Where Winds Meet

The story begins in a bamboo forest. It’s a setting that’s been featured in some of the most breathtaking action scenes in wuxia films, from A Touch Of Zen to Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, elevating their martial-arts flair with the stillness of nature. And Everstone Studios doesn’t recreate this scenery as a superficial visual trope, as other major releases from China have done in recent years. While the culturally Chinese Black Myth: Wukong and Wuchang: Fallen Feathers ultimately lean more towards dark fantasy and western sensibilities, this is an open-world action RPG that embraces all facets of wuxia, from the elegance of traditional Chinese strings and flutes to its romantic philosophy of virtuous heroes.

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Granted, China’s Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period (roughly tenth century) was a turbulent time of warring political factions. This fictionalised interpretation – or jianghu, as it’s customarily referred to in wuxia fiction – is thus populated with camps and outposts belonging to rival martial-arts sects and lawless bandits. But while your custom protagonist will infiltrate these spots to dispatch the forces present, there’s less focus on gratuitous bloodletting than in, say, Ghost Of Yotei. Instead, the acrobatics of the wuxia hero take the spotlight. Equally, it’s refreshing to traverse an open world without resorting to climbing and gliding, since gravity is less a law than a guideline here – you can run up cliffs, drop from a great height while avoiding fall damage, and not only double but triple jump.

The breadth of your fighting skills is similarly expressive. You begin with only a sword martial art, but there are dozens of styles to learn, from weapon-based arts such as spear, fan and umbrella to a range of mystic arts. The latter are cooldown-based techniques, mostly of the hand-to-hand variety, some loosely based on real martial arts such as using tai chi’s redirecting force to whip up gusts of wind or ripples in water. Others take inspiration from unusual moves that have captured imaginations on the big screen, such as the Lion’s Roar, named after the same technique in Kung Fu Hustle.