The Legend of Tianding Review (M4F10S0)
Robin Hood from Taiwan
Welcome to Taiwan in the early 20th century. As Liao Tianding, one of the rebels who resist becoming a colony of Japan, you will face the dangerous streets of Taipei City, fight police, and goons and master your kung-fu to steal from the rich and give to the poor.
Story
The story is told in six chapters through comic-book-style cutscenes and speech bubbles of characters. It would be nice if there were more dabbed text, not just a few words and sentences. So be prepared to read and there is only Taiwanese dabbing, which is authentic, but English would be nice to have. If you rush your playthrough, you can finish the story in a few hours, but I recommend that you play it slower. On the map of Dadaocheng – a district of Taipei City, you can find several side quests that are nice to do because the ending of the story depends on them and you can get nice buffs that make you stronger and help a lot during the boss fights that end each chapter. One thing I miss here. As I said, there are six chapters, but only four locations to explore. It would be nice to have two more. The story is well-written for a small game like this and it may surprise you with its twist.
Combat
The combat is well-made in this game, along with good controls (I played with the Xbox gamepad). For some reason, I thought it would be hard to learn all the moves, but I soon realised that there are only five to learn, which you can combine with each other, and two special moves. It's up to your reflexes and skill to master them. If you're playing on the harder difficulty – Wanted Outlaw, it's good to learn how to perfectly dodge an attack to activate one of the special moves. You will need it for the final boss fight, which was a hard challenge for me. Also great is the stealing of weapons that you learn at the beginning. Liao uses the red sash for this. When your enemy loses health, you can sash them and it will steal their baton, sword, pistol or whatever they are holding. Each weapon has limited durability or ammunition. You can increase this by using amulets or various buffs that you can get from enemies or treasures. If you die from an enemy or a trap, there are checkpoints all over the level. At first, I thought they were just on teapots, but I soon found out that there are hidden autosaves, which is nice because the game is not frustrating if you fail. I enjoyed the combat system well.
Audiovisual
When you start the game, you are greeted by a well-designed menu. It looks like you've just opened a comic book, and the loading screens are fantastic – transforming from a static image being drawn in front of you to gameplay. When the game is loaded, there is a nice, eye-candy art style with smooth animations. This was the first thing that attracted me when I played a demo at one of the game festivals on Steam. The game also has a nice soundtrack which, together with the graphics, creates a good atmosphere.
Conclusion
Do I recommend The Legend of Tianding to you? Yes, it’s a very good side-scrolling platform beat 'em up game with a nice art style, smooth animations, awesome combat system and you can learn something about Taiwan's history.
The Legend of Tianding 9.0/10
🟢Art style
🟢 Combat system
🟢 Often checkpoints
🟢 Story and Taiwan's history
🟢Soundtrack
🔴 Each chapter should have unique location
🔴 Only a few sentences are dabbed