lol i asked the dragon sage the kite question and his reaction was hilarious.
Finally got around to playing this and I quite like it. It really does have a strong Jade Empire feel to it, though I kind of wish the romances were more developed. If you romance anyone other than Feng or Lu Jin, your wife/husband gets mentioned only once (I think) after marriage and I pretty much forgot they existed almost immediately.
Once you ask the Dragon Sage a question, how do you become emperor? I tried to pick that option and he just said I wasn’t ready and I had to pick something else.
I finally got tired of playing this after about thirty playthroughs, I think I’ve got most of the options pinned down. Just a thought, seems that the writer doesn’t really read a lot about Chinese Kung Fu. First off, he only focused on two main fighting skills. Chi, and then the writer focused all of the different fighting styles into one stat, which isn’t really so good. There are much more styles of Chinese Kung Fu than western boxing or wrestling, as anyone who reads Wuxia fiction should know.
Chi isn’t about magic at all, or drawing energy from surroundings. The art of Chi Gong, or Nei Gong, literally means internal art. It is the art of mastering your subconscious mind to take manual control of everything, from your heartbeat to your muscles. It is supposed to help reduce wear and tear of years, and has the side affect of allowing you to increase your fitness just by meditation and also add to your strength in battle by increasing your flow of adrenaline.
Also, other factors in Chinese Kung Fu, Such as Qing Gong, the art of leaping and running and generally making yourself lighter, seems to be neglected. There are only two forms of Kung Fu in here: A fighting stat and a “magic” stat. Famous arts such as An Qi (hidden weapons) and Dim Yuet are only mentioned once as far as I have seen.
Also, in China, the monks are not allowed to take wives or have romantic interests, which makes the options of romance really doubtful and took away all the fun from the game. If romance options were deleted, the game would seem to be a lot better in terms of believability.
Another thing is that in ancient China, the people who practice Kung Fu are often associated with the Chinese Underworld. Some orders are robbers, who follow the “black path”, and others produce their own sources of income, who follow the “white path”. These two paths usually have violent clashes, as the white path’s job is to protect the weak. I expected to hear a little about this, but it seems that the story only has two factions that aren’t often mentioned in Wuxia fiction. The Emperor and the people.
One last thing: Even amongst the people, it is known that any who no longer honor their order are to be killed. Slowly and painfully, no matter what your order may be. The Chinese held their customs of kin and brotherhood dear, and if my rival does not go back to the Order of the Peach Tree, he should be hunted down by the entire world of Kung Fu for the rest of his life. Which, surprisingly, did not happen.
In short, I’d say the writer of this either doesn’t read a lot of Wuxia fiction, or was trying to create something that is not about Kung Fu at all. The most essential customs of the world of Kung Fu was forgotten, and although it was a good game, I was slightly disappointed to see that there was actually little about real Kung Fu in the game. The Order of the Peach Tree was also described more like western templars than people of the world of Chinese Kung Fu.
2 Likes
I WANT TO BECOME EMPEROR! The dragon sage keeps rejecting me :’(
You need to have a high Tianxia stat, and u will have to ask to become a great warrior or the second question, the one about restoring the empire to heaven’s favour.
Question; how long did it take to complete this game for the first time?
@ Saracenar about 2 and a half hours or so but you do also have some replayability in this game more then in rise of heroes anyway
@Wyrmspawn: Regarding Chi, they are using “chi manipulation” to include stunts like wire-fu flight, which is entirely in-genre. Same with the shouting trick; while I agree that ki balls are lot more anime-inspired than they probably should be, that’s actually a (legendary) trick. This is not, as it happens, real life.
I thought I could become one of the legends of old in this game, like one of Jin Rong’s novels. Instead, I got what seemed to be two stats for fighting only: “Magic” for all of the ancient arts, and “Fighting” for the hand-to-hand and weapons combats.
Also, for the romance thing. I still hate it, partly because it doesn’t fit in the genre and the setting, and partly because it just doesn’t seem written right. Many customs of the Jiang Hu, Chinese Underworld, was left out. It made the Order of The Peach Tree sound a lot like a guild of paladins or templars, with swords and magic.
This wasn’t written by anyone who studied Wuxia fiction, that’s for sure. It’s pretty good if you want a anime-style cartoon battle with fleeting scenes of romance in between, but if you’re expecting serious Wuxia fiction with any amount of insight into the real Chinese Kung Fu artists of old, I won’t recommend it.
P.S. I’m not sure about English spellings, but I think Zihao means good son and obedient son, not heroic son.
1 Like
I definitely agree with @Wyrmspawn; this is quite a letdown for anyone who’s somewhat familiar with the wuxia genre as popularised by Jin Yong’s novels. This game is a decent attempt, but setting lacks the … scale that I would expect of the genre. Claustrophobic, in a sense.
While romance isn’t out of place in this genre, romancing someone as a /monk/ was terribly awkward. Monks in wuxia are typically ascetic, and obligated to stay disengaged from any worldly affairs, especially from ‘pleasures of the flesh’. The writer could have made up some other martial arts sect (such as the Wudang Sect or any of the fictional organisations in wulin fiction) instead of making it a monastery order.
Another part which read very strangely was how your qi/chi level could be so divorced from your fighting ability. In wuxia fighting, strength and knowledge of the techniques is not enough - without qi, it is just form but without true skill and power. One can only train the body so far; it is often qi that is the true backbone of ability.
That said, I felt that the fight with Sun An was well-written - and surprisingly, my favourite part of the game.
1 Like
While some have pointed out that the game isn’t historically accurate, I actually found it to be quite entertaining. Now, this is strange for me, as one of my biggest pet peeves is when something is passed off as history, and ends up having a number of inaccuracies.
That being said, I found the gameplay to be very captivating. The character interactions (especially between Zhuge, Sun An, and Feng) were very well written. And though at the moment I only have explored one romance option (Feng), the interactions between Feng and the PC as a couple were awesome.
My only wish, however, was for some closure on the Foreigner vs. Empire vs. Rebellion conflict. I was expecting some sort of war, even an option for the Empire and Rebels to join forces against the foreigners, but it was none of that - the game ended with you still wondering who came out on top. It’s a shame, really, as the game spends a lot of time with you discussing war strategy with Zhuge, and you barely get the chance to apply what you have learned
1 Like
it is worth the price after being disappointed with the fleet, city in the clouds & star captain. CoKF is also worth more than 1 playthrough
I’ve liked the demo. And I thought it wasn’t too bad. Though, I’ve thought this Fiction!
Even though I know almost nothing about the Chinese culture, except that the Chinese created Kung Fu- I’m pretty sure this was more or less Historical Fiction?
I liked the game. Much better than the recent ones which have been rather short. As others have said, strong Jade Empire vibe, but as Jade Empire is awesome it’s not a problem.
@Happy, the many aspects of Kung Fu were left out, which is mainly why I’m against this. It’s good if you were expecting western fiction, but almost none of the Kung Fu related things were true, and most historical stuff was left out or made up. Don’t go to a Chinese History test after this.
It is a good game, but there isn’t much research behind it.
So out of curiosity, who was everyone’s favorite character?
Mine was Feng :-bd
Probably. XP But still, pretty sure it was made for fiction. Also, my favorite was myself. 
@Happy It’s certainly fiction, but even then, it didn’t really adhere to the stereotypes and tropes that define the genre of wuxia fiction. It would be like … reading fiction about knights who use magic instead of swords and physical weapons. Still good fiction, but rather disorientating if you went in expecting the usual conventions of the genre.
I guess it just sounded like how western fiction does. Swords and magic and romance for monks and helpful fox spirits… In real Chinese fiction, there are about a hundred different weapons per story, what people perceive as magic is not as portrayed, fox spirits, Huli Jing, simply means slut or are nonexistent,and monks don’t concern themselves with worldly matters and don’t take wives or husbands.
A little research would not have been amiss before the release, but its a good game if you weren’t expecting historical facts or real kung fu or wuxia fiction.