Felipe Pepe

Started Xuan Yuan Sword because of this post and within the first 20 minutes you are

saving foreigners from racist persecution

trying to escape Europe for safety in Arabia

summoning Satan

I've mentioned Xuan-Yuan Sword: Mists Beyond the Mountains before, but its Silk Road setting deserves more praise

It goes from Francia to Venice, Damascus, Baghdad, Tashkent & Chang'An, following historical events of ~750 AD like the Abbasid revolution, the Battle of Talas, and Tang Dynasty crisis.

Xuan-Yuan Sword: Mists Beyond the Mountains on Steam This Game is one of the most popular RPGs in the Chinese Speaking Area and has won many awards around Asia. The game story takes place in an era of collision between East and West, covering a wide ran...

The game was released in 1999 only in Chinese, but the 2023 remaster introduced an English translation store.steampowered.com/app/1638230/...

The translation is meh (but better than LLM), there's terrible upscaling in cutscenes, and the combat balance was messed up... but it's still a fantastic RPG

After the battle, the Tang Empire's control over the Western Regions was severely undermined, and it could no longer deploy troops in Central Asia. This moment also market the ascendancy of the Abbasid Caliphate, which slowly but surely surpassed the Tang Empire to become the most advanced country of its time.

Part of the game is about the Arab & Chinese conflict to become the world's biggest power. Europe is barely present, NPCs talk more about India than any Western nation.

It's important to play something like this and feel how limited Western games (and media in general) are regarding world history.

I've mentioned Xuan-Yuan Sword: Mists Beyond the Mountains before, but its Silk Road setting deserves more praise

It goes from Francia to Venice, Damascus, Baghdad, Tashkent & Chang'An, following historical events of ~750 AD like the Abbasid revolution, the Battle of Talas, and Tang Dynasty crisis.

We Asked Roblox’s C.E.O. About Child Safety. It Got Tense.

This interview is a snapshot into where tech companies are with online harassment right now.

They know how to end it, but they decided not to spend the money. They’re prioritizing growth (and profit) above all else. And they’re blaming YOU for logging on to the platform they designed to be unsafe.

Fire in the Beastlands on Steam Explore the danger and mystery of a fallen land, whose hidden wonders are shrouded and marred by the stranglehold of wickedness. In "Fire in the Beastlands," you are thrust into a world beyo...

I don't feel like I can do a good GOTY list this year, besides Digimon & Silksong I mostly played older games... one of my favorites still is Fire in the Beastlands, a 2021 metroidvânia with only 20 Steam reviews: store.steampowered.com/app/1814870/...

Sorry, brainfart

Great list! How crazy it is that we could still keep going, adding stuff like Citizen Sleeper 2, Sultan's Game, Rift Wizard 2, Tainted Grail, Fantasy Maiden Wars, The Last Sovereign, Inazuma Eleven, Deadeye Deepfake Simulacrum, Approaching Infinity, The Necromancer's Tale...

And 2025 isn't over!

Yeah, unfortunately that's a recurring issue with these games... you can understand what's going on, but any style and flavor the original text had is lost... :/

Qud, it's just a typo

At least for me, RNG only makes sense when tied to a vast possibility space - how many unpredictable, surprising and fun things the game can present.

Dying because RNG gave you bad skills sucks, dying because a random trap teleported you into space and aliens pushed you into a black hole is cool af

I feel a lot of people's hate for roguelikes come from only playing modern interpretations that have little to offer besides victory / defeat.

Even Hades relies on narrative & meta progression to make "bad RNG" tolerable. Meanwhile, it's legit fun to die in weird ways in Caves of Cud, ToME4 or DCSS

Xocada

Ho Tu Lo Shu

I love Chinese & Taiwanese Wuxia RPGs, not only for the cool martial arts setting but also for playing differently from Western & Japanese RPGs.

I often get asked for recommendations. I had a big thread on Twitter, so here's a new one!

Here's my favorites available in English (officially or not) 🧵

Só "Her Vanishing Silhouette" e os 2 grátis, esses valem muito. O resto pode pular.

INAZUMA ELEVEN: Victory Road on Steam The latest entry in the character collection and football simulation RPG series, "Inazuma Eleven!" With an original story featuring new main characters, over 5,400 players from across the se...

Foda essa estratégia da Level 5 de fazer um RPG de futebol q tá todo mundo elogiando, contratar a MAPPA pra animar as cutscenes E botar tradução em PT-BR...

...mas cobrar 375 reais por ele :/

Os preços locais dos caras são insanos, tá 53% mais caro na Polônia q no Japão.

Book of the Sword Saint 天外劍聖錄

轩辕剑外传枫之舞 Xuan-Yuan Sword - Dance of the Maple Leaves

天地劫外章 寰神结 Tribulation of Heaven and Earth Plus: The Knot of the Gods

Chinese Paladin 4

Finally, if you enjoyed this I'll plug my article on the history of Taiwanese & Chinese RPGs: felipepepe.medium.com/before-gensh...

There's A LOT more cool stuff there! Unfortunately these games never got any translations, but maybe a future generation of sinoboos will revisit them XD

To close:
-Beyond the Mountains is FANTASTIC, but the remaster has broken combat balance, you'll ignore 90% of battles
store.steampowered.com/app/1638230/...

I've also played Naraka, Honkai: Star Rail, Yi Xian and Where Winds Meet, but I prefer to not recommend F2P. They're worse than all else here

3 quick ones now:

-The Matchless Kungfu
store.steampowered.com/app/1696440/...
Kenshi as a Wuxia RPG!

-Warm Snow
store.steampowered.com/app/1296830/...
Wuxia Hades-like! Crazy popular, sold +2M!

-Devil Slayer Raksasi store.steampowered.com/app/1016600/...
Also a Hades-like, personally my favorite

Did I mention that Mount & Blade is super influential in China? So much they made an isometric one: store.steampowered.com/app/1094520/...

Salzaar isn't ground-breaking, but it's fun to play and scratches that itch when you want something different from playing Prophesy of Pendor again lol

However, instead of Taiwu, I recommend Tale of Immortal:
store.steampowered.com/app/1468810/...

Similar concept but with Binding of Isaac-like combat, it's a mega-hit with 1.8M sales in 1 month and 190,000 Steam reviews!

In their wake came many "open-world cultivation RPGs" - it's a sub-genre now!

Let's now change into a new sub-genre! In 2018, The Scroll of Taiwu came out: store.steampowered.com/app/838350/T...

It was a revolution - a Chinese-only indie selling 1M+ units on Steam, mixing base-building, roguelike exploration, a cultivation system, and Mount & Blade-like NPCs. Crazy complex!

I mentioned in their posts, they both have fan-translations. You can find them in the Guides tab of their Steam communities

I'll mention it in the thread later, but basically it's a fantastic game with a very bad port/remaster. It blurs the art, badly upscale the cutscenes, and breaks the game's balance... I've been waiting for someone to mod it to fix the balance so I can recommend it, but AFAIK no luck yet :/

Probably, but you can just console skip the intro, no?

Half-Life 2 is where it gets really annoying...

Probably Wandering Sword and GuJian 3. The Chinese Paladin 1 & Path of Wuxia are also good, just not professional level.

To close the story-focused RPGs, there's Faith of Danschant: store.steampowered.com/app/724970/_...

This has caveats - you need the (rather good) fan-translations and the first 2-3 hours SUCK. The main hero is too dull by himself. After that it's quite enjoyable, but still the lowest on this list.

Continuing into story-focused RPGs, the GuJian series began in 2010 when a team split from the Chinese Paladin studio. GuJian 3 is the only in English store.steampowered.com/app/994280/G...

It's a VERY slow & story-heavy action RPG, with a tiny cast being VERY introspective. Also fun mini-games lol

The Sword & Fairy series stands out by using a more fantastical version of wuxia setting (called xianxia) and by being more focused on romances - kinda part RPG, part Chinese drama.

Their latest game, Sword & Fairy 7, is a perfect example of both these things: store.steampowered.com/app/1543030/...