A rare helm among rpg's. Has been a long time since I last played any game almost nonstop for a whole week and still am excited about the game.

I would heavily recommend for anyone to try it out and if you also happen to love chinese wuxia, this is a must get!

A solid game with excellent ideas, but some flawed execution, and very flawed localization.

Tales of Wuxia is a Eastern RPG based on Chinese wuxia stories, with plenty of references fo Jin Yong stories. Even if you're not familiar with the genre, this game has plenty to offer... if you have patience to wade through some bad translations.

The game has a randomized character creation screen, plenty of branching story arcs (for the main story and side character arcs), a turn-based strategy battle system with adequate depth, and a time management role-play system where players must manage character interactions and their own stats. What's clever is that the players' own stats can have a drastic influence on how certain plot points proceed. If there's a downside, it's that some of the mechanics are simply not explained well (though the basics are explained well enough, leaving room for player exploration).

Due to the sheer depth the game has to offer, not to mention the shoddy translations (more on that in a sec), players will practically *need* walkthroughs and guides to help them get the best out of the game, but thankfully there's plenty of guides available.

As for the localization, the translations are actually pretty solid early on, but once you hit the halfway point you'll start to notice more and more bad grammar. There's even some minor scenes later in the game that go completely untranslated. Hopefully, a patch will come out to fix these issues soon. The bad translations don't make the game unplayable, but it's pretty darn annoying.

If there's one other issue I have with the game, it's the visuals. Part of the game takes place using more "realistic" portraits, but the time-management segment of the game uses "chibi" portraits. The transition between the two can be pretty annoying, since there's not much reason for the switching. Also, the "chibi" portraits actually show different moods while the "realistic" portraits don't... personally, I actually find the "realistic" portraits kinda flat most of the time.

Overall, I had lots of fun with this, but would only recommend it to people with either the patience to figure out bad translations, or wait until a patch which can fix it comes out. If you're a fan of Wuxia stories, then I defintely recommend it either way.

This is a remade of a game that was made over ten years ago. You play as a newbie to the world of Chinese Martial Arts. The game has two modes: Sim + RPG. During Sim mode you pretty much just choose different activities to build your character, and during RPG mode, you run around and fight people. Overall it's a pretty standard game. It gives you enough freedom to develop your character as you see fit.

There are a couple negative things about this game. First, English translation is not fluid... maybe the translation was done by someone who's literally translating Chinese into English. The syntax and the flow of sentences just feel off. Second, there's no customization of the character. The only thing that makes a difference in terms of appearance is weapon choice. Lastly, wasn't this game released in 2015? How come the graphics and 3D rendering was so badly done?

Regardless, this game was developed to cater to Chinese players. It's a breath of fresh air because I haven't seen a decent PC game coming out of China in a while. Every developer is too busy making MMOs. If you can read Chinese, definitely give it a try. If you just saw the movie Crouching Tiger and Hidden Dragon, then by all means, give it a shot as well.

Pro:
Very good story
various ending/choices
deep character story and perspective
No pure black and white
Tragic and Herodic story
Great music
Con:
medicore fighting system

9.9/10
(love the story minus 0.1 for fighting system)

I was a little leary about buying this, with all the people talking about game breaking bugs, inconsistent translation, and numerous crashes, so I'm writing this because it's the sort of review that might have put my mind at ease.

While the translation is not completely consistent, it is ultimately understandable and honestly pretty well done for such a huge game. 90% of the dialogue in this game is not only understandable but decently written and engaging. The other 10% is either cut off by text boxes (I have encountered only 2 or 3 instances of this), hilariously bad google translate, or localisation that doesn't quite match the rest of the game (characters using British colloquialisms, a villain saying "peace out", etc.). None of it is particularly damning or immersion killing, and a lot of it gave me a chuckle. So far I've been able to find answers to the untranslated quizes (such as the acupuncture point) either online or in the forum here. I should add that I have no experience or knowledge of the chinese language.

I have also not encountered any major bugs or issues. That doesn't mean you won't, I may just be lucky in this regard. For me, the keyboard and game are responsive with a controller plugged into my desktop and I haven't seen a single crash so far. In fact, it runs remarkably smooth for me.

Now I'm going to talk about why you should buy this game. There are very few kung fu RPGs out there, which is a shame. Jade Empire was decent but it suffered from Bioware's heavyhanded writing and the port was kind of a buggy mess, and I'm not familiar with any others like it. This game is far more open and ambitious than Jade Empire, and frankly better programmed (at least than the PC port).

Beyond that, it has an ambition that you don't see in RPG's anymore. While not strictly open world, there is an openness to this game in that it allows you to make your character into whatever you want, to make friends with whoever you want, and make choices that impact your character and the world he lives in. While there are some questionable design choices and I wish there was more information given in the UI, I absolutely appreciate the scope of this project and I think it was largely succesful.

My favorite part of the game, beyond watching my character improve from getting stomped by thugs into a respectable fighter, is how pretty and immersive it is. The graphics are admitedly a little dated, but honestly I find that charming in an age where everything is either hyperrealistic or retro, and the hand drawn scenes are very nicely done. The music, however, is where this game really draws you in.

This is a good game.

This is a complete remake of the decade-old legendary Chinese kung fu RPG.

Despite the English translated version doesn't carry the full spirit of the game in original language, this game would definitely provide western player a great opportunity experiencing the Chinese Wuxia culture.

Unlike some disappointing AAA games where the ending involves with space magic and different cut scene color, your decision in this game does matter and will heavily affect the story line and ending. Almost all event decisions affect the ending in some way. The story branch out into about four different main storyline in late game.

It is rare to see RPG nowadays where I really took my time to consider what I should answer, or decide what I should do when there is an NPC event --- "which side should I help?" "how about just take this item by force?" "it would be the best if I do nothing and stay out of this?". Decisions do MATTER in this game.

Replay value is high. I finished my first playthrough at around 35 hours. So just three playthough will yield more than 100 hours, and every playthough would be very different than the those before --- all of this... just cost 15 dollars!

Not to mention free DLCs with new contents and storylines (in form of mandatory updates).

I recommend this game with the current price tag ($15.29). If this game ever gets big sale (~$10 ish), you definitely need to give it a try if you are a RPG lover.

I have always been a fan of martial arts movies and games, even the twisty plot ones, and this game doesn't disappoint! And the battle system is a treat for strategy RPG fans like I am. The translation is a LITTLE rough in bits, but they were kind enough to help with some quest answers which might not have translated well (or as my friend Mew so graciously pointed out, not at ALL, even for some native Chinese speakers :-P). And the community is quite helpful as well. The story is intriguing, and quite compelling, and the graphics are on the high end of decent. Especially the animations. So many of em! I heartily recommend this game to any fans of martial arts movies or games, RPG fans, and anyone who is a fan of or wants to BECOME a fan of Chinese culture! Hope there's more content soon!

I haven't enjoyed a story and such a well thought out game in a long time. This game is for people who have someone an understanding of chinese culture, and who love chinese history. It isn't your straight up hack and slash or diablo kind of game~ Think of it as XCOM but with rich history, there is a lot of reading involved to enjoy this game. The translations are actually well done. Chinese has never translated that well into English, so if you're expecting an English/American use of the language, you own't really get far here. If you're a chinese who grew up in the west and always wanted to learn more about chinese culture, you will LOVE this game!

This game is HUGE on character development and relationships. Great story telling, but it is a VERY difficult game. Play it on beginner the first time through. I had to use cheat codes near the end 'cause I started on Veteran = (

What a gem of an RPG this game has been. It single-handely puts most modern-day RPGs to shame. Turn-based, multiple endings, multiple paths, choices and consequences, fantastic combat, wonderful music, many secrets, reasonably good story, memorable characters, you name it.

The whole theme of the game runs loosely on Jin Yong's Wuxia novels. Most of the martial skills you learn are either of Jin Yong's established skills in his novels or game dev invented or other irrelevant powerful moves known to martial arts history like the Wu Ying Jiao or Ru Lai Shen Zhang. A good refreshment over the usual Western fantasy RPGs.

While you get to visit villages, towns and cities throughout the game, a good part of the game is spent in "learning/training" mode. In this mode, you get various choices, in the form of an artistic 2D UI, on how to build and train your character. You're given a set stamina number, which you spend either training yourself up in various skills, doing chores, gathering goods / crafting, training in the arts, or strolling around to interact with other Wulin heroes and hopefully learn a thing or two from them.
When you visit towns and cities, you're presented with the usual town hubs in RPGs except of course this is in the Eastern Wuxia theme. You get to buy stuff from shops, do sidequests, collect items and help people. And this is where we come across the biggest flaw the game has to offer. Visiting certain cities and towns have time limits, and the time limits are pretty limiting. Forget about taking your own sweet time to explore the city. Just rush through the major sidequests that benefit your character most. The learning/training mode is also pretty much limited by a 4 year limit, although it's a hefty limit to build your character, would easily last for tens of hours or more and is equivalent to numerous turns. Many events will happen in the 4 years, some minor, some major. You will, however, get to free-roam around the game world in the end of year 4.

Skills and secrets are plentiful in the game. There are several martial skills for each category of weapons: sword, broadsword, staff, fist, finger, kicking, throwing weapons, music instruments, fan or brush. That's in addition to the collection of Internal Arts skills you can collect. Each skill comes with 2-3 moves and their unique bonuses. The skills are have their own animation, movesets, buffs/debuffs, and dmg stats. Needless to say the skill list is staggering, makes for multiple playthroughs to experiment, and is interesting and varied. The more powerful Jin Yong skills are in the game. Who wouldn't get excited with the mention of being able to obtain skills like "18 Dragon Subduing Palm".
Skills come from various mentors, events or chests. In a way, some of them are secrets and the most powerful of them are quite difficult to obtain and very very easy to miss. Their power relate to your other artistic skills like calligraphy, music, or chess or to your personal combat stats. Once you miss the chance to get the skill from a person or events, it's gone for good. There's no way you can obtain the skill short of restarting the whole game or reloading an older save. That game design decision might be good for some bad for the rest.

The game has a tonne of mini-games. There are mini-games for every gathering / crafting skill in the game. While they can appear to be fun at first, they quickly become a chore. Mining requires you to popamole, literally. Fishing requires you to play tug of war with a fish that you can't possibly lose, unless you don't ever release the line. Smithing requires you to play the game "2048". Painting requires you to put a set of jigsaws in a limited time. Collecting Herbs has you playing a memory game etc etc. Sadly, some of the most powerful weapons and internal art skills require you to go through some torturous amounts of mini-game play and some of them are hard, which probably requires many reloads to get through. Unlocking chests is also a mini-game, it feels daunting at the start but it's easy once you get the trick to it.

What makes the game truly shine other than the awesome number of skills in the game is the multiple paths you are able to walk in the game. The game has multiple endings, there are good endings, bad/evil endings, and even the grey endings. What endings you get depend on the path and choices you make throughout the 4 years of building your character and going through events. There's even an ending for losing to a chicken at the start of the game.
The liberty and freedom of building your character is amazing. You're free to specialise on a martial art or mix and match to your liking. Although the latter will most likely fail badly on higher difficulties.

Music is simply fantastic and adds to the game a lot. The standard Wuxia flair with a mix of Chinese, Hong Kong drama themed music. Combat is crisp, responsive and always interesting. Character art potraits are full of character and are eye-popping to look at. Story is decent enough and there are multiple paths to walk which will definitely affect your story. This game is already a great classic, imo. If they removed the town/city time limit and put less emphasis on the mini-games, optimise it a little, it'll become even better.

As of this moment I cannot recommend this. It has lots of crashing issues, and even some text that isn't translated. I mean it is a good game, but how are you meant to play a game filled with loading screens when it crashes on loading screens.