When I mentioned it before, it was mostly to complain that increasing the size of the subtitles does not increase the size of any of the UI's tiny text. Sadly, there's no work-around for that except to get closer to the TV if you need to read the UI. 😰 But at least the subtitles are more legible than the ones in the previous game! And they're better translated...though they put a lot more effort into getting the main dialog right than the other stuff. 'Cause while most of the dialog that's required for you to read is basically correct and logical, in talking to random NPCs you can get stuff like this:
Which was so funny I had to whip out my phone and take a picture of it. 😅 (If there's a screenshot button on the PS4, I don't know where it is. And actually even if I did, I wouldn't know how to get the pictures from the PS4 to the computer anyway. For the best, really: my system would have been glutted with screenshots of this game if it was on the Switch...) Honestly, I have to wonder about the guy who spoke that line, and what his life must be like if we pretend that line is actually what he wanted to say: did he used to get bad BO from eating steamed bread? And if so, why did he still eat it? 🤣 (Or maybe he ate steamed buns to fight off BO? 🤔)
A more pertinent comment about the translation is that it's somewhat reductive about how characters address each other. For example, the second female party member, Bai Moqing. For the most part, the subtitles have characters calling her "Miss Bai" or "Moqing." "Miss Bai" is an appropriate translation of Bai-guniang, but "Moqing" is far less illustrative of character relationships than "Qing-mei" ("Qing younger sister") and "xiao-Qing" ("little Qing") and "shimei" ("younger sect sister") or...huh, I don't quite recall what her brothers called her, might have been "xiao-mei" ("little(st) younger sister"). The subtitles also have her addressing her elder brothers by their given names (a huge no-no culturally!) instead of as "da-ge" ("big(gest) elder brother") and "er-ge" ("second elder brother"). For the most part, I do get why they were so reductive (people looking to play a video game are not necessarily looking for a lesson in another culture/language) but I do think it deprives the average player of some of the flavor and nuance of the setting and relationships. So there's definitely an added benefit when playing this if you're already familiar with the wuxia/xianxia setting and the most basic linguistic aspects like how the more commonly used honorifics work. (Which is certainly the only linguistic aspect I have even the least grasp on!) I expect it's not a problem for those with no background info, though. (The fact that they don't really explain about what cultivation sects are/do might be slightly confusing, but I'd expect most people would quickly come to a "rival magic schools" conclusion, which is, again, reductive but functional.)
Anyway, that's not what I wanted to talk about. Mostly, I wanted to say how incredibly gorgeous it is! It's not just that the graphics are really good (though they are) but the aesthetics of the visuals themselves. Most fantasy video games--especially non-indies--have either a generic European-inspired setting or a Japanese-inspired one, so just getting one with this level of graphical detail in any other setting is already a breath of fresh air. (Makes me especially sad that the demo for...I think it's called Raiji?...so quickly established that it would kick my hindquarters not just to the curb but right on through it and into someone's house. Because that, too, had a gorgeous visual aesthetic, in that case an Indian one, with the game's story rooted in the Hindu mythic structure. But there was no point trying to play the game if I couldn't even make it through the demo... 😭) The locations in Sword and Fairy 6 were already quite lovely, but the ones in Sword and Fairy 7 are leaps and bounds better. The details everywhere are just breathtaking!
As to gameplay, it's all around much more smooth. The massive errors I kept encountering in 6 are absent, and I can't recall any particular bugs off the top of my head, in fact. (Though there was one boss fight that I hope was bugged and not that it was actually supposed to lift two of the party members into the air and hold them there where they can't reach the enemy and then disable the attack buttons for one of the remaining two party members, as that's sadistic.) The combat is now a basic action RPG combat, instead of what was in the previous game, which was...weird? (It was like you had this timer gauge that filled up and once it was full you could use it to launch your skills, but there was literally no way to just use an ordinary attack: it was skills (and items) only. And you only controlled one party member (though you could usually choose which one to control), with mere tactics to suggest the behavior of the others, which was not always effective. 😰) The jumping mechanics have also been refined, which is good, since they put in a Breath of the Wild-inspired series of jumping puzzles you have to take part in to impress some fluffy little fairies (a variant on the one pictured below); in the previous game, you had little to no control over how far you jumped, and yet it had these glowing spots in hard to reach places that you got a reward for reaching, most of which seemed categorically impossible to get to with that jumping engine. Thankfully, this time you have at least some control over distance when you're jumping. (Not quite as much as I would have liked, considering the platforming sequences, but enough to make them not tear-out-your-hair frustrating.)
Like the previous game, Sword and Fairy 7 added some additional game mechanics to "spice things up" periodically. In the early section of the game, this included some quicktime events (not my favorite), and then in several places later on there are stealth sequences (which I may hate even more than QTEs) and there are also more involved mandatory platforming sequences than the ones in the previous game (which at least is balanced out by the better jumping engine). All these "spicier" game mechanics can be skipped if you fail them enough times. (Though I'm glad to say that I never actually failed any of them enough times to be offered that choice. Uh, except one puzzle late game where I thought you had to jump your way up this spindle of rock to get the proper angle to do a thing and kept falling into the bottomless pit beside it, only it turned out I just had to walk to the far end of the platform and look up (instead of down) to get the right angle, so...that was just me being a dumbass, but at least I figured it out eventually.) You also move faster, which is a great relief, particularly because the two actual cities you visit are really huge; if you were still poking along at the speed of the characters in Sword and Fairy 6 it would take forever to comb those cities for the people you have to talk to in order to unlock extra entries in the library. (I ended up talking to everyone in one of them like two or three times 'cause the guy I needed to talk to was sitting down behind a building at the edge of the section of the city with the fewest people in it. 😰) As to that card game I mentioned earlier...it's really badly explained, and at this point (four opponents left to beat), I think I've mostly figured out how to do it right, but no matter how good you are at the game's strategy, there's still so much luck involved that it's just miserable to play. Triple Triad from Final Fantasy VIII is probably always going to be the best invented card game in an RPG, but at least this one is better than Tetra Master or whatever the one in Final Fantasy IX was called.
Another nice quality of life upgrade from the previous game was an improved game map (especially where sidequests are concerned!) and an accessory that made all the items hidden in an area show on the map. (It's possible there was such an item in the previous game and I just never acquired it and/or couldn't read what it did because the text was so tiny.) Given how much of the library was unlocked by picking up books in sects and towns, that accessory was vital! (Also vital for collecting the materials needed to forge new equipment...)
The story feels a little more straight forward than the previous game's story did: the idea of trying to give a capsule summary of what Sword and Fairy 6 is about (or even who its villains are) gives me a headache, but I think it would be a much easier task for Sword and Fairy 7. (Though I tend to like going in blind, myself, so...) That's not to say that there are no plot twists, of course, but more of them are surprises to the characters than to the player. 😅 There was a little more focus on the game's two romances than I'd have preferred, but they did at least work as romances. (It helped that one was pre-existing at the start of the game, though. It's always easier to accept "these two young people have had unspoken but utterly obvious crushes on each other for years" than "these two people just met and now they're so deeply in love that it's the most beautiful thing ever for reals," you know?)
The only caveat I'd want to offer regarding the story is that the ending might be a bit frustrating, depending on how one likes endings to work. (If anyone is actually reading this, there are some detail-free spoilers in the middle of this paragraph (also some for the previous game just before that), so take due precautions if you're thinking of playing the game and want to be 100% spoiler-free.) If you've played a lot of JRPGs, then you're probably familiar with the trend (which may have started with Final Fantasy VII, and has certainly been used ever since then in the Final Fantasy series) of having an ambiguous and/or unsatisfying ending before the credits, then putting the clarifying/happier ending in an additional scene after the credits. As China's answer to Final Fantasy, the Sword and Fairy series seems to embrace this trend as well: the previous game went from an implication that something 100% unacceptable was about to happen before the credits to a scene after the credits which revealed that thankfully the foresight of another character had been sufficient to prevent the tragedy that was threatened, and that everyone seemed to be doing pretty well a few years down the line (and even that the dead character had already been reincarnated). So, in this game they carried the ambiguity a little too far: when the credits start, the fate of one of the main characters is bleak, and two of the others' fates are unknown (but probably okay), and then the scene after the credits establishes that the other two are totally fine and happy, and then the scene ends with the implication that the bleak situation is about to rectify itself. In other words, the post-credits scene kinda cuts off where you'd expect the pre-credits scene to cut off. Honestly, it's sort of "to be expected" in a video game that terrible things that happened to the party members after the final battle will be auto-corrected at the end, but actually getting to see the confirmation of that is always appreciated, you know? I, personally, found it very frustrating in the moment, but the more I look back on it the more okay I am with it, given how strong the implication was.
EDIT: Now that I've read the whole library (which took like 2-3 hours across two nights, because there's just so much of it!) I can say that my initial thoughts of "well, duh" about the bittersweet ending turning to a happy one may have been incorrect. I mean, I still think we're meant to take it that everything is going to become a happy ending promptly after the cutscene ends, but having read about the characters and events of previous games, I'm getting the feeling that bittersweet and even tragic endings may actually be the norm in this series. 😰 I'm hoping I'm wrong, of course, but there were a lot of characters whose entries in the library mention them sacrificing themselves. Also a lot of them are mentioned as disappearing after accomplishing whatever it is they've set out to do, but that might just mean the ending sets them up as going on a journey and then no later game ever has them show up or mentions where they went. (It turns out that these games are actually much more interconnected than I had initially thought. I mean, they're still stand-alone, but various places, people and organizations come up repeatedly. For example, two of the incidental characters you meet in this one are actually former party members (since the library seems to only have entries for party members, I feel like I can say this with certainty), and both the Tianshi and Xianxia sects originated in previous games.
Yes, they look like giant peaches with faces, arms, and leafy bunny ears. They are definitely among the cutest RPG enemies I've ever encountered, and I very much want a plushie of one. 😁 Dunno if there are any, though; I've encountered three pieces of official merch for this game (two Nendoroids and a doll) online but they're all of characters, not monsters. (Weirdly, one of the Nendoroids is for a demon lord you only encounter a handful of times. I wonder if he's actually in some of the other games as well? The other Nendoroid is of the heroine, Yue Qingshu (seen above), and the doll is of Bai Moqing. I've actually ordered the doll, but haven't made up my mind about the Nendos, though; they're much pricier than the doll, after all.) EDIT: yup, it turns out the demon lord was in a previous game, and it seems he was even a party member. That's probably why the listing for his Nendoroid doesn't specify what game he's from, 'cause he's from more than one! (Still haven't made up my mind about buying either Nendo, though. Esp. since I'm more leaning towards the heroine's than the demon lord's (after all, I don't know him all that well as a character), and she's much more expensive, since I wouldn't be buying her direct from Good Smile.)
Oh, I should probably talk about the characters! The four party members are all likable, and the game did a good job of keeping the heroine focused on both the task in hand and on her duties to/the survival of her cultivation sect even after she becomes aware that she's falling in love. (So much in the world of fiction has female characters forgetting anything else exists once they fall in love. 😫) And I can confirm what I suspected when I discussed this game before: Xiu Wu is absolutely a heterosexual Lan Wangji. (Or maybe demisexual/demiromantic really. He takes a while to figure out that such things even exist and apply to him.) He's probably got more alcohol tolerance, though. 🤣
Oh, but speaking of MDZS characters, I was looking through the library section in the game's menu where it gives brief entries on characters from previous games. (I haven't read most of the library yet; waiting for it to be full, since the type is so tiny I'll have to sit/stand nearer to the TV to be able to read all the text, so I wanted to wait and do that all in one go.) Anyway, one entry caught my eye--or rather gave me a double-take!
I'm sure the name is spelled with different characters, but still! What are the odds? (Especially with him being connected to someone named Ouyang Ying: 'Ying' is the birth name of MZDS's hero, Wei Wuxian, and the Ouyang Clan in MZDS was based in Baling, very near Yunmeng where the Jiang Clan was located...and in the novel's present Jiang Cheng kind of verbally bullied the leader of the Ouyang Clan, because of how nearby the two clans are and how much weaker the Ouyang Clan is than the Jiang Clan.) Of course, no matter which previous game he came from, he probably doesn't look like this:
Soooooo....yeah, tl;dr version is "I liked." 🤣
