This is hard because I kind of wish, like Letterboxd, you could give half stars. Imo, this game is really good at one thing: The combat. If you are an action gamer and want some cool combos and weapons, and stuff, then honestly, it's not bad. But truthfully, that's kind of where the game stops excelling. For full transparency, I am at the final chapter of the game and have yet to finish (I've been enjoying Silksong, but that's allowed me to put together my thoughts so far on this game.

To be fair, I play on a laptop with a 4070 and an i7, so take this all with a grain of salt, but the game looks good, but it doesn't look great. I ended up playing on like High settings, and I noticed that the actual world was kind of interesting to look at, but nothing was really incredible imo. I don't like to compare, but the recent hit of Expedition 33 had some absolutely breathtaking visuals and environments, and honestly, for what this game was trying to go for, I was fairly let down.

I am also fully aware of the development timeline with this game, and have long since supported the initial mind behind the project, Yang Bing, but for 60 - 70 dollars, this just does not hit. I love me a good Chinese narrative with weird Chinese mythology or ideas because they're so unique, and while the CONCEPT of this game IS UNIQUE, the entirety is just a mess. The story of this game will have you questioning what they were intending or why. None of the characters are really well acted, written, or interesting at all for the most part. There's a brief bit of undercooked crafting, and the level design is only interesting on occasion.

This is where I feel like I'm between a rock and a hard place. This game does not deserve to be a 4/10, nor does it deserve to be a 6/10. I think it is a 5/10 game through and through, which is where I'd put it on the scale at a 2.5. I will revisit this once I finish the ending (likely in a day or two as of writing), but sadly, I don't think that I will be changing my viewpoints much.

UPDATE: I just finished the game and yeah pretty much what I was saying initially unfortunately. Maybe this game just isn't for me, but yeah everything really just felt half-baked outside of the combat. It genuinely felt like they were trying too hard to be a final fantasy style story but there was way too much going on and nothing really felt rewarding or interesting. They threw a lot at the wall and in my eyes only the combat stuck.