REVIEW : Sword and Fairy: Together Forever (PS5)
Sword and Fairy may not be well-known outside of the East, but it is a long-running cherished and important series that has just recently made its way west. While many of them have been well-received and are technically playable, the majority are solely in Chinese, necessitating fan translations for Western gamers to enjoy them. Sword and Fairy: Together Forever (aka Sword and Fairy 7) is attempting to establish itself as a more well-known Eastern Action-RPG series. After the first two hours on PlayStation 5, Sword and Fairy piqued my interest as a game I want to follow through to the end, despite its glaring flaws.
The first thing to remark is that, even though this is a western localization, the entire game is spoken in Chinese. Even though there are subtitles for the dialogue, I had some difficulty at times. When the dialogue would advance on its own, there were times when I couldn’t complete reading it in time. I also detected some grammatical problems here and there. To some extent, I admire the authenticity being displayed, but this may pose a serious core problem for some people.
Although it is part of a continuing series, Sword and Fairy: Together Forever is a stand-alone novel, so there is no prior information required to fully enjoy what is on offer. The plot centres around a young woman named Qingshu, a sword practitioner who helps protect her village from monsters. It isn’t until she saves a mysterious youngster that she is thrown into an ongoing battle between deities and demons…of course.
It is unusual for western audiences to encounter an Action-RPG with JRPG features that are so extensively focused on Chinese culture.
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For those familiar with the JRPG genre, this may be a pretty clichéd notion, but it’s the story that has eventually hooked me in. It’s also unusual for western audiences to receive an Action-RPG with JRPG aspects that focus so strongly on Chinese culture, making it feel fresh even when Sword and Fairy struggle.
Graphically, Sword and Fairy is a significant improvement over its predecessor. On PS5, it runs on Unreal Engine 4 and is brimming with stunning character models, monsters, environments, and architecture. Outside of cutscenes, it is inconsistent. Nonetheless, there were a few times during my game when I halted to absorb the surroundings.
Sword and Fairy’s gameplay, on the other hand, falls short in the first two hours. Sword and Fairy are divided into various places since they take place largely in hilly terrain. There will be side missions available at various points throughout the story. Unfortunately, the ones I tried were nothing more than fetch quests.
Combat, similarly, falls short of its potential, at least thus far. You had a couple of combos here and there in a real-time hack ‘n slash manner, a novelty for the series, but it never seemed tight – even with a lock-on option. Part of this is due to a lack of flow in combat, but the camera was also a cause of annoyance both in and out of battle. I found it often getting lost on me, and even after lowering its sensitivity in the Settings menu, I still encountered issues daily.
Despite its faults, Sword and Fairy: Together Forever has deserved a deeper dive from me.
Characters are given special skills such as shooting spectral swords, knocking down adversaries with lightning, or simply basic healing – but it could all have been done better. Abilities cannot be used until your character has completed the move they are presently performing, which means you cannot cancel into other actions. When it comes to boss encounters, I found it a little more enjoyable by using the surroundings as a strategic tool to get an advantage, as well as the polarising mechanic of quick time events, but overall, it is more flash than substance. Despite its shortcomings, Sword and Fairy: Together Forever has earned a deeper dive from me after my time with it. It created a good impact with its story and presentation immediately offering multiple unexpected twists in such a short period, despite the gameplay being middling. All of the characters I’ve met have shown promise, and there are questions in the game that I’d like to know the answers to.
