The Legend of Tianding (Xbox Series X)
Tianding is a folk hero from a very specific stretch of time for Taiwan, the island falling under Japanese rule following the First Sino-Japanese War. This rule that lasted for 50 years at the start of the 20th Century received plenty of resistance, and during this tempestuous time, a man named Liao Tianding rose in prominence as someone who aided the native Taiwanese by stealing from their Japanese rulers. As he became a symbol, his real life exploits mixed with myth and legend, making him sort of a Robin Hood figure for the Taiwanese who dreamed of independence.
The action platforming game The Legend of Tianding aims to mix the myth and reality of this cultural hero as well in its plot. On one hand, Tianding’s efforts in this adventure follow some of his real world exploits just with greater exaggeration. You don’t just steal from rich Japanese oppressors, you tear down their businesses and take them on in big boss battles. The rumor that Tianding escaped capture in real life by leaping off a moving train into a gorge here is evolved into escaping a train after a man with mystical control over fire ignites it. Tianding’s broader goal in this plot is to steal from the rich and give to the needy, his early efforts focused on helping specific people or targeting those who exploit the people native to the island nation, but a greater supernatural threat exists that starts to intersect with the fight against Japanese oppressors. Integrating locations like a real cave Liao Tianding operated out of with this more mythical angle continues to produce an interesting blend of reality and fiction that fits a legendary figure well. With the game chapters introduced by way of radio teasers while cutscenes are depicted through comic panels, there is an interesting commitment to this feeling of a tale told many ways throughout Taiwan’s history without the game ever fully pulling back and presenting it like you were merely reading a book or hearing a storyteller share the tale.
The Legend of Tianding’s six chapters mostly comprise of the folk hero having to explore large areas like a sewer or the earlier mentioned train, each space presenting plenty of dangers you’ll need to navigate around or battles with enemies. Many side paths with treasure rewards await players with a keen eye and these often whip out the more interesting movement challenges, Tianding gradually acquiring many abilities that not only help him explore better but are useful in a fight. An upwards kick gives Tianding an extra jump in essence but also launches foes upwards, and later the flying forward kick both gives you more jump distance and is a nice follow-up attack to that launching rising kick. Normally Tianding has to rely on a dagger in battle and it is good for rapid strikes, but his red sash really expands the way you can fight.
When an enemy has taken enough damage, a press of the Y button will extend your sash out, this not only allowing you to pilfer a little pocket change but also you can disarm an enemy this way and turn their weapon against them. There is actually a wide range of weapons enemies can wield against you, not only melee options like swords, staves, and axes but also firearms and even things like grenades. While Tianding has the weapon his attacking style will change, meaning when you’re in a group of enemies you can start to strategically pick which weapons to take. A staff is a very fluid way to rapidly attack foes, but some special enemies won’t flinch when hit, so if you can get your hands on something like a rifle, attacking them from afar will help wear them down. Each weapon has a certain limit on how many times you can attack with it, but since most any non-boss enemy can be stolen from, an enjoyable combat flow emerges where you’re rapidly snatching new tools with your sash and moving through many attack types in a single battle. While some like the police baton are pretty plain and the throwing rocks are rather weak, they can all fit into this system since they’re usually at least a small improvement over your dagger in some department while your own blade is still useful enough you don’t feel stuck using it if you have to.
The most common time you have no choice but to fight with your knife will be in the game’s boss battles, and while the usual fights against armed bodyguards and Japanese officers are quick and fluid, the bosses tend to focus instead on smart opportunistic attacks and learning how to avoid some powerful arena-wide abilities. A dodge roll and the many jumping skills help with this, and with bosses like a rickshaw-carried merchant whose gold statue fires a machine gun at you or a courtesan who can summon a large pink tornado or explosive red butterflies, you definitely get a taste of the game’s willingness to lean into the legendary nature of this tale that can sometimes otherwise feel grounded. Tianding may dress as an officer to trick a landlord harassing citizens at one point and then taking on these larger-then-life foes in battle at another, and allowing these bosses to be so tough may feel like a break from the standard combat but it also provides the battles that will really push you to play smart. Checkpoints aren’t too rare and you carry some healing items that replenish any time you find those checkpoints so you can retry a boss as many times as it takes, although there is a penalty for dying where you’ll lose some of the money you’ve acquired through battle when you fall. Boss battles do at least stop extracting this tax after a few deaths, and there is an amulet system where you can equip a few with special bonuses and one of the earliest you can get prevents this. There are at least other useful amulet powers so it’s a choice rather than a necessity, and through side quests you can earn not only new amulets but other boons like increased carrying capacity for your healing items.
As for what you’ll be spending that money on, The Legend of Tianding actually does a fairly smart job in integrating its hero’s benevolent nature through how it’s used. There are dagger upgrades to purchase, but otherwise the money is mostly given to beggars around town, Tianding actually stealing from the rich and giving to the needy as the legends say. These beggars all do conveniently give him a treasure for helping them out so that gameplay function kind of makes it less altruistic than it normally would be, but the treasures these beggars give and many of the ones you find while out adventuring are fairly interesting in design. The collectables in The Legend of Tianding all have some tie to the specific time period the game takes place in, the player finding objects of interest tied to Taiwan’s history and the Japanese rule over them. From alcohol brands to special stamps representing specific cities, to postcards and advertisements that either showed the beauty of the island or were used as an attempt to push the locals towards Japanese living, these souvenirs from real world history are already intriguing historical curiosities. Some are rather unexciting admittedly while others can provide a unique little slice of life from that time like how a specific company’s bricks were considered so high quality that people with buildings made of them would proudly display the company logo facing outwards on one of them. Rather than mere curios though, each of these collectables also provides a passive bonus such as increasing the durability or strength of specific pilfered weapons or increasing money drops. With 145 collectables found both in levels and from aiding the poor, you not only are gathering neat historical artifacts but boosts that gradually do have an appreciable impact on how you handle a fight.
THE VERDICT: The Legend of Tianding blends history and fiction into a game that feels cohesive and fascinating even if you’re unfamiliar on what parts come from the real life folk hero. Collectibles are smartly both peers into the real past of Japanese-occupied Taiwan and always a benefit in some other manner and myths can become interesting set pieces to bolster this action game’s variety despite it still having some grounded moments of forming a resistance movement. Tianding’s abilities make him a joy to handle in combat as he can fluidly swap between different enemy weapons while bosses put up a powerful fight so you aren’t too easily slashing your way through this historical adventure.
And so, I give The Legend of Tianding for Xbox Series X…
A GOOD rating. It is pretty easy to get wrapped up in the impressive feat that is The Legend of Tianding’s presentation. Already the game looks lovely and has a good soundtrack with traditional Taiwanese sounds, but then the game finds a pretty clean way to weave together elements of the Liao Tianding legend into an adventure that can build to a cohesive climax. It doesn’t feel like a history lesson but offers plenty to admire if you are interested in this underrepresented slice of world history while its fictitious nature is happily embraced with boss battles that break away from reality to put up powerful fights. We are in the heightened world of legend here where Liao Tianding can move through the air with martial arts moves and fluidly yank weapons away with his sash, but even that scarf use ties back to some real tales of the hero being adapted here. The Legend of Tianding doesn’t need to just get by on its impressive representation of the myth because of the fluid combat and expanding exploration elements, and while there are some ideas just stapled on like a card game, The Legend of Tianding mostly just feels like it needs path to improvement would be just to keep building on what it already has since characters like Turtle appear without much to do. The adventure isn’t overly long so that compact size does at least allow for some other characters like a police officer whose goal is to grab Tianding to progress reasonably through his arc rather than stewing in parts of it for too long, but perhaps had it kept evolving some more than it could really turn heads with its gameplay too. The normal fights and bosses feel a bit disparate because you aren’t often challenged too much by regular skirmishes so much as given a place to really show off with flashy attack chains, and having a few enemies not flinch when attacked doesn’t feel like the way to really invigorate this combat style. At the same time, that fluidity helps these battles feel satisfying despite not often being too difficult, and with the platforming still present to keep testing you, The Legend of Tianding doesn’t become monotonous.
Video games can be an excellent opportunity to immerse yourself in something from another culture’s history, and even having taken a History of Taiwan class back in college, it feels like The Legend of Tianding will do a much better job at sticking certain elements of that island nation’s past in my mind. Rather than something I needed to know for exams and essays, now the Japanese rule of the island after the First Sino-Japanese War is the setting for an enjoyable and lovingly realized action game, and while this game adapts the myth of the man as much as the reality, that also helps to share a meaningful legend that is worth learning about as well. Had it just been a history lesson in game form it might not have stood out, but The Legend of Tianding had smart ideas for its action and collection elements that help better cement it as something worth remembering as a game too.