Talking about the era of domestic martial arts single-player masterpieces in the past, "The Legend of Jin Yong Qunxia" (hereinafter referred to as "Jin Yong") developed by Heluo Studio in 1996 may be a game that cannot be bypassed, boldly integrating the imagination of Jin Yong's 14 works, and the exploration gameplay that conforms to the original work but has a high degree of freedom, once subverting the players' cognition of martial arts games in those years.
Although the subsequent "Legend of the Martial Arts Group" was also well received, the expiration of the license of Jin Yong's works and the second dissolution of Heluo Studio also made the sequel to "Jin Yong" that many players cherished come to naught. In order to realize the martial arts dream in his mind, a group of MOD authors based on game production fandoms began to emerge, and many high-quality game mods have been launched for players to realize their dreams.
In 2007 and 2009, an author who switched to Flash to make Jin Yong fandom appeared in the public eye, the author who put 2 and 3 directly after the original title "Jin Yong" in his fan work, called "Half a Bottle of Immortal Vinegar".
Now it seems that these two games can not be called exquisite, the cobbled together character avatars, content materials with different styles, it is not too much to describe the first impression with roughness, but with the complex branches that are quite loyal to the original, and the extremely high degree of freedom of exploration, just relying on the word "gameplay", half a bottle of fairy vinegar has won the title of "vinegar fairy" in the player group.
After releasing "Jin Yong 3", Vinegar Immortal said that he would take out "Jin Yong 4" in 2010. But this time the vinegar fairy released a large group of pigeons, and it was 13 years to release them.
In August 2022, Xindong suddenly released an independent game promotional PV called "The Legend of the Great Heroes" on the Internet, with a mediocre name, a fairly delicate but not outstanding cartoon pixel art style, it's hard to say where it is attractive, until I noticed the five words on the title, "I super, half a bottle of fairy vinegar?" ”
Just when everyone thought that he would never see "Jin Yong 4" and Vinegar Immortal appear again, he came back with a brand new work. Or open world, or martial arts. At the Steam New Product Festival in February 2023, the game was opened to all players, and the familiar exploration gameplay and option branches also made it one of the most watched games at the new festival.
Just when everyone was still unsatisfied, thinking that it would take a long time to see each other again, in response to the player's request, "The Legend of the Great Hero" simply came to a reverse bounce ticket and opened the EA release on March 8. Within a week of launch, it ranked in the top 5 of Steam's hot sales list for a long time, and quickly received 3,000+ special praise, and SteamDB showed a peak of nearly 29,000 players.
After getting started, I quickly understood where such high praise came from. Even if you can feel that it is completely a half-finished product, it does not affect the player's "top" of it. (The game is based on EA version 0.6.x)
01
Unlimited freedom
The main line of "The Legend of the Great Heroes" is a 100-day limited-time challenge. After the player completes the prologue of the beginner's tutorial, a storyteller will come to the door and inform him that at the time of the 100 days, there will be a major event related to the world's blessings and disasters, and all the player has to do is to gradually become stronger from an unknown shrimp in 100 days, and choose the way to deal with the 100 days change.
Then the game puts the whole world in front of the player's eyes, there is no fixed main line flow, and how to explore it is all up to the player's will. Even in the very beginning of the game, a snitch and a catcher both fell to the ground, and players can freely choose, either to help one of the parties and open the plot branch, or to ignore anyone and go away; One thought of becoming a demon kills both, or helping one first, and then secretly releasing the other, will lead to different plots.
You can also worship a god first
The sense of freedom of the game is given to the player from the very beginning and continues into the future. Like the direction pursued by all martial arts games, there is never one solution to the problem in "The Legend of Great Heroes". The setting of stealth and battle anytime and anywhere, as well as the rich options for character interaction, have already divided the most basic three paths for the mission, whether you want to secretly kill or sit down to reason (brush good feelings), it all depends on will.
To this end, they also made some rooms into objects that can be destroyed, and as long as they enter the battle to empty the health bar, they can break some scene elements, so as to hide some secret rooms and further expand the explorable space in the game.
Team up to haunt the village chief's house
However, the only way to be open and free, and to make players feel full of purpose, is to fill with a stream of content. The game currently opens a chapter of the "nameless area" used as a novice village, as well as the remaining 3 towns and their surrounding areas to explore, of which all named and surnamed NPCs open their exclusive personal plots after reaching a certain level of favorability, and there is also a layer of main story content between towns, sects, and gangs.
In addition, the world is scattered with martial arts cheats, treasures or quest puzzles obtained through various conditions, and the game strives to create a lively and full of possibilities.
After giving all the space to the player to explore freely, relatively, time has become the biggest limitation in the game, only 100 days from the invasion of the Yan Kingdom, and everything the player does needs to consume a certain amount of time, logging and fishing takes time, fighting takes time, entering the mission will consume events, recovery energy needs sleep, even standing still, time will be consumed little by little.
8 hours of quality sleep
Can imagine the completeness of the game content after it is gradually filled, how the passage of time will catch up with what they want, but it is completely too late, how to find the goal to build a gameplay suitable for the content of this round of the game, may also become the hottest topic in the player community. At the same time, it is also a test of the design skills of the half-bottle vinegar studio, because this is a gameplay that does not require an optimal solution, it needs limitations, but it is also unlimited freedom.
Although from the current EA stage, the content filling of "The Legend of the Great Heroes" is far from enough for players to consume, and the mission events in the three towns are not enough to provide players with goals in the long term, and quite a few players say that the middle and late stages of EA content are too empty. But the infrastructure of the game is already in place, and you can see the various attempts of the production team in it, and I believe it is only a matter of time before it fills up.
02
Gameplay, varied
As a martial arts RPG, the gameplay system of "The Legend of the Great Heroes" is very flavorful. The classic five-dimensional physique plus points, initial character characteristics, martial arts attributes after entering the game, personality traits added and subtracted according to the player's choice, martial arts cheats cultivation, talent tree "martial arts", life skill levels, etc., the rich character system like the name of the dish is not absent in this work. In a martial arts game that emphasizes free exploration, this kind of system is not unusual.
But complicated is complicated, and the difficulty of getting started in "The Legend of the Great Hero" is not high at all. The game has been simplified to a considerable extent in the cultivation of martial arts, when players want to practice which exercises, as long as they choose the cheats and the actual battle can be gradually learned, the ten levels of martial arts will also be upgraded with the increase of actual combat experience. To put it simply, equip the cheats and go out to fight to learn martial arts.
The combat part of the game adopts ATB-style wargame play, and players can release corresponding martial arts according to different weapons and equipment. Depending on the attack position, it also has a damage bonus effect of side and back hits. The difference of martial arts and weapons will also have a differentiated attack range, boxing martial arts are mostly based on straight-line distance, knife or piano exercises are mainly fan-shaped or rectangular, with the upgrade of martial arts, the range of attack may also be further strengthened.
Changes in martial arts upgrades
The basic combat gameplay is simple and easy to understand, but the relatively complex character system adds a wealth of possibilities. In just one week, there are a large number of players who are happy to develop the game's combat gameplay, including the damage-reducing turtle genre stacked on the characteristics of state and defensive martial arts, and the counter-damage play method that relies on special conditions to obtain the "Wuji Cave Heart Method" and use the power to fight.
Source: Station B up@ Sleep at night
In terms of the design idea of game content, "The Legend of the Great Hero" is not much different from "Jin Yong 2&3" with half a bottle of fairy vinegar more than ten years ago. The game does not leave the player out of nowhere because the initial points are messed up. The player creates a bucket number to play steadily, or you can concentrate a little, pull full of understanding to accelerate the growth of the day after tomorrow, or be a stupid person without understanding, and realize a peerless exercise on the stone tablet in a certain back mountain, and ascend to the sky in one step.
In addition to the battle, players can also combine new mission solutions with different strange events, learn the skills of stealth from street beggars, and then learn a trick of point-pointing at the God Trap Gate, with stealth as an unwitting monster thief in the world, desperate to kill the demon from beginning to end. Once you understand the basics of the game, you'll gradually discover countless anecdotes in the game.
Source: Station B up@ The night god did not speak, and single-handedly fixed the general's account
This rich, repeatable exploration gives players the thrill to reopen the game over and over again. Searching for possible gameplay, finding the plot and missions that failed to trigger the last time, fighting wits with the author who made the game, consuming every adventure and Easter egg in the game as much as possible, and walking through completely different adventures is one of the greatest joys of "The Legend of the Great Heroes".
03
A martial arts dream more than ten years later
Despite the above boast, does the game have many problems now? Many, as many as cattle hair. As they said in their self-deprecating announcements, the current rivers and lakes are full of "human affection", insufficient plot text, slightly rigid bounty task design, relatively rare character shaping and plot interaction content, plus all hard gameplay that relies on "spending money" to solve problems: most of the opening of the plot highly depends on the improvement of favorability, but the way to improve is only to give gifts, making this version of the game full of "copper smell".
The lack of game guidance and the lack of mid-term driving force have also become the content of current player feedback, but the official also wrote instructions in the release announcement early on that they hoped that players would wait until the official version to play, and there was obviously nothing to criticize. And even if there are many questions, if you ask me if it's fun, I have to admit that "The Legend of the Great Heroes" is fun.
The advantages are also as mentioned above, the simple and easy-to-understand gameplay content and free and relatively rich explorable events support the varied exploration breadth of the early stage of the game. I'm looking forward to what kind of surprises the content on the official version of the game can bring me.
Now nearly 14 years have passed since the release of "Jin Yong 3", and the vinegar fairy is no longer the young man who fought alone in the north, the progress of development tools and the formation of the team did make "The Legend of the Great Heroes" in terms of quality can be called the luxurious enhanced version of "The Legend of Jin Yongqun 3", but when we saw that players just reported bugs in the morning, and there was a repair announcement in the afternoon, and when they went online for several days while fixing bugs and planning the future with players, we felt that he was still the one who dared to resign for a few months to complete " Jin Yong 3" "Extreme Workaholic".
After more than ten years in the game industry, getting married and having children halfway, and now not confused, the vinegar fairy once again turned his head and traveled alone, his purpose is simple: "to make up for unfulfilled wishes". "The Legend of Jin Yongqun 4" is not only the regret of many players at that time, but also a wish shelved by the vinegar fairy, which has come to the stall of EA release, and the road to realizing the dream has always been completed.
Nowadays, the environment of domestic solo travel is much better than more than ten years ago, and half a bottle of fairy vinegar has also made up the determination that "no matter how difficult it is this time, it will go on". Now "The Legend of the Great Hero" is busy completing the final idea, and the Han family squirrel formed under the influence of the vinegar fairy also has the "Simulated Rivers and Lakes" and new works on hand.
Heluo Studio, which was once disbanded and reorganized, has been deeply entangled in copyright with Zhiguan in recent years, and even fell into the crisis of disbanding again. But its producer Xu Changlong also previewed a new mysterious martial arts work under development in 2022, less than half a month before the release date of the new news of Heluo Convention on April 1. On and off for more than 20 years, the group of young people who had dreams and enthusiasm for martial arts and domestic single-machine are still continuing to make dreams.
Perhaps the flood and low quality of the "fairy martial arts" theme in the past few years have led to low expectations for subsequent new works of such works, but counting the upcoming immortal martial arts works on different platforms in the past two years, several large manufacturers of open-world martial arts, candle dragon for several years without sound "Divine Dance Fantasy: Life of Delusion" and "Ancient Sword and Qitan 4", solo game "Yijian Storm and Cloud" and other new tours, as well as the above-mentioned things, perhaps the new "martial arts" will once again discuss the sword.