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Codex Review RPG Codex Review: Tale of Wuxia

Infinitron

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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
Tags: Heluo Studio; Tale of Wuxia

All right, that's enough JRPGs on the Codex front page. It's time for a CRPG. By which I mean a Chinese RPG of course. I've never heard of Tale of Wuxia before, but it must be good if Darth Roxor decided to just randomly review it out of the blue. Indeed, he considers it to have one of the best character systems he's ever seen in an RPG. So read on, gweilos:

Tale of Wuxia’s main tagline is that it “has been dedicated to providing gameplayers with a player-defined platform, where they can customize their own Wuxia” (“Wuxia” is Chinese for “martial hero”), so as you may imagine, character building is an important part of this game.

And what a platform for character building it is! When you look at the system at first, you might get suspicious, because it has all the elements that don’t work in most other games, and which lend themselves to a great many trap builds. I’m talking of course about the multitude of statistics (there are around 40 things to raise), and the fact that seemingly useless things (“tea-making”, “calligraphy”) are coupled with what looks like obviously superior options (combat stats). In another game, you’d identify the dump stats, pump your sword skill to maximum and set sail to victory.

This is not at all the case in Tale of Wuxia. Here, all the statistics, from floriculture to martial arts, are useful to some degree, for a number of reasons. For starters, most combat styles in the game scale off two abilities – a primary combat skill and a secondary skill. For example, there’s a Taoist sword-fighting style, whose effectiveness is influenced by your skill in calligraphy. Similarly, a throwing weapon style will need high chess-playing. A zither (yes, the musical instrument) fighting style requires a high score in music. So on and so forth.

Also, a word on how the styles actually work. Apart from being influenced by a primary weapon skill and a secondary support skill, they usually give you a set of three unique moves in combat, though the most basic ones may be limited to two moves. All the moves require energy (mana, more or less) to perform, while the higher-tier abilities are only unlocked when you reach enough proficiency in a given style, and they also go on cooldown when used. Switching between styles in combat is possible, but it puts all the better abilities on cooldown, so effective switching requires a modicum of planning to pull off. The move sets are all clearly focused on a specific purpose, and the abilities often work best in combos. To follow the example of the Taoist sword style – the first, basic attack gives you a mana shield, the second move buffs you with vampirism (leeching both health and energy from damaged enemies), and the third is an area-wide slash that ignores armour. Proper combination of the three can leave you almost unkillable.

The versatility and flexibility when it comes to the combinations of skills and fighting styles gives tremendous freedom and breadth to the character system. The ways of building your wuxia are numerous, and you might switch between different styles many times throughout the course of the game – whether it’s because a new one you’ve just unlocked is more powerful than what you had before, or because you got bored of the old one and want to try something different.

Furthermore, raising various skills to high levels often gives you various long-term boons. These might be unlockable choices in adventures, skill check opportunities, or entirely unique events that are triggered only at certain skill thresholds.

There’s also a nice synergy between the above aspects, as the events you unlock often serve to let you gain new combat styles, which might not even be related to the skill that triggered a given adventure. Of course, these events will also net you experience, new acquaintances, items and the like.

Another element that ties all these parts together are the “internal arts”. These are basically passive abilities that boost your character’s performance, and their functionalities vary wildly. Some simply give stat bonuses (some of which keep rising the longer combat goes on), but others are more involved, and may give you a poisoning aura, let you move freely through enemy zones of control, periodically remove debuffs, etc.

Obviously the final piece of the puzzle that makes the system whole is equipment. You don’t get to play dress-up too much in Tale of Wuxia, as you can only have three items equipped at a time (a weapon, an armour, an accessory), but the bonuses they provide are still significant. Apart from the obvious features like boosting your attack and defence, your gear will also grant you additional abilities, which are not unlike the internal styles.

When you combine all these parts – stats, combat styles, internal arts and equipment – you can get so many, so different character builds and playstyles, it’s honestly almost overwhelming. You can mould your character into an unbreakable, ever-regenerating bulldozer, an artful dodger, a toxic avenger, a mass-slicer and dicer, Cacofonix, a ranged pinner and kiter, an immortal swordsman, a fan-slapping paralyser… and more. Or combinations thereof. It’s completely crazy, and it’s unlike anything I’ve seen in an RPG.​

Read the full article: RPG Codex Review: Tale of Wuxia
 

Delterius

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i dunno wots happening, i'm just gonna link the first thing that comes up on google


so i assume maxie asked roxor's hand in marriage
 

Roguey

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Doesn't seem like it'd be my thing, but I'm glad the Chinese finally showed Bioware how it's done.
 

Zerth

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Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
Well, this is one of these cases one shouldn't judge a book by its cover.

Few years ago, by solely judging the looks of some promotional artwork I saw somewhere, I downright assumed it was another chinese martial arts MMO such as 9dragons or age of wushu (which was also reinforced by the fact that there are plenty of asian mmos with "tale/s" as part of their title). So It didn't really pique my interest and thus never bothered to find out what It was really about, otherwise I would have given it a chance earlier, cuz it sounds compelling.

It also doesn't help at all it seems like was pretty much ignored by most (if not all) western mainstream media. Its Metacritic page it's nothing but a barren wasteland. These journos can't be decidedly useful for anything.
 
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RK47

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10/10 writing, much better than anything Larian ever wrote. Actually, does the game feature alternate solutions for quests? Asking for a friend.


Not many of such instances. Only in some select scenarios you get to employ some skills.
It's kinda under-developed.
 

Darth Roxor

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Actually, does the game feature alternate solutions for quests?

I would say it has a lot of alternate outcomes/options for most things (even if it's as basic as "do you agree with guy x or y"), but it doesn't have a lot of "quests" in the form that we know from other run of the mill RPGs.
 

Morroweird

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Do these assorted things like tea-making or caligraphy only serve as secondary combat skills or do they have some use outside of it?
 

Abu Antar

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Enjoy the Revolution! Another revolution around the sun that is. Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
This was one of the bigesst positive surprises for me. You guys should also play the Pre-Sequel, even if that is a bit more of a traditional style of RPG.
 

cw8

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This was one of the bigesst positive surprises for me. You guys should also play the Pre-Sequel, even if that is a bit more of a traditional style of RPG.

Is the pre-sequel as buggy as they say? How different is it from the original?
 

RK47

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It's a pretty standard jrpg format instead of the princess maker scheduling game
 

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