2024 hasn't been a very good year for video games.
Many disappointements, many occurences of corporate greed, it seems we just can't catch a break.

But in the middle of that, there are games which are worth praising coming from directions we didn't expect. Road to Passion is one of them. I got a bit on an impulse, as it seemed to be a nice Wuxia game with tactical turn by turn combat. For people not in the know, the Wuxia genre refers to stories in ancient chinese settings heavily martial arts focused. It's not a very popular genre in the west, although it's getting more known with every passing day. In China, it's pretty huge with a long tradition of games which paved the way to what we have right now.

Road to Passion offers a lot of things. The art is very good and charming for an isometric fake 3D game, and coupled with the music, it contributes to render the ambiance perfectly(although the music can be repetitive fast). The gameplay system is quite different from what western RPGs are used to, although there are some similarities, instead adopting a system which is more on par with the Wuxia genre as a whole. Coming from a western games background may requires you a bit of adaptation, but if you have played Wuxia games before you should be able to adapt perfectly.

Rather than having a central story, the game has multiple intercrossing ones, which you will get to follow or not depending of which martial sect you wish to join and be loyal to(or betray!), and which bit powers you wish to support or ignore. You have a big freedom in what you can do, and the way you want to play, although there is a particular sect which is pretty much your beginner sect, and will allow you to experience the game with some comfortable assistance to let you know what is has to offer while also allowing you to follow a story fitting to your ambitions. You can be a budhist monk. You can be a noble bandit. You can be a noble hero righting wrongs. You can even manage to become Emperor if you play your cards right. The translation is honestly not very good, but it's serviceable enough that you understand the big ideas. The english translation was and is mostly fanmade, and still need a lot of work. You will need to accept this if you wish to enjoy the game, but as I said, with the context and a bit of Wuxia experience, you will understand most of what is being said.

The game also has a lot of replayability. Because there are a lot of sects to join, different story paths and story lines, different weapons to use and master, and an in-built system to carry over some things from one run to the next, you can experience different things each time. With 4 regular levels of difficulty and a special difficulty mode which is customisable to provide an even higher challenge suiting your needs, you also have ways to test your understanding of the game all while providing a challenge as you progressively get stronger characters to start a run with. At the time of writing I'm at my third run through the game and I'm looking forward to more runs to try more things. I'm still not bored, and I still want to play more. A friend saw me play the game, got intrigued by it, got it and is now as addicted as I am.

So for me it's probably so far my game of 2024. I've spent almost 200 hours on it at that point, and I want to play it more. It doesn't feel like a chore like when I play others games. I can return to this game, and know I will have a mostly relaxing good time. In addition to that it seems like the devs are still adding new content relatively regularly, so we may get more to do as time passes. Pretty good value if you ask me!

Really enjoyed this game I chose Zither for my first playthrough and just beat it now it really does have so many different paths you can go on whenever I couldn't beat the bosses i would go to another region and find side quests getting stronger but be warned if you plan on fighting the temple guy is soo difficult took me like 10 hours to beat him lol but it was very fun just trying to figure out ways to win I found different techniques ect. I Recommend this game

This is so game, this game is a game, so much game