Xuan-Yuan Sword: Mists Beyond the Mountains
This Game is one of the most popular RPGs in the Chinese Speaking Area and has won many awards around Asia. The game story takes place in an era of collision between East and West, covering a wide range, spanning Eurasia, the Arab World, Francia, and China.
Xuan-Yuan Sword: Mists Beyond the Mountains is a rpg, turn-based combat and historical game
developed by SOFTSTAR ENTERTAINMENT and DOMO Studio
and published by 方块游戏(CubeGame) and Gamera Games.
Released on July 25th 2023 is available only on Windows
in 3 languages: English, Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese.
It has received 918 reviews of which 752 were positive and 166 were negative resulting in a rating of 7.8 out of 10. 😊
The game is currently priced at 6.89€ on Steam and has a 50% discount.
The Steam community has classified Xuan-Yuan Sword: Mists Beyond the Mountains into these genres:
Media & Screenshots
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Requirements
These are the minimum specifications needed to play the game. For the best experience, we recommend that you verify them.
Windows
- Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
- OS *: Windows 7 / Windows 8 / Windows 10
- Processor: 1.8 GHz Processor
- Memory: 512 MB RAM
- Graphics: 3D graphics card compatible with DirectX 7
- DirectX: Version 7.0
- Storage: 2 GB available space
- Sound Card: Direct compatible sound card for audio
Reviews
Explore reviews from Steam users sharing their experiences and what they love about the game.
即使是20多年后的今天，依然可以称得上经典。故事情节的格局，主线支线的互补，图像音乐的细腻，额外彩蛋的设计，是一款小工作室的全力打造之作。即便现在很多中文RPG，也没有这样的灵魂。Steam高清版加入了很多方便的操作，值得推荐。
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The unexpected has happened: a classic Chinese RPG has received a remastered release, and with it English subtitles. The game was originally released in 1999, and it is one of the most highly regarded installments in the franchise. Like most other games in the series, it’s historical fantasy, although this time, it is not just about Chinese history, as our protagonist, Septem, is a knight from the Frankish Kingdom. He is given an important mission by Pepin III: to travel to the distant East and obtain the secret method that can win all wars. On his adventurous journey, Septem travels to Venice, the Middle East, Central Asia, and finally to the Tang Empire. In terms of gameplay, it's basically a JRPG. You move around in isometric view with chibi style characters in the locations or on the world map, while the battles are team based and use Active Time Battle system. A wide variety of different items, equipment and character abilities add depth to the combat. One of the mechanics unique to the series is the Spirit Fusion Pot, which allows you to both capture enemies during combat (which you can then summon to help you) and to fuse not only items but also captured enemies too. Basically anything can be fused with anything. The game also shows what the outcome of the fusions will be, so there’s no trial and error, thankfully. This sort of crafting system is interesting, though you can do without it on a casual playthrough, since the game is not very difficult. The basic enemies and random encounters can be easily beaten using auto attack, it's only the bosses where you really have to pay attention to what you're doing. This also makes capturing enemies a bit more difficult, as you need them to be at low health, but they often die from a single hit. All things considered, I didn't mind that the game wasn't hard, and I also appreciated that there was no need for grinding or farming to finish it. It was only at the last boss where I had to turn back to stock up on healing items. By the way, apparently, this was not the case with the original game. That was harder than this release, which is based on an expanded mobile port. The visuals of the game are great, there was no need for a remaster here. The locations are beautiful and spectacular, and the backgrounds of the battles are done in the style of Chinese paintings. For most of the game we are looking at chibi style characters, but in combat we have nicely drawn and detailed sprites, not just for our teammates but the enemies as well. One thing that didn’t end up great are the cutscenes. It seems they tried to AI upscale them, but they just ended up being ugly. It would have been better to leave them pixelated. The audio is allright, there are some very nice music pieces, but the sound effects are mostly just doing their job. For me, the story was the most interesting part of the game. Septem's adventure begins in the 750’s and during his journey, which takes him through almost the whole known world, he meets many interesting and memorable characters, including of course historical figures (e.g. Pipin III, Emperor Xuanzong), and gets involved in political intrigues and historical events (Abbasid Revolution, Battle of Talas, etc.). Of course, it is a fantasy game too and this aspect is more pronounced. The story, rich in twists and turns, involves fantastical and mythological events, with the main antagonist being Lord Satan himself. I really liked this mixing of different cultural inspirations. I never thought I'd see a game world combine Christian lore with Chinese folklore, but this one did it. This was also good for the enemy variety, as we have everything from creatures inspired by European mythology to various genies and monsters of the Chinese fantasy genre. Interestingly, our hero is not even a believer at first, but a down-to-earth pragmatist who is as surprised as we are by the encounters with the divine and supernatural, but after what he experiences and learns about himself during his journey, he has to come to realize that 'there are more things in heaven and earth', if I may say so. The game is not short on dialogue. Not only do we talk a lot with our team members and the NPCs that join us, but almost every minor character and NPC has something to say about the situation. This adds a lot to the lore and the world, but talking to everyone is also ho we find side missions. Apart from the usual fetch quests these include, interestingly enough, math problems, which basically require you to put the game aside and start counting. There are also some NPCs who ask historical or religious questions, giving you a reward if you answer correctly. These also require some googling, but at least you can learn something from them. The remastered release isn’t flawless though. The biggest issue here, as with most Chinese games, is the English subtitles. It's noticeably machine translated, and you often come across odd phrases, typos or various stylistic errors that break immersion. This would be less of a problem in a game with dubbing, since the voice actors can establish the mood of the scene and present the characters, but here we only have the text, so sometimes it's hard to figure out what the original writer was thinking. Overall it's not that bad, you can follow the story and most of the stronger, dramatic moments come through, but it could have been a lot better. I also encountered a few cases of text disappearing from the screen too quickly and some crashes, which could be avoided by setting the game to Windows 7 compatibility. Apart from these, it was fine. Despite the translation problems, I had a lot of fun with the game, it was an amazing adventure. I would recommend it to those who are interested in Chinese fantasy games but also to those who have a passion for retro JRPGs, because in that category this game is a real gem, which was not available until now for those who don't speak Chinese. I hope to see more remasters of classic Chinese games in the future.
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I have beaten this game 4 times. Once in 1999, once in the mid 2000s, once in the mid 2010s, and just now. The first 3 times were the original CD versions (and subsequent expansion packs). The most recent time was the current version (mobile remake). Graphics Classic sprite based art, unchanged from the 90s version (there's some upscaling, and upscaling up to 2K available for background and effects in the workshop), but it is mostly hand drawn water color style art, which still looks fantastic in 2024. There were some additional animations added in the remake version to a few of the character avatars/sprites, but honestly I wouldn't have noticed them unless they were mentioned to me. 10/10 Audio The music is fantastic. The first track you hear in Venice is one I've listened to at least a thousand times. As you traverse the in game world, the music changes to fit the environment thematically. The sound effects are sort of glitchy (inconsistent volume), but overall sound the same as the original. There is no voice acting (same as original) 8/10 Gameplay Mechanics/Combat There is a significant differentiation between the new/remake/mobile version vs the original, and that is enemies have their HP cut by about 70%. For most of the first half of the game, every monster dies in 1 hit. However you can play the DLC version of the original DVD copy which has the original damage values. Keep in mind that these values were based around 90s game play, and they are tortuously hard to play with. We're talking hundreds if not thousands of hours of grinding for certain "special rewards". The remake vastly reduced the difficulty, to the point of it being almost boring to do fights because so many monsters are 5 to 10 second kills. The final bosses (and the secret bosses) can be killed in a minute due to a special ability acquired from the expansion (that was released 20 years ago). In the original version, this special ability while still overkill, would still not let you kill the bosses in a minute. HOWEVER, I honestly preferred the vastly easier version of gameplay because I've already done the 100% completion on the older, much more difficult version. So this time around I wanted to just cruise through the game. This remake/mobile also includes additional China Campaign quests which extended the length of playthrough but the quests themselves were very easy (minus the trivia questions). Many of the side quests are math or trivia questions, which may become tiresome and even unintelligible for some. 7/10 Story/Plot The plot is great. Perhaps it's nostalgia tinting my perspective but I really enjoyed learning and reading through the story once more. I played this in Traditional Chinese all 4 times and cannot comment on the quality of the English Translation (which I hear is not good). The story in Chinese is very intriguing and keeps the player guessing, learning, and understanding as the character develops. 10/10 Overall I loved it. I loved it when it came out, and I loved it enough to do a full replay on the remake version, which I still loved. I honestly feel this is one of my favorite games, it is not perfect but the story, character development, monster crafting capabilities were things I loved to spend time on when I were younger, and still hold true today. 8.75/10 FInal notes I wrote a guide and a post in the Community Hub for those trying to get the DVD version to work on the Deck. Happy to answer any questions.
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This game has a 1999/2000 vibe in its purest form, it feels like a lost JRPG gem from the times of the original PlayStation that somehow made its way to modern times. Had it been released in English back then, and probably we would be talking about a renowned classic in the West. The pre-rendered backgrounds and the character sprites make this game beautiful, together with an excellent soundtrack and a storyline that keeps you hooked till the end. You actually get to learn some historical background of the 8th century and some details of the golden age of Chinese history during the Tang Dynasty. The QoL enhancements of this port address some of its original issues (not all) and make the game better than the original version. There are though some issues with the difficulty balance, from enemies too easy to enemies that will one-hit kill you, but these are minor grips. The English translation is not the best, but it is serviceable and good enough to play the game and understand it. I truly hope that someday we can see Xuan Yuan Sword: The Scar of Sky in English as well.
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Last Updates
| Steam data | 20 November 2024 03:14 |
|---|---|
| SteamSpy data | 20 December 2024 04:26 |
| Steam price | 23 December 2024 12:51 |
| Steam reviews | 23 December 2024 18:05 |
Online players
45
Developer
SOFTSTAR ENTERTAINMENT,
DOMO Studio
Publisher
方块游戏(CubeGame),
Gamera Games
Release
25 Jul 2023
Platforms