FujiwaraTaku

Well this is my first time to use metacritic. I am a Taiwan gamer and I have been looking forward to play this game long time ago. Happy that finally it released. Hidden Dragon Legend is developed by an indie studio in mainland China with several people. I am glad to have a chance to meet the developer at PAX East held in Boston March this year and was happy to see a console game with Chinese cultural content can go global. If you know the history about what happened to console game market in China, you will understand how difficult to be that this game come out. #The Chinese console game market was banned by its government for 20 years# First I want to say that the score I rate is based on the indie game standard. Hidden Dragon Legend is an 3D sidescrolling action game mixed with a lot of old-school platformer gameplays. The graphics is great for a sidescroling game. There are lots of beautiful & different types of scenes that you can see in the background throughout the game. The ancient Luoyang City, white horse temple, bamboo groves, mystic tower, path among the mountains etc. And the direction of the camera will turn at some places for example in that tower of chapter 2. You can see routes leads to hidden areas by the camera turning which makes exploration of the level enjoyable. The fighting part of the game is really enjoyable as I am a hardcore ACT gamer. The combo system is the main way to defeat enemies. If you are skilled of combo, higher combo number can make you faster to accumulate the rage, which is the 5 orbs below the stam bar. And this makes you can use powerful skills more often. This part decide the difficulty throughout the gameplay because you should also focus on evading enemies attack in a fast rhythm fight. Using evade in proper way can trigger a time freeze that you can counter back if you have unlock the combo. So evade is the core of fighting can keep the combo number not to fade out. There also trophies about the combo system with the highest 400 and I only get 200+ at most. Fighting with the bosses you should look carefully about how to beat them although there are descriptions in the option menu. With different strategies to beat the bosses seems related to different trophies. The levels are designed good with different type of challenges. Take first level of Chapter 3 for instance it is a escaping level that you are followed by lot of mechanical spiders created by a boss name Dark Raven. It is strange to see mechanical thing is a ancient Chinese dynasty but this is just a start. Dark Raven is an elder in the enemies organization who use specific technology to control many traps and puppets machines according to the story. The gameplay throughout chapter 3 is to deal with these mechanical guys and traps. I think it is a innovation that a game with Chinese ancient culture mixed with mechanic elements and make this game a lot of fun. The platforming part is challenging at the very start once you face a jumping puzzle. The challenge mostly come from the camera setting that you cannot see the next step or even the ground or trap in front of you. You should combine jump-double jump, hook, dash in air or even the air-light combo to go through some places. And the hook system seems not so easy to control because you should hold R1 and use the left stick to aim first. And the aiming sometime makes me feel awful. But if you keep trying and practicing you will get used to it. The storytelling part is the worst of this game. Cutscenes are full of animations lack of polish and the story is skipping and hard to understand if you do not read the text on loading screens. And the collection items found in the level tell little about the story but more for the background. If you consider that it is an indie game you may think it acceptable of the poor storytelling. In general consideration I can give this game an 8. Notice that I am rating this as the indie game standard but not AAA. Hidden Dragon Legend is a game mostly like Ninjia Gaiden 2 as it has fast rhythm challenging combats. But it also mix platforming gameplays. If you are looking forward to an epic story and excellent cutscenes animations, I don't recommend this game. But, if you like fast rhythm action game with deep and complicated systems it is exactly your choice. It is a best indie game I have ever played in this year. Hope they can have a success in global market.