taiwanese RPGs! you are firing up so many Chinese and Taiwanese people's nostalgia you know? Me included! Thank you so much! Che, thank you!
No problem ...happy to hear it brought out some nostalgia!..always looking for something obscure to review!
I can't believe you reviewed this game Che! I grew up in China and played almost all of the Taiwanese/Chinese RPGs back in the days as a kid. This one was the most famous one at that time among the Chinese speaking population. Equally famous is another long-running series spanning more than 10 games from the same company called Xuan-Yuan Sword (I liked that series a bit more because it has more to do with the ancient Chinese history). Sadly most of the good ones are from the old days. Softstar Entertainment (the company that made this game) has really gone down the hill in the recent decade.
Tbh although I've played a ton of old Taiwanese RPGs, very few are still memorable to this day. But there are a few gems. I remember a very unique one called Tun Town from the DOS days. The protagonist of that game is a kid who can talk to animals. Most of the party members in the game are different breeds of cats and dogs, and they all have different personalities. It's a very comedic game with a lot of humor which is not seen very much from Taiwanese/Chinese games. I don't think this game has an English translation though.
But, if you ask me ONE most important Taiwanese RPG, I would say it's this one game made in 2001, simply translated as "Castle" (original Chinese name: 幽城幻劍錄, lit. "The Story of a Void City and a Phantom Sword"; you probably noticed Chinese games really like the word "sword" in their titles...). It's actually a prequal to the "Tian Di Jie" series, but it's this prequal that is the true masterpiece. The story is simply amazing. I used to put it at the top 1 spot in my best RPG stories list, until I played Planescape Torment. Actually, the story of Castle is also about a man discovering the memories of his past incarnation as well as his destiny. Also, the use of (Chinese) language in this game is just leagues ahead of all other Chinese RPGs. It truly reads like a classic Chinese literature, with a touch of the feel of archaic ancient Chinese. The game never achieved commercial success back then though and has always been deemed as a somewhat cult classic among Chinese audiences, but many hardcore Chinese RPG fans hold this game as the absolute best out of any RPG that is made in the Chinese language. There is a fan project to translate this game to English, but their last demo on youtube was from 2012 (czcams.com/video/9fd-TpyDALg/video.html&ab_channel=VerveFanworks). I checked their forum. It seems the project is still ongoing though, at a snail pace... But from what I saw, they have already translated the vast majority of the game's texts, so hopefully they will release their English patch soon.
EDIT:
Please allow me to add that the music of Castle is out of this world! Listen to some of my favorite tracks from the game if you are interested:
Theme song of the female protagonist: czcams.com/video/5cJgKunvm8A/video.html&ab_channel=TotoWong
Overworld map music (The picture on this video is unrelated to the game. A picture of ruins of an ancient civilization in the middle of a vast desert would be a more fitting one. I hope I didn't spoil too much of the game by saying this... well the scene is in the opening cut-scene so it shouldn't be a spoiler)
: czcams.com/video/TIdQPoZliKw/video.html&ab_channel=%E6%99%82%E4%BB%A3%E9%9F%B3%E6%A8%82SilentSnow
Boss fight music: czcams.com/video/cV8nL1Yc6Ro/video.html&ab_channel=v2sign
TV show based off the series ..which is pretty cool cause I'm sort of a fan of Chinese TV shows (emperess in the palace, three kingdoms, Nirvana in fire) just to name a few ..I will definitely check out tun town if there is a good English translation and thank you for the music recommendations ..love hearing new pieces or video game music
@@RetrospectiveGaming Glad to hear you are interested! I would wholeheartedly recommend you check out Tian Di Jie "Castle" if the English patch becomes available. As for Tun Town, it's a short and light-hearted game but I don't know if it still holds up today since I played it really long time ago (also don't play the sequel in 2004 that one is garbage). Anyway looking forward to your Piranha Bytes reviews! I played Gothic because of your review. Risen and Elex are also on my list to play.
So that's what CRPG really stands for:
Chinese
Role
Playing
Game
Next up is sort of a mini marathon of Piranha bytes games ... Next review is Risen followed by ELEX! will put those out sometime within the next 2 months
Haha oh dear... The risen series is like my ultimate level of i love but hate you in gaming.
First half of risen was amazing. Atmosphere and progression system was as good as gothic 2 imo
hey! u should check out Realms Beyond - Kickstarter Trailer
if u havent already :) its oldschool crpg game that looks really promising ^_^
This is one of the best gaming channels on CZcams, and I've been watching since AVGN was known as the Angry Nintendo Nerd.
The game is not working for me =(
Correction! Taiwan is the Republic of China (ROC). Mainland China (aka what people usually refer to as simply "China") is the Peoples Republic of China (PROC), not the other way around. The ROC was formed on mainland China after the end of the Chinese revolution, which marked the end of Chinese Imperial rulership. At that time, the Taiwan island was under control of Japan. At the end of WWII, when the Japanese surrendered, the ROC took control of the island of Taiwan, thus making it a part of the ROC. After WWII, the civil war in the ROC between the communists (CPC, aka Mao's people) and nationalists (KMT, aka Chiang Kai-check's people) resumed. In 1949, the communist essentially took control over mainland China, and the nationalists were driven to the island of Taiwan. Meanwhile, the Peoples Republic of China was established by the CPC. Thus, the end result of this was that mainland China became the PROC, while the old Chinese government remained on Taiwan, making that essentially the only part of the ROC to remain. The government of Taiwan/ROC has ever since claimed to be the sole legitimate ruler of all of China's territory (mainland China + Taiwan). More capable people than me can probably enlighten you as to wether that claim is substantiated or not.
Wow never thought someone on youtube actually try to review this gem, have so much memory playing this one..
Actually I remember him being called li as in *lee* like tommy lee.. but its been a long time
It took me an hour to try and figure out how to pronounce his name haha ...hopefully I got it right
You make my day!
I recently watched many videos about this game to recall the impressive time I spent on this game with my fellas when I was on primary school. And i found your video, it is so surprised to see people from different culture is interested in this story. It brings me very happy on my 31 yo birthday.
This game is a LEGENDARY. It was 100% DOS based game and later transferred to Windows and generated more than six game sequels and one TV drama, though most people think the first version in this video is the classic. Even in 2018, fans are still having its "fast run challenge" on live gaming-show. Because this is unforgettable memory of the gaming people who was born 1980-1990 in China, many people says it makes them feel like they are the male character and has the relationships with the girls. I think the feeling is like when western people first time watching Wizard of OZ, it was a classic and no play can ever change its position in your heart.
btw your voice is perfectly expresses the story, sad, deep and charming.
8:15 Actually there are many hidden treasure in the game. In snake dungeon, you can walk to the back of the building getting the level up thing only found in the later game. The misty flower tree maze can get you a really good accessory. The place where you get the 36 "not sure what it was translated to" has the biggest treasure ever. You can learn the Elemental God level spell.
Bless you for the only review of this game
British American here who has been in the Chinese gaming industry for a few years now. Thanks for the review man! This means a lot!
I remember playing the dos emulation with a fan made eng patch back in 2016, i highly reccomend this rpg, the story is superb.
I agree ..the story is great
Just played swords and fairy 7 literally today, and I need some info about this. Awesome job to you sir , for mkin this content.
Found this video because i'm currently playing the new game in the series (it's amazing) and I really like how much i'm learning about Chinese culture and mythology from this series.
The most iconic Taiwanese/Chinese speaking region's RPG was "The Legend of Jinyong / Jin Yong Qun Xia Zhuan /金庸群俠傳 (1996 / MS DOS)" which was based on late Jin Yong's 14 novels. Open-world CRPG with tons of recruitable NPC (all comes with their own side-quests), moral meter, open ended character builds and high replay value (2 endings - good or evil character). All characters and stories are taken from the 14 Jin Yong's books which was mashed up in one open-world CRPG.
Jin Yong's novels are much more famous in Asia, which was adapted into more than 100 movies and TV series. "The Legend of Jinyong 金庸群俠傳" is my second all time favorite game after Final Fantasy Tactics. You should try it if there is any fans translated version.
Now that's sounds like a game I want to play ..if I can find a good English translation of it I'ma definitely review it in the future
I've actually played that alot on my modded PSP back in the day! Loved the atmosphere in that game and the music soundtrack!
This year was 25th anniversaries of Legend of Sword and Fairy!
I completely forgot to mention this when I watched this video a while back, but the best way to play this game today is through "palsdl" which is an open-source reimplementation of the original game engine. This means the game has been ported to a ton of platforms. You can even play it on your PSP, Vita, 3DS, Switch, Android phone, etc.
You can find it here: github.com/sdlpal/sdlpal.
So happy that someone on CZcams acknowledges this masterpiece of a game! 😁 i find this more fun and enjoyable than Final Fantasy!
Thanks Che! Btw, if you someday gonna checkout other Eastern RPGs that's not from the usual Japan you gotta look up Astonishia Story!
Pretty humorous for a semi serious Fantasy RPG.
Respect for reviewing this game it was really fucking good. And good attempt to pronouncing the names too but the MC is pronounced Lee instead of Ly lol
Some correction here, the pronounciation of Zhao Ling'er is not right, the "G" has no sound, so it is not linger but more like "lin - er".
This is really a good game review from English speaking world.
How did you enable the English translation? Iv read the readme and it says” overwrite the extracted files for your GAME VERSION into the game directory “ . I’m not good with computers so this is confusing to me
People's Republic of China is mainland China.
Taiwan refers to itself as the Republic of China (sans "People's"). There's a lot of historical/political connotation associated with those names.
Thanks for the clarification ...as you can tell I suck at world history
I thought the Taiwanese hated to refer to it as Republic of China? I might be thinking of somewhere else in "china".
@@STALKERvoir From what I can tell...The people's republic of China claims Taiwan so in some articles I read it refers to it as that ..I'm a scrub at world history so it baffled me
@@STALKERvoir Taiwan was founded by the anit-communists KMT during the post-WW2 Era / the PROC Cultural Revolution. They were essentially the exiled/outcast capitalist/nationalist/right wing opposition who lost to Mao Zedong. They fled to Taiwan and basically fortified the island into a pseudo-military junta for several years preparing for war with mainland China. However, the Taiwan government still sees itself as the legitimate Chinese government, but due to the fact that the People's Republic is a world super power and has more guns than Taiwan, the small island republic is not recognized by most countries (the US doesn't but still maintain foreign relations). Taiwan is also not a member of the UN because of mainland China
@@RetrospectiveGaming yea i just wanted to let you know cause Taiwanese and mainland Chinese get riled up over this stuff
so... is it chinese final fantasy? if so I'll play all of them, but I need to know :D I like 7, only played that one a little bit, it's really gud.
This was a fascinating review. I wish I could play this game but I have no access to the platforms it is available on. It was good to at least hear about the story and its significance.
So many interesting RPGs out there that many ppl didnt have access to until the internet got big! .. I hope someday all of em get unofficial or official translations! .. The OST is pretty good also
Hey can you help me on how to install the english patch?
In europe most people know about this (those who are interested in chinese stories and movies at least) because we had many chinese movies, even in theatres when americans only broadcast american movies. There's a reason why France has always been the second country where manga sells the most, right after Japan...
Got another subscriber! I'm playing the seventh and was curious about the previous, shame only the sixth has english translation
Sword and Fairy 7 comes out next week for ps5 in NA!! Excited from what I see
Is this a CRPG(classic rpg) like Pathfinders?
Xiaoyao is in the sword and fairy 7!
Nostalgic times lol
I'm really glad you enjoyed this game.
I'm currently starting the translation of the third main installment, which I consider to have the best story, gameplay, OST, and overall quality. I hope I can complete the translation one day, but it'll take a while. You can check out the opening here: czcams.com/video/-la3nsNx5us/video.html
The Chinese folklore is quite complicated and is based on Chinese's rich culture, and many things you were familiar with (such as the five elements in Naruto) actually were actually based on the it.
From the screen cap it does look like the 1998 version which does have easier combat and maze compared to the original, which may explain the lack of challenging.
Since i'm one of the those people got stuck on the original version and finished on the 98 version, so i'm not sure if the original was better. Since it does get repetitive as you need to grind and the maze is easy to get lost in with the same pay off. (Also the 95 version require a bit of tweaking to get around DOS himem and sound blaster problems in most system)
Overall, it's a enjoyable game and it has a lot of influence in both RPG gaming as well as literature, since the generation grew up on this game end up popularize the Xianxia genre again and you can easily see elements of this game in many modern Xianxia tales.
Also check out Xuan Yuan sword 3 scar in the sky, as it is the RPG game that defined early windows era as well as Gujian series that defined late windows era.
This is one of my favorrittteeee childhood games and IKR the story is so fricken long
You people have to STOP apologizing for not knowing how to pronounce words in languages different from your own. If you never heard it, just use your own language's phonetics.
9:34 Sounds like my art teacher.
che my nigga, keep this shit up mang 👍... thanks for reviewing these "unknown" jewels of the past
interesting. how about reviewing valkyrie profile or vagrant story ?
There's already about 100-200 many reviews of that game.
Pick something more obscure
Super interesting.. good review! Definately was not expecting that. My partner is Taiwanese and she and her family prefer Taiwan. It depends on whether you like the whole Chinese don't recognize your country thing or not lol
When I was in junior high school, I used to play this game a lot. Of course I didn't understand a single thing since it was all written in Chinese. I googled "old chinese rpg" and stumbled upon your channel. Thank you for bringing up the nostalgia!
Hey Che, I picked this game up at your recommendation and I had two questions.
1. I seem to have a movement bug that only started recently but now I can't get rid of it. I can move but it requires multiple of the same input and then sometimes it just locks up completely. I was wondering if you encountered this and if you had any ideas on how to fix it.
2. How the hell do you get out of the lake of blood? I'm super lost.
Thanks.
哇 居然有仙剑视频！点个赞
the show from this game is amazing!
this is the best Chinese RPG in the 90s
I found this after reading the LN Black Tech Internet cafe, which they mention Legend of Sword and fair 1-3. Check it out.
YEAH
never knew this game has english version
Lee Hsiau-yau
Is that how these names are actually pronounced or is this dude butchering the pronunciation? I definitely pronounced it waaaaay differently in my head.
People's Republic Of China is the "regular" China, whereas Taiwan is called just Republic Of China officially
In comparing to likes of Final Fantasy 6/7. This game certainly has some flaws. First the story is actually a bit short and they have to create some overly complicated dungeons to compensate the length of the game. While the plot is touching let’s face it. 90% of the time we are just running in dungeons and figure a way out. Good think they offer HP and MP recovery after battles so we don’t have to back track to the town every few mins. Second you already mentioned it. The battle system really isn’t fancy and as long as your party is levelled enough. You can just get through battles by spamming moves. Even if you are under levelled, these throwable items will just help you win easy. So the only challenging part of complicated dungeons is just getting through the dungeons themselves. There is no hard battle or mind blowing puzzles to deal with.
The biggest plus of this game is probably the plot, especially the cinematic deaths, which leads to the great fame of the game (spoiler alert):
One of the playable character, Lin, will die near the end of the game and there is nothing we can do to save her life. She is killed off-screen while the hero is fell into unconscious. Just imagine to look of Lee’s face when he wakes up from coma and first the doctor approaching him and saying “Hey congratulations young man your wife is pregnant, you are becoming a father soon”, and when he is about to rejoice, the doctor adds up “but the same can’t be said to your another girlfriend. She is long dead before even sending here.” Then she proceeds to display him Lin’s dead body. There isn’t any blood and gore in Lin’s death scene but the way they make it. This has to be one of the saddest death I have ever seen in video games. Let alone they are able to display strong emotions of such a depressing death within a pixel game. I assume this scene alone is already the reason why this game is so famous across Chinese gamer communities because it is so powerful and iconic.
Final Fantasy games are never challenging either. This at least has better plot. The ending makes it seem like the game was unfinished or meant to have a more immediate sequel though.
@@mistertagomago7974 Unfinished is the most accurate description of this game. I am by no mean to dislike the game but there are just so many more things I wish they could have spent extra time and resources to put into it (again they are probably not resourceful at all during 1990s) like afterall they created such a fantastic game world. Like having a better explained post story, making towns and villages backtrackable so we can free roam.
@@abc2390986 I agree completely on all of that. I was honestly hoping I was at a half way point when I reached the end. I know the sequel continues the story but it coming out 6 years later is worrying to me. I was told China had a Video game ban around this time though.
Thoughts on Obsidian being acquired by Microsoft?
News from the front line: czcams.com/video/Suvxb0OfhpQ/video.html
To me it can be very bad news knowing what actually happened with the old CRPG studios that got under control of bigger mega corporations.
Is DAT long hu chong?
HAVE YOU PLAYED FALLOU NEW CALIFORNIA
My craptop can't handle it ... gotta wait til the new PC is done
@@RetrospectiveGaming my pc couldn't either so i bought a new ram
this the equivalent to chrono trigger
Taiwan is its own country.
weird, aren't some of the things on this game banned from china?
well its made in Taiwan. Also video game censorship hadn't really started in China back when this game was made.
censorship in Mainland China has been tightening only since 2003. this game was made in 1995 when China bans no game, so every pc kid in China copies it...
The artwork in this one is f*cking weird.
It's a weird game for sure ...loved it
@@RetrospectiveGaming You felt weird because you dont understand the culture.
You weren't lying when you said "99.9 % of your, probably never heard of this game".
23 years old 8bt jRPG made in China...
Doesn't sing financial hit to me.
It's definitely 16bit, but otherwise you make a great point.
It's only the most successful game franchise in China, with a bazillion sequels and TV shows
@@djhenyo a bit nit. afair it's a DOS protect mode game, aka 32bit.. it also has a SEGA Saturn port of the game. as the console 32bit , so is the port.
though the game uses 8bit-256 colors...with likely a customized palette. all in all everything about the technical detail of this game still attracts me to learn...
@@imkow The only thing a 16-bit console couldn't handle easily in this game are the movie clips, but even the Sega CD with a 32X has enough processing power.
@@djhenyo :) for english version maybe... the chinese font alone will take 1MB of memory.. Both SNES and MD have RAM of 128KB or so.. the game sized about 20MB without video movies while the largest cartridge of a known SNES game is about 4MB...also the limited palette of 64 colors on MD.. it definitely need some work to downsize the game and make it work on a 16bit console.. Sega CD maybe. 32X kinda not 16bit..
This is the GREATEST GAME OF ALL TIME PERIOD.