It has been a longggggg time since I’ve sat down with a side-scrolling action-adventure game and felt satisfied by its gameplay. Typically, they’re a dime a dozen with pointless narrative backdrops, where there is just enough story to push you through to the one-dimensional action. It’s amazing how people cannot balance story and action together to create something special.
Thankfully, The Legend of Tianding creates that special game. It mixes actual historical figures and events with easy-to-pick-up gameplay. Somewhere in between there is a nice little upgrade system that keeps you pushing, exploring, and saving the day.
On that note, let’s get right into it.
Story
The Legend of Tianding tells the tale of Liao Tianding, a legend in Taiwanese folklore. He was a vigilante hero for Taipei City and tried to take down the colonial Japanese authority that has occupied his people’s town. He was a regular Robin Hood.
The story in The Legend of Tianding is riveting. It reminds me a lot of IP Man, where oppressive Japanese forces invade a city and are determined to upend it by devastating the economy and breaking the spirit of the residents. Much like IP Man, The Legend of Tianding has a lone savior, Liao Tianding, who isn’t living for himself, but rather wants to inspire his people, while using every ounce of his ability to take down his enemies, one boss at a time. This game’s story has the structure of a classic 80s action film where the hero is dominant, loses, learns, and then demolishes the bad guys at the end. What that equals out to is meaningfulness and engagement with the gamer. I’ve been playing this game for the last week or so and have been positively fascinated with how this story works and how it feels to play out. It definitely has those ‘never going to lose’ vibes to it.
It’s a good story that is the heart and soul of this game, which isn’t a knock on the gameplay. Rather, the gameplay is very complimentary of the story. They work beautifully together.
Let’s get into that right now.
Kicking, punching, and triple jumping
So, what would you expect from a side-scrolling action adventure? You run, you find enemies, you fight them, and then you move on to the next battle. That is the usual formula for this genre. While it’s certainly not Kung Fu on the NES (I mean, I would be happy if it were), The Legend of Tianding’s gameplay is similar in function. Like every other action game of its type, when the action is kicking (pun intended), you move your character through different scenarios, find enemies along the way, and jump, run, kick, and pull off special moves. It’s typical of every type of side-scrolling action adventure, from Streets of Rage to Final Fight. And that isn’t a bad thing whatsoever. Not a lot of games of this type can pull off the engagement and magic of those titles. Add The Legend of Tianding into that mix. Seriously. It takes the concept behind those action adventures and pushes it a little further. Again, it’s basic when it comes to fighting, though not so basic in other ways.
The real magic of this gameplay comes with this game’s design. And there are a variety of elements that make this design special. The first is the amount of city/land you can explore. These aren’t just one-off places to go in, get the job done, and never come back again (like typical action games). Rather, they’re cities you can visit, leave, and return to when you need to go back. And you will need to come back at certain times. What that creates is an oddly satisfying exploring component in a genre that usually just pushes the player in one direction. Much like The Legend of Zelda II, the game features items you can uncover while you explore said nooks and crannies. You can find items laying around, give homeless NPCs money in exchange for buffs, and just find special places and treasures and you jump around.
And that ain’t all!
To help create this sense of scale and need to find every nook and cranny in the game, the devs at Creative Games Computer have put in NPCs with side quests, something not particularly typical of this genre. These side quests can be as simple as finding a hat or going to fetch ingredients from a chef. You’re given tasks, which makes the game feel bigger, and it gives you a little something extra to do in a basic fighting game. And these side quests never feel like a waste of time. They sometimes help to progress the story, while other times make you feel like the story being told is holding true to its intentions of the player playing a Robin Hood-like character. All these little things go back to the story of the game and mesh with it to create this bigger-than-life tale.
Another cool feature in the gameplay design is how you can adjust and upgrade your character’s abilities. This also plays into exploring. You will find that helping people, beating bosses, and helping in general lead to finding booklets and/or amulets that teach Liao new fighting or defensive moves. For example, I helped someone out in the game as a side quest, and they gave me an amulet that allowed me to triple jump in the game. When I received this, it not only allowed me to maneuver Liao through dangerous traps or tribulations during long journeys in the main story but also expanded my exploring abilities through my travels (meaning, I could jump higher and the top of structures were more accessible). Anyway, the upgrading creates motivation to keep playing and exploring. The upgrades are meaningful and not at all wasted.
One catch to the upgrades is that you can only use a limited number at a time. This is especially true of the amulets, which you can only use three at a given time. You can choose which ones to combine, but you can’t use them all at once. It’s a nice like strategic element in the game that directly affects how your character can survive during missions. It’s a nice ‘extra’ that gives the game a bit more complication and a reason to keep playing more. These upgrades are worth the exploration and help, as they will allow Liao to do more in the action category.
Staying with that last sentiment, the controls in this game feel natural, even when they can get complicated. And there are times when the game throws some Mario Bros. Lost Levels at you. During missions, you will find obstacles and enemies in your way that you have to stop and think about how you’re going to navigate them. For example, late in the game, you’re going to find yourself underground with lava flows everywhere and cliffs occupied by enemies. You must strategize how to avoid falling into the lava and quickly take out the enemies before they try to punt you into the hot liquid of death. The controls, even when there are a bunch of moves you’re having to memorize, feel easy when you execute jumping, kicking/punching, and pulling off a special move. The latter of that sentence means you can wrap a sash around an enemy, steal their weapon, and use it against them. Sounds fun? Yeah, it’s an actual blast. Anyway, pulling off those moves in a split second feels like nothing at all. It’s easy yet should be complicated. The controls and moves are the best part of this game’s design. They are certainly a driving point that had me coming back for more. I loved them.
The gameplay design’s exploring, upgrades, controls, and variety of gameplay choices on how to approach your gaming session make for a great time. The additional side quests and goodies you find outside and inside missions also make everything work well and make the adventure so much bigger. This is a big gameplay world for a side-scrolling action title.
Bound to be some hiccups
The biggest hiccup of the game is how short it can be. While I love the content of the game, I wish it had a bit more girth to it all. I wanted it to last longer and I can tell you that the gameplay is going to be under 10 hours unless you’re a perfectionist and want to find everything you can. The size of the mission levels is long in the tooth and hides quite a few aforementioned upgrades. Ultimately, the game still may not fully satisfy the promises it made with all of its gameplay design. That said, the game is still fun and worth a go if you don’t mind the short stint.
The other big hiccup is that this game thinks it is a movie. While there has been a total of six movies and four television series that tell this tale of Liao Tianding, plus one manga, one book, and two video games (including this one), there is no reason for a game to contain this amount of dialogue. As a lover of good stories, I appreciate the thought and effort that went into the extraordinary amount of dialogue and care to get this story seen through, but I do wish it was a bit less chatty. I played through Death Stranding twice and I know when dialogue should be reeled in a bit. No one wants a side-scrolling action visual novel. Scratch that, I wouldn’t mind seeing one of those. ANYWAY!
The flip side to the dialogue complaint is that the dialogue and character twists and turns are solid and hit home in a good way. I would rather see a chatty story than a story with no substance. But for an interactive format that is driven by action, too much dialogue can make the game feel stalled at times. This is forgivable, but it is a noticeable element that some gamers may not completely enjoy.
This is art
Visually, The Legend of Tianding is one of the more gorgeous side-scrolling action games that I have enjoyed in a long time. I wasn’t sure about how the visuals were going to be, but they impressed me. The color tone and the early 20s feel to it all settled quite nicely into the story. There were a lot of nice details about the cityscapes, the people, and the action. While the enemies might have seemed a bit drab and repetitive at times, the environments they lived within were lively and beautiful. Visually, there was a lot to love about this game.
Audibly, the music was masterfully done, as were the ambient noises from places and people. The cities felt and sounded busy thanks to the audio work. The music pushed everything dramatically forward when it needed to do so, and pulled the moments back when everything was calm. The audio complimented the visuals perfectly.
On the presentation side of the tracks, you’ll be giddy at what the game brings.
Let’s wrap up this rambling.
Conclusion
The Legend of Tianding is more than just a side-scrolling action game. It lives within a larger world and does its best to separate itself from the rest of the side-scrolling action genre. It mostly does a good job with its gameplay design but stumbles in some areas to keep it from being perfect. In the end, it’s one worthwhile action game when you need a little bit more than just punching and kicking.
