While most gamers are unaware of it, Asian countries besides Japan produce a fair number of games. South Korea and China account for a lot of that but only a handful end up translated. Last year we had the chance to review Xuan Yuan Sword 7 from Taiwanese company Softstar (review here) and now Softstar and publisher Eastasiasoft are back with another localization for Western markets!
Sword and Fairy: Together Forever is the latest JRPG style release to come West from Taiwan. This is the 10th main franchise game in a series dating all the way back to 1995 and the entire series consists of 23 games, a card game, three separate TV series, two stage productions, a live-action web series and even a series of novels. In short, these are the Final Fantasy of Taiwan and China, deeply steeped in Chinese mythology and folklore and given the highest treatment. It’s a lot to live up to so let’s dive right in!
Sword and Fairy: Together Forever is a hybrid JRPG/action game with levels, character management, and action-based combat similar to the Dragon Age series. You start out playing Yue Qingshu, a young girl who is a member of a failing clan of summoners. Through a series of odd coincidences, you end up linked with a deity named Xiu Wu who helps you and your friends on your way to stop the attacks of Vicious Beasts on villages while trying to recover his magic sword. With the help of a few friends from neighboring sects and more that a bit of political intrigue, you’ll eventually find your place in the world.
Sword and Fairy is a uniquely Chinese take on the classic JRPG formula. While the combat is familiar, the setting, dialogue, and overall design are distinctly Chinese and the mythology incorporated into the game is simply fascinating. Every bit of the game is utterly immersed in a fantasy version of ancient China and the entire setting feels lush and vibrant no matter where you go. Once you’re in an open area, combat consists of face buttons for basic attacks and the R2 trigger plus a face button for special attacks. You earn more attacks as you level up and you have to manually assign them to key buttons. Combat is definitely challenging at first because Yue is quite underpowered and Xiu has lost a fair amount of his power as well. In fact, the first boss you come across, after waiting quite some time, will definitely give you a run for your money!
Speaking of time, Sword and Fairy: Together Forever is a remarkably slow game. The main setup for the story takes several hours and the game doesn’t really open up fully until about hour 7 or 8 depending on your playstyle. It’s a long, slow burn that will drive gamers nuts with the bad overall pacing and glacially slow plot set up filled with quasi-teen romantic angst and weird political alliances. That’s a really long time for an RPG to get moving. There’s just no hook in the early parts of Sword and Fairy and getting there requires patience.
Additionally, there are a ridiculous number of dialogue-filled cut scenes in Together Forever. You’re constantly waiting for scenes to end. Sure, they’re skippable with the center button and the circle button, but skipping them means missing crucial plot points and other important details. You can’t advance the text though, so you’re forced to listen to the game prattle on, fully voiced in Chinese while you wait for each screen of dialogue to dole out the crucial information bit by bit.
On top of the slow start, Sword and Fairy: Together Forever is remarkably text-dense in both the menu backstory and the NPCs, leading players to ignore some of the information or miss it entirely in the sheer overabundance of small text. It’s not always clear what you can do in order to modify your character, even if the menus are straightforward and switching to the overworld map to fast travel around is fairly inconvenient, especially since the actual location names are basically illegible. None of it is difficult by any means, just a bit of a hassle. Money is in short supply too and unless you scavenge every random item point (there’s an item that puts them on your map and you absolutely need it), you won’t have enough cash for armor and weapon upgrades and spare health potions, leaving you in dire straits when it comes time to finally fight a boss.
Side missions will also earn you money and gear but more often than not, they’re simply not all that compelling in terms of story. Travel here, fight this, retrieve that, come back, get your reward. While the backstory is there in books, texts, and cut scenes, the towns and cities feel somehow lifeless even as they’re full of animated people living their lives. They feel like window dressing rather than vibrant and that’s unfortunate because the game really deserves a feeling of true interactivity.
Visually, this is a pretty spectacular game with modern cinemas, expressive faces, detailed costumes and background and a high attention to detail. The visuals do suffer from weird texture drops and polygon pop-ins and pop-outs from time to time but it’s honestly fairly unimportant and not consistent enough to really grade Sword and Fairy down for it. The sound is utterly spectacular though and Sword and Fairy: Together Forever has an utterly compelling soundtrack that keeps the pace of exciting scenes and will have you humming haunting Chinese melodies well after you’ve finished playing. There can be the occasional sound glitch here and there, notably in the Mountain Deity boss fight where this review encountered the boss music glitching and continuing to play for several scenes until the game was reloaded. This was a one-off that couldn’t be replicated however.
When things really get moving in Sword and Fairy, the game becomes much more interesting though. The combat system is well-designed and fun, you can switch characters on the fly based on your needs of the moment, and the enemy variety is excellent. There are also a variety of action and stealth mini-games incorporated into play. Conveniently, if you are terrible at them or don’t want to bother, you can even skip them and move back to the RPG but they’re a nice way to mix things up. But you only get to toy with combat for hours at the beginning and it’s a long wait for the payoff. If you go in knowing that, Sword and Fairy is worth your time but some players are certain to be turned off by the extensive and seemingly never-ending dialogue.
Zipping from area to area while completing side missions is somewhat of a chore though. Sword and Fairy has great level design but the load times on a PS4 Pro are quite long and many quests require you to go back and forth between areas which means a heck of a lot of waiting around for the level to load so you can run halfway across it, do one thing, then load again to get to a new area, do the same thing, then go back and complete the mission. It’s a hassle at best and the game would likely be a lot smoother and faster on the XSX or PS5 with their faster load speeds. This is a game that feels like it’s designed for next-gen hard drives.
On the upside, once you acquire a few spirits, outfit your characters, and get free reign of the overworld, Sword and Fairy: Together Forever starts becoming more and more fun! The plot scales back a bit, you can spend some time wandering about and fighting stuff, do a few side quests, then zip back to the main quest. It feels good to take back control of the game, so to speak and the remainder of this 25-30 hour epic Chinese fantasy are more entertaining than the opening hours. While Sword and Fairy: Together Forever doesn’t get everything right, it’s a great introduction to the series for patient Western players that know what they’re getting into. Compared to Xuan Yuan Sword 7, it’s a lot slower and less challenging but beneath that crawling pacing lies the beating heart of a fun JRPG heavily steeped in memorable Chinese mythology. Sword and Fairy: Together Forever isn’t for everyone, but it’s a fun experience and certainly worth your time if you don’t mind waiting a while for a payoff!
This review is based on a digital copy of Sword and Fairy: Together Forever provided by the publisher. It was played on a Playstation 4 Pro using a 55” 1080p Sony TV. Sword and Fairy: Together Forever is also available on PS5 and PC on Steam.