First time with the series and was a pretty enjoyable experience. The production values are probably the biggest standout. The graphics are pretty good especially the art direction. Beautiful to look at when it portrays the nature backgrounds and reminds me a lot of Ghost of Tsushima.

Even though it only has Chinese voiced audio, all of the story dialogue are voiced and there's a lot of those. Even some sidequests are voiced.

There's roughly 70 tracks in the game and they are very pleasant to listen to. The songs tend to lean towards relaxing, but beautiful than intense ones which suits the game's tone.

There's a lot of game content from frequent sidequests, a card game with collectible cards, a platforming mini-game, cooking and even a rope jumping mini-game. It feels very complete as a game.

The game has decent QoL mechanics such as fast travel from anywhere, save anywhere, and a frequent auto-save function.

The main characters are a highlight. There's only 4 characters in the party, but they get a lot of focus and development throughout the game. The game's perspective will switch between them at times too. The group's chemistry is also solid.

The supporting cast is a mixed bag. Some are decent, but the antagonists are shallow and underwhelming.

Combat feels somewhat clunky early on, but it became enjoyable after unlocking more battle skills. The two ranged characters aren't very fun to play compared to the two melee ones. They just feel awkward at times.

The story is rather straightforward and a bit predictable, but it's interesting enough to keep me engaged with what's going on. It is pretty heavy on lore though so there's a lot of terminology thrown around. Fortunately, it's not that confusing and it has a very good in-game glossary that can supplement any info you need.

Overall, it's a solid game with good production values and budget.

For some reason, I always want to go to bat for games from China. It's a large country whose games are very rarely localized. Additionally, the China-hatred on the internet makes me want to reflexively defend the underdog. China has a terrible, repressive government, but that doesn't mean that all Chinese people are bad, and the hate for China seems to spill over into borderline xenophobia. Finally, I enjoy Chinese wuxia/martial arts/fantasy movies, and this feel into those categories.
Unfortunately, despite being initially disposed to like the game, I was not particularly impressed. The game feels like a stiff and unresponsive hack 'n' slash, in the vein of Kingdom of Amalur: Reckoning, Dragon's Dogma, and Dark Alliance (not Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance). Devil May Cry and its sequels have spoiled me when it comes to hack 'n' slash combat, I'm afraid. Instead of just letting me play the darn game, Sword and Fairy 7 subjects me to cutscene after cutscene (complete with Quick-Time Events) and painfully basic tutorials. Once again, I have been spoiled by Devil May Cry (no tutorials and every cutscene has something cool [1] happening). The graphics have that weird, plastic-y look that characterizes low-budget games with good graphics--scenery sometimes looks good and sometimes looks bad, while the main characters look like Barbie dolls. This, combined with the stiff controls, made me feel like I was playing with action figures. Overall, I felt like this game was decent, but not really a good use of my time. It clocks in at 20 hours on HowLongToBeat, and reviews say that the majority of that is cutscenes, so it's safe to say that it's not for me. I'm glad to have Gamepass around so I can try out games before I buy them.
The music is great, though. Every Chinese game I've played so far has amazing music.

I've always been curious about this series. One of the oldest coming out of from china that are still published today. The ''Final Fantasy'' of China.
It's definitely not a bad game. As mentioned in another review here, it's not a bad game had/have some potential. The story is very interesting, the skills are very cool and the graphics are good.
But everything else feels like an early Xbox 360 game. The game has many annoying bugs (not being able to use a sword at certain times for no apparent reason), map disappearing, not being able to run and others. In addition to popin constants in the graphic part.
But overall I'm glad the game is on gamepass. It's worth the curiosity and as I said, it has an interesting story with good twists.
Made me curious for the next game.

Estava vindo em uma sequência de jogos bons. até chegar nessa merda...
Ainda não entendi nem porque comecei a jogar esse game, mas no começo ele me cativou até, só que já do começo comecei a ver muitas problemas técnicos que na hora relevei e continuei o jogo, mas pqp, é uma patifaria esse jogo, acho que a coisa que mais me irrita foi os cortes secos até na cutscene(não colocam nem uma transição sla, da tela ficando preta e faz a transição) e também as vezes que você andava trechos parcelados no jogo e era interrompido, algo que seria facilmente resolvido de forma mais "clean", oque manteve nesse jogo foi a gameplay que eu curti e mesmo assim, na reta final essa porra de física fudida desse jogo me tiltou, os controles também são um lixo, até a mira do jogo é ruim.
A história a única parte que realmente gostei foi as histórias do personagem Sang Yo, o resto é confuso.
A platina do jogo é tranquila, até chegar no fim do jogo você já pegou pelo menos a maioria ou até todas.
Não joguem essa porra.

Campanha finalizada com 26h e 45m.
O jogo é lindo muito por conta da direção de arte, os gráficos deixam a desejar mas claramente o orçamento do game contribui pra isso.

O combate é cheio de magias e tudo bem estilizado mas pra mim tem um problema bem chato: tu não sente impacto do golpe (tanto quando acerta o inimigo e quando o inimigo te acerta. Morri algumas vezes porque não achei que os golpes estavam pegando e estava com HP mais baixo do que pensava).

Outra coisa que achei bem chata: Os chefes são tudo esponja de dano. Tu bate, bate e bate e daí bate mais um pouco e chegou na metade da barra do boss. A dificuldade não é muito alta mas infelizmente no último chefe eu achei que subiu demais. Tem uma parte da última luta em que precisamos dar muito dano pra atordoar o chefe antes dele lançar o próximo golpe mas meu dano contra ele era tão baixo que eu não conseguia evitar esse golpe quase que hit kill e o pior é que eu não podia retornar pra ficar mais forte...só se eu tivesse disposto a perder pouco mais de 1h de jogo. Infelizmente tive que modificar a dificuldade para o easy pra poder chegar no dano necessário e finalizar a história.

A história é bem interessante mas um pouco xarope de acompanhar. As legendas em alguns momentos passam muito rápido e pra quem não manja tanto da língua, é utilizado um vocabulário um pouco diferente do que estamos acostumados em outros jogos.

Quem estiver curioso, aproveita que está no game pass!

Where it Shines:
Art Direction - 10/10
Lore - 9/10
Characters and Story - 8/10
The Good:
This game really surprised me. It's a lot rough around the edges, but it's beauty and characters really kept me interested. Every area in the game is so memorable. Truly. No other game I have ever played had so many well thought out set pieces. Every time you enter a new temple, city, forest, etc, they make sure to have you access it in some breathtaking way, with a sunset overlooking cherry blossoms for example. It's remarkable and such a breath of fresh air with all these samey, middle age high fantasy grey tones in every game. I wish more games were like this.

The Bad:
It's a bit tough to follow for a non-chinese speaker. I mostly made do, but a lot of the lore is really over my head. That said, around 3/4 of the way into the game I felt like all the exposition was done and it wasn't just random: everything connected together and came to a head really well. I wasn't expecting that. I was expecting some all over the place story but it was actually quite cohesive, so I'll blame being lost for the majority of the story on translation issues.
Summary:
Everyone should at the very least see some cutscenes of this game. It's a beauty to behold. The combat and gameplay can be a bit tiresome but overall, I do think this series needs a lot more love and I hope they make more translated for english audiences. As it stands, I haven't enjoyed a Final Fantasy game in a long time, but Sword and Fairy 7 really gave me the feeling I was looking for. Highly recommend.
****note on my ratings:
half ⭐: hot trash garbage
⭐: below average, needs work
⭐⭐: average
⭐⭐⭐: pretty good
⭐⭐⭐⭐: excellent
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐: all time favourite
half star ratings between those mean it's slightly better or worse than stated in this list.
*

Gameplay: 7
Story: 6
Graphics: 8
Music: 10

Overall I would say it's a fun game if you're looking for an RPG to play that has a different feel from what you're used to. It definitely has an unique feeling and I don't think it's a game for everyone. The story isn't anything special but it's competent enough to keep you playing. Combat is cool and flashy and the visuals are very beautiful at times, especially with ray tracing on PC. Unfortunately it suffers from pretty frequent stutter. With the latest patch as if this date I can't get a smooth 60 fps running on an RTX 4090 and 13600K.

As a franchise that I - or anyone I know - had never heard of before, Sword and Fairy exceeded just about all of my expectations and ended up being a really nice surprise.

To give a little context, my gf has just taken a 2-week trip to visit family, and as such could not play her PS5. Mostly for fun, I decided that in this time I wouldn't use mine either, and finally get some use out of my Gamepass subscription and dust off some Switch games I've been neglecting. It was a perfect plan honestly, I'd probably play tons of games.. right? :)

Every time I've gone through the Gamepass library since it was added, this game has caught my eye. The cover is pretty, the title implies romance within the party, and as an Eastern-made RPG the interest was almost unavoidable. I must've checked the screenshots half a dozen times before installing it and deciding that I'd "just try it" to see how it is, fully expecting some half-baked, incoherent or clunky title. How wrong I was 😌

The cold open maybe wasn't the best draw for the game if I'm being honest, taking place in what would later prove to be the worst setting in the game by far. That said, by starting out with a full arsenal of skills it was quickly clear that the combat was the sort that I would enjoy a lot, which I s'pose makes it a good cold open because it sold me on the game lol.

Immediately after this we switch to Yue Quingshu, the beauty on the box. The character designs, costumes and locations in this game - while admittedly still "AA" in their quality - are really pretty. The overall aesthetic of the game is really colourful and all the major locations look grand and intricate. It's all very well done, and each region or realm has it's own flair, as do its inhabitants. And to top it off, the music is gorgeous. It's hard to describe how but the soundtrack is full of songs that match the tone or emotions on screen, and the inclusion of a library to find and listen to any song at any time is just a nice touch.

To address what is probably the biggest negative I have about this game: It's a skill issue honestly. Chinese as a language is so foreign to me and that really showed while playing this. It's so weird to think about how accustomed I've become to hearing Japanese that this inspired such a different reaction to it. Not recognising a single sound and having to read every line of text in order to follow what was happening was honestly quite jarring to me.

Not understanding is one thing, but because of this at times it was difficult to recognise the nuances of conversation. Of course when someone was shouting or particularly sad or jokey it was clear, but any time there was a subtle emotion conveyed in a spoken line it was completely lost on me, as I had only the text to go off and am not experienced enough with the language to recognise things like that.

To make matters worse, there are plenty of translation errors throughout the game, which I can't put too much fault on the devs for as it's clear this was no mega-budget production, but unfortunately it did make it harder to pick up on the true meaning of things at some points, leaving me to just assume how something was meant.
And even worse still, some of the subtitles would run really long, even over the gameplay or during combat, so it was a struggle to read the entire thing before it left the screen. This was at its worst in the late-game when big lore dumps would happen and even if I read the whole thing in time I'd need to read it back over to make sense of it :(

With all that said though, for whatever reason I was surprised to find this game to include as much comedy as it did, and it was kinda cool seeing similar comedic beats being hit as you might expect to find in a Western or a Japanese game. Obviously I know China isn't another world or anything, but for how unfamiliar the language felt it was a small comfort to have the familiar jokes and bonds. I s'pose they maybe helped me recognise the tone in related scenes as well🤔

Anyway I've rambled enough, final small point is I did experience some frame drops in the equipment menu of all places, even running on a Ryzen 7 and a GTX 3080Ti, thankfully I'm not a stickler for that but if you are then you've been warned :p

Otherwise there's not much else to say, this was surprisingly really enjoyable and I'm super glad I gave it a try! Solid little ARPG with a cool world and story, great music, fun combat, and it was only around 20 hours. Definitely recommend if any part of it appeals to you, I'd love to see more of this series over here in the future 🙏

Thanks for reading to everyone that did, hope you're having a wonderful July!

P.S. I am aware that there's a mod on nexus that supposedly fixes the translation errors, but I only learned of this 2/3rds inso I didn't use it. Might be worth a look!

CNs for Sword and Fairy 7: child abuse, sexual harassment.

Going directly from Sword and Fairy 1 directly to 7 was a surprising and painless switch. The gigantic xianxia franchise has a massive mythology that raises its flags for if you want to follow it that way, but best operates in continuing to make you feel small. Despite the lore entries and the tiny nods, Sword and Fairy 7 holds a candle for the bewildering and naturalistic fantasy drama that put the franchise on the map which swells into its own blaze.

At a glance, 7 feels like it it's trying to ride Final Fantasy's shift to the ARPG but takes immediate steps to dispel this in its opening. Set pieces are grand in feel but modest in scale, weaving you through space with side and main quest tasks that activate the local culture and society, not unlike Shenmue's more lock-and-key moments. Your party assembles early through the bureaucracy of the magical sects or seeming coincidence, but sticks together with dynamic relationships to one another as well as to the growing cast of villains. Sword and Fairy 7 delivers one of the best ensemble casts I've ever experienced in games, with no one feeling that much more important than the others.

Combat leans more towards a classic action game or Musou feel that prefers you know where to stand and how to use your character over twitchy character action play, handing you carefully assembled encounters which deliver or reinforce strong narrative beats. I have a lot of affection for this game which lets every character shine in their pulpy on-genre beats, but it also must be said that this translation is worse than some machine fan translations I've played. If you're played to this kind of translation, the game will still shine through that and it's potentially dogshit load-in times. I hope for more from Sofstar in English and to see their care for drama blossom into other games.