In Swordsman, the new Perfect World MMO based on the wuxia novel by Louis Cha, you take on the role of a swords(wo)man in order to bring peace to the violence-torn region of Jianghu. Is it worth the investment to enter these 36 chambers of Wu-Tang?
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Swordsman starts off pretty well, with a Star Wars-style text prologue being unfurled over an azure sea, accompanied by a Mandarin narration telling you of the troubles of the Jianghu province and the ten martial arts schools vying for supremacy. Your character is introduced in a cheesy, anime-esque solo beach training scene, interrupted by a little girl crying about bandits invading the village.
Now, I say "cheesy", but I mean that in the best possible way. You're not a fan of kung fu movies unless you can really appreciate a certain amount of cheese. So I was hopeful: in these first few minutes, Swordsman was absolutely delivering on the earnest, larger than life vibe of, say, a Fong Sai Yuk movie. These positive impressions would not last long.
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After being given the option of three character control styles (though you can always adjust key bindings at any given time) I walked through a village under attack, and the quest tracker told me to kill 5 "mysterious attackers". I diligently did this, with said mysterious attackers being occupied by village guard NPCs as I helped whittle them down and discovered my basic attacks - a punch and kick function located around your character portrait in the lower middle of the UI. Kind of odd that they weren't auto-assigned to 1 and 2, but okay.
It was then that I noticed something a bit odd. The quest tracker in the upper right corner displayed the targets of my quests as clickable links. I tried this and expected to bring up a codex entry or something. Oh no. It was something far better. You see, in Swordsman, one just has to click the subject of the quest and their character autoruns there.
In the Lone Sword Village tutorial instance, this caused me to get into trouble once, running into a wall of mysterious attackers who wished to prevent me from spiriting away a precious Iron Sword the village elder had bequeathed upon me before being murdered by these ruffians. I moved a bit to quit the autorun and engaged in some basic melee attacks to fend off the wave of villains. Even though they had all jumped out from behind the bushes presumably to ambush me, the far end of the row did not have enough aggro for my shenanigans to trigger them. So I punch out half these guys and kinda let the rest stand there, and do the same for the second wave a couple dozen yards down the road. When I reach the temple, a cinematic plays out, I am rescued by a dashing NPC and I wake up in an inn thanks to my savior.
This is where the average MMO takes its time to ease you into the world after an intense instanced introduction (alliteration worthy of Spike and Suzy, this one) to the story. And I suppose you could say Swordsman Online then indeed shows you where you can buy weapons, armor, where the bank is, and how to interact with objects in the world, but... I just clicked through everything.
That's right, Swordsman entirely dispatches with the concept of exploration in an MMO. Now, I know people (and there's nothing wrong this playstyle) who just click through any cinematic or piece of dialogue in an MMO in order to get on with it. That's fine, and Swordsman could very well be catering hardcore to these players. But, you know, if you're really going to half-ass it this badly, why even bother have a story? Or quests? If you can just click the quest's target, go there automatically and kill it... well, you're going to have to be really into the awkwardly translated dialogue ("Go to the cella", one quest window says) to have any vague sense of immersion. I know the visual novel is a thing, but it translates into one hell of a boring MMO.
To give you another fantastic example of this game's inability to actually be a game - or at least a facsimile of my brain's interpretation of a game, many people have many different opinions on what constitutes a game, of course - at one point I had to chase a villain into a junk. Time for some awesome Crouching Tiger walk-on-water action, right? Well, time to stand by the trigger spot, hold R, and watch an animation of you doing awesome things, at least.
GNG was given a code to download a "Hero's Pack", consisting of a fast mount, a stat-boosting ring, an apprentice companion NPC character and some vanity outfits. I did not require them at any point. Nor did I require any health potions. I played to level 20.
People often bemoan F2P MMOs (or F2P games in general, for that matter) for having a difficulty spike point where you just can't advance any further - without great difficulty at least - without pretty much having to pay for special items. I would bemoan Swordsman doing this, but I can't. I would bemoan the fact that a Hero's Pack costs $59.99/€49.99, but I can't. There is simply no need to buy it.
I would actually be very curious to know some numbers behind sales of the Hero's Pack, since blowing $60 on an in-game bundle that could buy you and a friend a copy of Guild Wars 2 requires a mindset that is so alien to me that I would honestly wonder what I'm doing writing on games in the first place.
Tell me, dear readers, do you like Swordsman? Why is that? I'm honestly not judging, because there seemed to be plenty of players running around in Jianghu, so it must be doing something right. I'd love for someone, anyone, to tell me what they like about this game and learn about other playstyles that one could get satisfaction out of.
For me, a game that is not pay-to-win but click-to-win, offers scandalously overpriced (but strangely unnecessary) microtransactions, exists in a world that is utterly without life in its NPCs or mobs and basically offers no challenge whatsoever is not a good game.
The music was pretty cool, though!
GNG was given a code to redeem a free Hero's Pack for this review.
