Shuyan Saga (PC)
While a visual novel and graphic novel may sound like they’d be two words for the same thing, the video game genre and presentation format for long form comic stories do differ in some key ways. A visual novel usually uses simple and often static images to contextualize a large amount of text whereas a graphic novel features visuals and text in often fairly equal measure and the length and focus of it is what leads to its comparison to a novel. This distinction between the two becomes incredibly important when Shuyan Saga’s approach of making a graphic novel video game enters the discussion, because it goes above and beyond when it comes to mixing together its visuals and text.
Shuyan Saga’s art, illustrated by Daxiong Guo, is definitely its most spectacular feature, over 1,400 unique images helping to tell the story of princess Shuyan as she tries to retake her kingdom of Nan Feng after its overrun by ruthless invaders. While it is common practice for comic books, even the high end and artistic graphic novels, to feature simplification of characters when they’re ancillary background characters or take certain drawing shortcuts in order to get the work done in time for a deadline, Shuyan Saga ensures each image shown during its story is beautifully drawn. Characters never look goofy unless that’s the intention of the scene, and they remain on-model with detailed faces no matter what angle or distance you’re seeing them from. There is a naturally sliding scale of how the features can be shown from a distance, but every scene shown feels like it had the same amount of care put into it as the previous one.
There are moments where enormous art too big to show on screen all at once pans around to show a vivid scene, both the real action and more spiritual and supernatural elements receiving the same attention when it comes to bringing them to life in impressive detail. One reason characters like the leading lady Shuyan become such likeable characters is because the art is always giving you a chance to read her emotions clearly on her face, and while there are no animated illustrations, the stills picked for when characters are speaking, interacting, or even fighting build the cast up just as easily as the actual writing.
On reason this attention to detail might be so important to the creators is that they realize it can be scrutinized on a huge monitor, unlike Dead Space: Ignition which doesn’t care that it blows up comic book panels on a huge screen despite the characters sometimes barely having any distinguishing features. Most of your time with Shuyan Saga is taking in the story with these vivid illustrations on screen, and with that gorgeous presentation being one of its selling points, it is easy to see how it could have been weakened if you had the time to bask in a beautiful image only to start to see shortcuts that were taken. In some ways its art is almost too good to be in a true graphic novel due to the logistics of printing it all out in a book you could bind, all the intricate background detailing and other lovely touches probably not playing along well with mass-produced inked literature. Shuyan Saga also displays its text well to never cover up too much of the screen and the willingness to shift angles or perspectives so much in a scene shows that the artistic side gets an impressive amount of love and is prioritized over the work load such choices entail.
On top of the art, voice acting was given a good amount of focus, every bit of text that appears as part of the plot spoken aloud by the appropriate characters. There are a few characters who aren’t the best like the main villain’s right hand man Vulkar sounding like a cliche sneering villain, but a lot of the voice cast draws out the emotion of the scenes very well and brings the illustrated scenes to life. While the game’s marketing likes to brag about snagging Kristin Kreuk from Smallville to play the leading lady, she does a great job in helping Shuyan be more than a run of the mill rebellious princess. Shuyan begins the journey eager to step away from her royal duties and pursue her interest in Kung-Fu, but when the Guer hordes led by the supernaturally powerful Ganbaatar seizes control of her city, we can actually see and hear the pain of having her life upended, the desire for revenge, the feeling of helplessness, and so many other emotions drawn out well by art that is complemented by the writing and performance. Almost as effective is the performance of Don Sheppard as Jian, a rather rough man who has been on the run from the Guers and contrasts the princesses old mindset of luxury and freely pursuing her interests quite well. Jian’s life of practicality and survival has turned him into a man quick to anger and protect his own hide, but when circumstance leads to him being one of the few people around Shuyan after the city is sacked, his human side shows more and we find a complex character who both wants to help the princess but can only do so through his unrefined and blunt ways.
To try and draw out her people’s guardian spirit within her to help defend against Ganbaatar’s own dragon spirit, Shuyan seeks out a way to train her body and mind, leading to her encountering another cast of fun characters that form a nice friend group for Shuyan during the second half of the adventure. While they mostly function within a broader group dynamic with characters like the meek and awkward Dongmei, gentle giant Baojia, and the jokester Guo, Jade emerges as a rival mindset to clash against Shuyan during a part of the plot that otherwise might have sunk too deep into its focus on a rather familiar martial arts training story line. In fact, Shuyan Saga’s story stumbling points probably do relate to its rather by the book overall narrative, with Ganbaatar being a fairly one note conqueror, his troops villains with no depth, and the Kung-Fu training tapping into genre staples of spiritual focus and defensive techniques beating out raw power and aggression. The characters and their interactions as well as Shuyan’s personal struggles buoy the plot and help you be invested in the course of the events though, especially thanks to the fact there are points you can directly influence it by choosing Shuyan’s action or dialogue. These choices seem to influence Shuyan’s personality more than the actual actions of the plot in that you can give her more spunk or make her more humble in those moments. There are moments with consequence that involve these choices, but others are just different approaches to the same result. It’s still a nice touch to have it even where it doesn’t hold much weight as Shuyan is well-rounded enough where none of the responses feel like they’re coming out of left field.
The points where you can pick the next action or bit of dialogue from Shuyan aren’t the only moments of interactivity, but in this game with fantastic art, endearing characters, and lovely music, the gameplay is surprisingly stilted, weak, and features 3D models for the characters that look amateurish and don’t seem to be touched up much from Shuyan Saga’s origin as a game for mobile phones. The jump from the art to the rather plain character models is somewhat jarring but easy to accept over time, but the controls and actual action struggle to find a way to make their side of the experience interesting. There are two forms of combat you’ll be asked to engage with at regular intervals, and while failing them does allow a skip option to appear if you only want the story, these are frequent and aren’t just included as little minigames to break up the story. Instead, you’ll find yourself in battles where you either view things from above or have the camera zoom in on a one on one fist fight akin to a fighting game with health bars near the top of the screen. The top down fighting is the weaker of the two, the player needing to click on enemies you wish to attack but clicking open areas by mistake can lead to weird dodge rolls or walking when you just wanted to hit a moving target. Enemies have little symbols appear above their head so you can block in time and others have a symbol telling you when you just need to get away or you’ll take damage even if you guard. Later in the game you get some abilities to execute a powerful move that transitions to the side view fight as well as the first healing option that exists outside of random drop luck, but these fights are usually simple enough that they don’t hurt because when the clicking combat ends up pushed a little too far it can be somewhat bothersome to wrangle it.
The side view fights are a little better because they focus more on identifying attacks, blocking properly, and mixing up your high and low strikes to pull off special combos that can knock enemies down and deal additional damage. One on ones can be triggered by enemies and tougher foes like to get you in this mode despite it benefiting you more that they’re doing so. While clicking high or low on screen to execute the attack isn’t as fluid as assigning button presses, it can be learned and done with enough fluidity that these fights go much smoother than the top down skirmishes. Identifying how your enemy blocks and striking well during the openings makes this work well enough, but the battles do get much more interesting when you start to learn the Way of the Phoenix’s focus on maneuvers known as a Greet. A special sort of dodge, this allows you to avoid an enemy attack, do a light counter strike, and build up power for a strong move they can’t block where you need to click and swipe appropriately to pull it off. The touch screen controls were likely much more fluid, but once you get a feel for the Greet it can be integrated easily into both types of combat and make battles more interesting and dynamic than clicking to attack and trying to outright avoid incoming attacks. In fact, Greet mastery can make even the fights meant to be hard into displays impressive enough to match the story’s emphasis on them, although the Greet’s injection of skilled play and more fluid action can’t completely redeem the gameplay portions. These mechanics go from weak and occasionally annoying to having the potential for a bit of fun which isn’t nearly enough to make them a true companion to the artistry on show in the rest of Shuyan Saga.
THE VERDICT: Absolutely gorgeous illustrations with seemingly no compromises make Shuyan Saga a visually spectacular interactive graphic novel, and with the effective music and delightful and complex personalities on show in the supporting cast and Shuyan herself, it’s easy to be enraptured by this title despite a fairly traditional narrative. Artistic splendor and good character writing can’t completely cover up the rudimentary gameplay sections that add a bland taste to the adventure when they’re not outright bothersome to participate in, but they do eventually find some footing as you gain new techniques. The action in this story about Kung-Fu comes up remarkably short and is a poor conversion from its touchscreen roots, but the graphic novel portions are still so stylish and well constructed that Shuyan Saga is by no means worth dismissing for its weaker and less emphasized interactive segments.
And so, I give Shuyan Saga for PC…
A GOOD rating. I would so love to bump that rating up to a GREAT, but Shuyan Saga’s clumsy integrating of action can’t be outright ignored because of its frequency and focus. At the same time, the graphic novel elements still make up most of the experience and are wildly successful at all the extra touches that really makes the story shine brighter than its basic backbone would lead you to believe. The art, most of the voice acting, and music can bring its characters to life and make their interaction so much more compelling than if this was a low effort visual novel, and the writing for characters like Jian can make someone you are built up to dislike at first into one of the standout characters whose fate you can easily grow attached to. Shuyan is a great leading lady because she has the degree of nuance to her that you can choose her personal responses without breaking character and she comes to the strife of her situation and burden of her role with a surprising layer of believability.
There is only a flicker of Ganbaatar having anything more to him than a ruthless conqueror unfortunately and the martial arts training portions can feel like they lack a unique identity, but the graphic novel portion of the adventure is still not only executed rather well but nails the different appeals of the comic book genre it has adapted into a video game form surprisingly well. The gameplay portions are actually the only huge thing that keep it from getting a glowing recommendation as they can’t carry their side of the experience well enough. Better controls would do a lot to redeem it or make it at least negligible, but some ideas like mixing up high and low strikes and Greets have the potential to make the game enjoyable for its gameplay rather than aiming for being negligible. In its current state though, the tournament mode and Jade’s side story you unlock for beating the main game are definitely not going to grab you with their almost laser focus on the gameplay mechanics that don’t get improved just by making things harder or adding in traps to avoid.
It breaks my heart that Shuyan Saga isn’t all it could be simply because it tried to get some interactive Kung-Fu into its story. The graphic novel elements, the audio touches, and the writing are all there to be something I’d love to recommend without many caveats, but that gameplay hangs over the whole experience as something that fails to add to an experience that otherwise gives so much attention and care to its most important parts. Lofty Sky Entertainment seems to have a multimedia focus and perhaps that is why so much of the artistic side of this game works so well, but this seems to be their first true game and the interactive element just isn’t there to make this a cohesive success. Still, the action is not a total train wreck and often can be pushed through without much incident, so Shuyan Saga can still be appreciated for everything it did pull off with style and heart.