tldr: There's lots of sects.

longer, unrelated to the tldr: I'm on the fence about this recommendation. I have extremely limited exposure to the setting and philosophies presented in the game, so there's more I don't know than do. Still, it served as some exposure to the setting and I appreciate the fan translation for even giving me a chance. Though I will say, if you have minimal to no tolerance for spelling or grammar mistakes, then this is a strong Do Not Recommend for you. Heck, skip this review too.

Also keep in mind, this was a guideless / blind playthrough, so there are some things that could have made the game easier or trivialize it I imagine.

On the one hand, I really appreciate the:

• controller support
  
• fan translation is sufficient to progress the stories presented and interact with the core of the UI
  
• number of allies, abilities, combat and non-combat passives you can develop
  
• the number of outcomes in a given scenario and how much the game references it - choices matter, sometimes when you don't expect it
  
• some meta progression with achievements giving you a greater start, housing, and select items of legendary rarity carrying over (if you find one)

And then on the other, I'm not fond of:

• the solo fights in the game, which there are many and easily the least enjoyable part of the game's combat for me - and every time I encounter a protagonist-only fight, my heart sinks and the desire to play again decreases - though there are some starting traits to help out with this
  
• the level of helplessness a player can feel in a guideless / wiki-less / blind playthrough depending on weapon chosen (if you know where and how to get ones for your chosen weapon or happen to luck out, you will be ahead of the curve
  
• the potential difficulty spikes and how frequently a game over will occur - would recommend staggering your saves, one where you're safe, the second when you're in an event / dungeon that you don't know when it's going to end in case you end up facing a fight you can't win (or be prepared to start a new game)
  
• the scholar questions - you'll need external knowledge / outside of the game to answer these or get ready to save scum and start taking extensive notes
  
• the patch around the time of this review has been pestering my firewall to accept connections - blocked it and still ran fine.
  
• story pacing can be frustrating at times with a great number of antagonists that teleport away and recurring villains when thwarted / defeated to "who the F is this character and why would I want to help you at all?"
  
• some encounters can permanently kill NPCs - be it shopkeepers, quest givers, potential allies - and short of having a character or party that acts fast and can take out all the threats quickly, be prepared to say goodbye to some of these characters - sometimes you have some control to prevent this or bait the enemy AI certain ways, but the first few playthrough attempts, get ready to live without those characters

And then to a lesser degree, there are times or areas where I'll need to reach for the mouse when the gamepad / controller loses focus. I can't say the interface has been too intuitive and perhaps part due to the translation needing more room to display or the UI or both, you may find yourself trying to move the UI out of the way to view content behind one text box or another.

There's a lot of things I've learnt while playing the game and it has, to me, a very steep learning curve. Be prepared to die and game over a lot while you're getting used to it. You might be tempted to start with Normal difficulty or higher, but if you haven't played the game at least once before, would STRONGLY recommend starting on Easy until you've reached one non-protagonist-death/gameover ending.

There are random encounters that have level scaling. The standard encounters aren't bad. The ones with elites/bosses, they can be rough. On Easy or Normal, story encounters don't appear to have scaling, but higher difficulties, there are time-based scaling for some encounters.

During the first 3~20ish hours of the game, I was saying things like, "I can't wait to start a new character and try something else out" or "I should answer the Duke's summons next time" or "I should join that Sect next time" or "Could I make a full team out of the Nameless Village characters?" etc. Toward the end of the first full playthrough, I was deflated. And I haven't felt like that since Elden Ring.

So for now, I do the little thumbs up. I'm just not sure when or if I'll get to playing this again.

Worthly as fk

This is a hidden gem. A masterpiece tactical jrpg (really wuxia) style game where you play as a new martial artist seeking glory, fame, wives, artifacts, etc.

Technically very impressive - not a rpgmaker sort (not that I have anything against rpgmaker type games).

Has a touch of a Morrowind vibe to me - you're left to your own devices, pretty deep morality system, very integrated world, skills level up through use or training, and time progresses.

Story doesn't lock you in to follow a linear narrative, so you're free to "beat the game" through various alternative paths. Depending on the ending, you can take part of your character (the grindy bits) and transfer them to your next new character. So, if you spent 15 hours mining in your first play through and finally become a master miner, in your 2nd play through, you won't have to spend another 15 hours mining. Really like that system - one of the main reasons replayability is impossible in many games.

Lots of other neat things, but don't want to spoil anything.

I suppose the only warning that I could see be an issue to many is the deep historical backdrop of ancient China, where it's assumed the player knows ancient Chinese culture decently. I'm personally familiar with that somewhat, so found it interesting. The English translation isn't official either, so it's pretty bad. But, after awhile I got used to it and didn't even notice all the broken English and strangeness. If you don't like reading, you may not like this. And of course, all the names are Chinese names, which I personally find VERY hard to remember or pronounce. So, that really took something away since I can't really recall the names of pretty much any of the characters or even main cities that I went to a thousand times. I got lost quite a bit, thinking I'm going to one city, but ended up going to the wrong one, wasting lots of time. But, I'm just dumb like that.

Overall, a must play masterpiece in my opinion. 10/10