The Legend of Tianding Review (Daenis)
It is a game that I would play, finish it and just pass normally. But when I saw the "Overwhelmingly Positive" reviews on steam, i just didn't get it why. It's a pretty below average Side scroller for these days.
The mistake which makes a 2D action game totally bad for me is also made in Legend Of Tianding. Moving the character and fighting is not enjoyable. It feels clunky. There are no smooth transitions between movements. The character does his attacks without moving. This is what I dislike most about these games.
There was only one mechanic for which this game was advertised. Honestly, it was the mechanic that made me buy it (and those thumbs ups ofc). We grab enemies with something like a belt and throw them here and there, and when we do that, we take their weapons. It sounds good. But in practically it loses its meaning very, very quickly. Like from the very first minutes of the game. Because you realize from the first episode, although there is different enemies which have different weapons, none of them make you feel like you are using a different weapon. There are no specialty about them, whichever you use or not, it makes no difference. It's not fun to use them either.
Enemies take no damage when we grab and throw them, we can't get them to fall by throwing them to each other. The only thing is that we take their guns from them when we do that. But there is nothing special in it too. Then what's the point of holding and throwing them? When I finished the first episode, I said, "Is this it?". And that's pretty much it really.
There are new mechanics that you unlock as you progress through the game. Jumping from wall to wall, gliding while falling, dodge at the right moment and create a clone that mimics you for a very short time next to us. That’s it. For 4-5 hours, you hit the enemies straight, dodge and defeat them. And the game is over. There is no cool combos, special abilities, blocks, nothing that enriches the gameplay.
Of course it is okay to make only one or two mechanics in games but the point is making them good, enjoyable. I don’t think Tianding is good enough at this for that “overwhelmingly positive” rate.
Progression
The progression in the game consists of two parts. One is the part where we advance by beating some enemies and finally get into a fight with a boss, and the second part where we follow the story, run from place to place and be exposed to long dialogues. Both are boring.
There is nothing special in first part. In the past 25 years, in a thousand other side scrollers we beat enemies. But those most are better than this. There are small traps, enemies and really really easy puzzles in these sections. And for a game with so little gameplay variety, they take very, very long time. Or so they feel like that. There are no tangible aspects apart from the boss fights at the end. They are not ''great'' either but most fun part of the game.
The part where the story progresses is not much different. This game is produced by a Taiwanese company. And they wanted to add things from their own culture to the game. I liked this. There are no English voice-overs. You play the game with Chinese voice-over. Thanks to this game, I realized that I am tired of hearing English voice-overs in almost every game released, regardless of where they are from. There are many language options in most games, of course, but English is selected as a fix. I liked hearing chinese.
The story is about stealing from the rich to feed the poor and rebelling against authority. If you have watched even a few old historical Far East movies, you would know most of them have similar subjects and similar narratives. Legend Of Tianding did not pursue an innovation in this regard, but preferred the very traditional way. Ok so far. But they must have been incredibly confident in their story that they put incredibly long dialogue sequences between fights. I don't understand this. You are not telling anything new, at least know how to explain it briefly. Ingenuity is not writing long dialogues.
Like I said, it's a game that I would normally finish and go through. There is not even a lot of material in it to talk with pleasure. It's just an *below* average game to me. I was just little annoyed by this positive rate in the reviews.