Wandering Sword (PC)

Geoffrey Wright | October 4, 2023 | Review | No Comments

First showcased and announced for the west last year, Wandering Sword offers an interesting combination of a typical Wuxia style storyline with a pleasing 2.5D presentation using Unreal Engine and built upon a tactical RPG base. Does it manage to fulfil the potential it seems to have? Lets find out

Wandering Sword sees you playing as Yuwen Yi, a warrior leading a small convoy through dangerous lands during a time of unrest. It’s not long until some ruffians turn up to throw a spanner in the works and you end up in the crossfire which leaves your caravan in tatters & your friends dead. Turns out your cargo was a well renowned and much respected martial arts master who saves Yuwen and takes him to Wutong village. Stricken by a disease needing to recover from, you’ll be taught martial arts by a new master in Jiang Yinfeng during that time before heading out to shape Yuwen’s fate and avenge his friends.

While the story does start off slow as you fetch & carry around isolated village, once the journey really starts it opens up to be more of a spectacle. There’s plenty of locations to visit and characters to draft into your party, so there’s much to see in the 20-30 hours the first playthrough will take. Paying attention to affinity built up with characters is a must though, not only with regards to your relationship with party members, but as the game offers multiple endings your actions and affinity can lead to different results when replayed.

Visuals is one of the games high points, with a similar 2.5D style to the popular Octopath Traveller as it blends sprite based characters to 3D environments. From the few games I’ve tried in this style it can create some striking moments, and Wandering Sword is no different. There’s plenty of little details surprisingly in the visuals and the music also aids in setting up many scenes during your playthrough. Many scenes are gorgeous, just take a look at a few of the screenshots here for example. Only downside I guess was that I was expecting a little more flamboyance during the combat, but it does still hold up in a restrained way.

At first the game topped out at 1440p, but with some post launch patches that was upped to 4K to make those chunky pixels as crisp as possible. My system (R7 5800X/32GB/RTX 3090) had no issue hitting that resolution with locked performance, the game seems to top out at an odd 80fps. You’ll likely be fine as dropping resolution seems to save a bunch and the game scales down well with how its styled.

While the general gameplay is relatively similar to most, you go from place to place completing quests for folk while levelling up your character and buying the gear needed from stores, it’s the combat systems that will interest. That’s no typo, I did mean systems, as the game will let you switch between turn-based & real-time on the fly outside of battles. They do play out similar to each other, offering a setup along the lines of a Disgaea or Agarest, as you battle it out on a grid with your moves dictated by an area of attack. Further to that there is a time bar that fills an this is where the battle system difference comes in. Turn based will have the fight stop when this fills up for a combatant, but real-time will see the fight continue so you have to keep track of everybody at all times. Each has its perks, turn-based is slower and more tactical, and real-time more chaotic and engaging, so the choice is yours.

Once battles are done the money can be used for better gear etc. and the XP earned goes towards character building. It can be used to boost ability levels for an instant boost, but can also be used to enhance your Chi which can lead to improvements in several different schools of combat. Getting to grips with this is where the biggest bugbear of the game is for me in the UI. Most of the systems are explained well, though there is a lot that can be overbearing at first, but doing them simply is another thing altogether – especially with a controller. Just getting to where you need in the menus can be finicky as the selection seems to circle what you actually want or refuse to change tab, there’s been several patches since launch but it still feels off. A mouse can alleviate some of the annoyance but its not a complete fix.

Wandering Swords is a striking adventure at times that packs in plenty to keep you engrossed during its journey, only really let down by a slow start and somewhat awful UI. The visual flair and choice of how to engage in combat will no doubt attract an audience, multiple endings & character builds should keep you coming back, so there’s is plenty to like even if through gritted teeth at times.