"100 people technical team, 12 years of precipitation, the reborn "Sword Man World 3" online won the best-selling Top 9."
The situation seems to be not just a little good, but a big good.
However, whether it is the one- or two-star bad reviews in the first half of the Appstore, or the player evaluation of the Taptap platform with an average of 2.7 in the past 7 days, it reflects that many real players are not so buying the third-generation mobile game of the "Sword Man World" series of Xishanju.
In Xishanju's own words, what "Sword Man World 3" wants to do this time is "classic martial arts", coexisting with the sense of the times, focusing on restoring the earliest classic martial arts end game, gangs forming groups to grab leaders in the wild, PK gameplay when things are indecisive, not engaging in so many "micro-innovative superpositions", focusing on "the game jianghu that players should have in their eyes".
That is to say, the tea house of the first generation of "Sword Man World" drank tea, played the piano to talk, exchanged anecdotes and other leisure social content, and was cut down in three generations.
Actual play, game criticism in the "Swordsman World 3" to see is the domestic martial arts online game in the first 10 years of the framework prototype of the 21st century, and then add the later 5 years of page game development of the whole set of automatic circuitry and automatic hang-up combat, there is a look "playable" ARPG combat and DIY skill roulette wheel, but the actual battle is with the monster BOSS close to where the light is where, manual operation of mobile dodge always has a sense of rubber sticking to the sluggishness, and eventually you will be persuaded to give everything to the hang-up and automatic.
Battle footage shown in the release of World of Swordsmen 3.
Battle footage from the actual experience of World of Swordsmen 3.
Even compared to the previous two generations of "Sword Man World", "Sword Man World 3" at the end of 2021, it seems to be a major regression, you will find that most of the design of "Sword Man World 3" can be seen in some big factory martial arts mobile games around 2016, such as Perfect World and China Mobile Game's "YiTian Slaughter Dragon Chronicles".
Typical partner recruitment heap combat power gameplay, in a variety of novel adaptations of martial arts online games or comics to modify the martial arts online game has been reused countless times, playing the same.
This framework of the product in the young users of Taptap, of course, can not get much praise, but in the "experience" of the Chinese game industry, it may be very suitable for some kind of imagination, 24 to 36 years old, daily do not have much time to play games, but still want to experience the "jianghu sense" and martial arts identity of the player, so "Sword Man World 3" may be set as a kind, more like the traditional page game of the form.
Anyway, as long as the player recharges in place, they can kill all four parties in the Song and Jin battlefields.
In fact, this is a kind of martial arts and xianxia MMO products that are commonplace in the Guangzhou-Shenzhen buy amount of help, the core gameplay is basically copied from several verified head hits, you play a beginning to know the next 7 days, the next 14 days of the game will develop, cumbersome daily gang master door, automatic hanging up to fight monsters, class schedule-like world activities, may continue from 12 noon to late at night every day, the game experience is comparable to overtime 997.
Then this kind of MMO is usually also paired with the global voice shouting system of the family or world channel, not long after entering the game, you will hear the female voice to pull you into a social software group, everyone plays the game together, and even proposes to marry you in the game, making the domestic martial arts xianxia MMO often become a hotbed of frequent online fraud marriages.
It's not that such a "martial arts classic" can't be done, but in the past, we will hope to see more different things in the brand of Xishanju and the IP of "Sword Man Love". For example, in the generation of "Sword Man World", Xishanju tried to switch horizontal and vertical screens, tried to streamline the paid content of the game, and completely relied on the differentiated business model of 60 yuan monthly card and fashion sales in order to make a profit, which was personally promoted by Mr. Lei Jun, CEO of Xiaomi Group.
But after the "Sword Man World" generation as an experiment failed to cause the imaginary trend, two years later we saw "Sword Man World 2" that compromised with the market and disappeared into the crowd.
Until the end of 2021, we saw a basic repetition of the design level of other online game manufacturers in 2016 "Sword Man World 3".
At what point did you start giving up?
If Xishanju's "Sword Net 1: Return" launched in China two months ago is a return to the old end game of 20 years ago from the picture quality and gameplay, with the page game automation system of 10 years ago, "Sword Man World 3" is to use the industrial game engine level that is closer to the current competitors to make a game similar to "Sword Net 1: Return", although the specific performance ability and "Tianya Mingyue Knife" or "A Dream Jianghu" have a big gap.
This reminds the game critic of an interview with the head of the "legendary" IP operation of the Shanda Network at the golden plume award site many years ago, when the "legendary" IP had different mobile game project lines, such as the classic "Legend", "Legend of Blood", "Legend world", etc., aiming to seize players of different ages through different packaging and art styles, taking the retro route for the old users of the end game, and taking a more mysterious trend route for the new generation of players.
The idea is actually very good, but this "Legends" mobile game family did not save the grand fall of the game business later.
On the occasion of the 25th anniversary of "Sword Man Love", seeing the new works of "Sword Net 1: Return" and "Sword Man World 3", two "tributes to martial arts classics", the game criticism seems to see the "return to the classic legend" of Shanda.
If Xishanju does not reflect in time and continue this, in order to put public relations advertorial self-hypnosis to the media, replace the real boutique creation, and win the trust of players and the market, then in the view of game criticism, "Sword Man Love" as a classic IP, sooner or later, like many domestic terminal game old IP, into a dead and not stiff situation, so that Xishanju and Jinshan repeat the decline of many Shanghai veteran game manufacturers.
All classic stories may have an end, and Sword Man World 3 obviously has a more modern, younger appearance, but its core is too old to annoy the young people of the moment. This is not a "classic martial arts renewal", but an old factory that is overwhelmed by revenue KPIs, trying to get a hard time from the past of China's game industry.
Certainly not a decent end.
The achievement of the best-selling list Top 9 is undoubtedly a recognition of the research and development concept of "Sword Man World 3" "Tribute to Classic Martial Arts", and also makes a good start for the game operation of "Sword Man World 3". And after that, what kind of classic martial arts game charm and market potential can it show us? ”
After three months, it's worth seeing if Swordman World 3 can deliver a better best-selling list than Sword Net 1: Homecoming.
Is it still the original intention of Xishanju to do martial arts games?