Tale of Immortal Review (Kairax)
(I played 110 hours on different account)
Hard review to make:
This is one of the best "Cultivation" games.(That's why I recommend this)
BUT amount of stuff that is "wrong" here kinda huge:
Good parts:
- English translation is good/decent
- Straightforward and easy to understand leveling and gearing system
- Tooltips really informative
- Quests are interesting
- Battle system is kinda mix of modern ARPG and bullet-hell (left click, right click, dodge skill, conditional ultimate, and later on 2-3 more upgrades to system)
- Mods can be added from in-game, some of them are "cheat"-types, some "convenience" or ease-of-use, some are Chinese-made, but they added tag "English" just to flood the search filter.
Bad parts:
- ONE save file (yes, technically the game moves your previous save files to other folder, so you can manually swap old save file back. But it's SUCH A BAD MOVE)
- Quests (half-due translation) have weird requirements/endings, so you easily can prematurely end a quest line. (Also wiki is kinda nonexistent, so most of the help comes from Reddit searches and YouTube channel with quest lines)
- "Mini"-games:
* Forging artifacts - require ridiculously fast reaction speed, hard, not translated properly and in a whole useless (because artifacts seriously lacking in strength and lagging behind your character power development)
* Learning new skills - waste of time of clicking left or right mouse without providing substantial bonus to learning time (by end you will be required to play 2 or MORE minigames to learn 1 new skill)
* Alchemy - add specific herbs, then add optional herbs to fill secondary requirement and then play "time-it-right" minigame. After 5–8 games, that recipe removes the need to play "time-it-right" minigame. But by that point you learn a higher tier recipe and this "bonus" becomes useless.
- Battle system (yes, adding "bad" section too) - some enemies have ability to limit damage to "cannot be damaged more than 3000 dmg per hit"
or straight "invulnerable to dmg, except from gimmick dealing 5-10% dmg"
or "You have life-leech skill" or "You have stun-skill that worked for EVERYTHING before this fight" ? Nah - they straight don't work now.
-General system of learning new skills:
After you start the game and get comfortable with the skill-set you develop, you find a need to upgrade to higher-tier skills, but for example they lack prefixes/stats you REALLY like. In that case, game got your back - Do some repeating quest fight - you get special stone that let you migrate some of your prefixes into higher-tier skills.
Or Kill strong world monster and can straight promote your existing skill to higher tier.
Sound good? Yes, and it is consistent until last zone/last 2 leveling tiers.
When you get there - no more migrations and promotions. ROLL THE ROULETTE. If you get shit in shops, it's 3–6 months skip for next chance of new skills in shop. OR complete hard main story boss to get access to time-attack boss-rush that drops currency that allows you to reroll skill shop (but limited to few times per month).
Yes, gearing part at last 2 tiers killed almost all my interest to the game, but I pushed along.
- Final main quest part:
Yes, this is STILL "bad part" section. After a great fight in the main story, you get to ANOTHER location with a lore dump that was "vaguely hinted after character creation" but forgotten since then. So you drudge along, doing another 1-3hour of questing and reading lore that literally "lost" you.
And then
*Final boss:
Fun fight, good lore background development. But remember about some monsters ignoring game mechanics? Yep, it's here. And fun part - you can actually "lose" to bullet-hell + invincible boss + ridiculous arena/distance to boss. And by "lose" you mean you get "loser" ending (basically - your character, start again with new character)
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In the end, the game is 6/10 for me. Really fun "cultivation" game with decent mod-support, decently translated with decent game mechanics, but abysmally ruined ending.