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An interesting "adventure" based on literary works written in the wuxia (武俠) genre. This is a series of short novels and short stories by a Taiwanese writer with the pseudonym Gu Long (古龍), whose real name is Xiong Yaohua (熊耀華). The series includes three collections. One of the books (楚留香 傳奇) is dedicated to the adventures of Chu Luxiang (楚留香). In particular, the described game is based on the story “Breath of the Blood Sea” (血海 飄香). The plot is beautifully presented in an introductory intro made up of good animations. Four martial artists died strangely in one night. Obviously, they were poisoned, for it is unrealistic to kill each of them in a duel. The bodies were thrown into the sea. At this time, Chu Liuxiang, while traveling on his houseboat along the coast, found the very corpses. Now you, the player, as Chu Luxiang will need to investigate this mysterious incident. In the book's plot, Chu Liuxiang is an outstanding martial artist. He uses a metal fan as a weapon and uses it only for self-defense. Despite his excellent fighting skills, one of his most characteristic traits is that he has never killed a person in his entire life - not even an enemy! He usually relies on his intelligence, experience and calmness to solve mysteries and defeat enemies that are much stronger than him. Chu Luxiang lives in a houseboat called the Xiang Pavilion (香榭) with three young beauties. The gameplay mechanics are extremely simple. You will move from location to location, as is typically done in quests or adventure games. All control is only "mouse". You need to "listen" in text dialogues what the characters met with you or each other are talking about, and you should also collect quest items, placing them in your "inventory", which is located at the very bottom of the game screen. In different situations, any of the wearable objects, being pointed and "dropped" on the game object, will open the passage further. The indicator of the transition is a fan pointer, which opens up if you can go further to the next location. At the beginning of the game, you must go down into the hold of your houseboat and change your clothes. To do this, you need to click on a strictly defined drawer of a large chest of drawers. After that, you will change into one of several characters (depending on the selected box). In the story, you must transform into a bearded Zhang Xiaolin (張嘯林), dressed in a purple robe. To do this, click on the drawer in the upper left corner of the chest of drawers. After changing clothes on leaving the hold, you need to take three items from the box to the right of the door: steel balls, a ticket and a handful of silver coins. Now you need to jump high out of the ship (just point the fan pointer over the sea), and you will instantly find yourself on the shore (after all, about martial arts). Next, you need to go to the coastal city of Jinan. There you will go to the hotel, then to the gambling establishment located next door. The graphics are beautiful and bright, the screen resolution is 320x200, and I would like more to display all the ancient beauty that is embedded in any Chinese novel written in the wuxia genre. Dialogues appear at the top of the screen in large, easily readable white hieroglyphs. And they are not in the game menu - only pictures, by the meaning of which it will not be easy to guess at first what they mean SAVE, LOAD, SPEED, etc. The musical themes in the gameplay change from location to location. Of course, they all have a national Chinese flavor. Intro animations are accompanied by digitized speech in standard Chinese dialect (goyu). The game is definitely good and “hooks” with the extreme simplicity of the mechanics of its gameplay. In fact, here it is - a universal tool for visualizing ancient Chinese literature. The hieroglyphs that appear in the dialogues will be a serious obstacle to understanding the plot of the game. But there are no branches in the dialogues, so the course of the gameplay here is straightforward - "our brother" can try to go through all the locations. |
