【Review Foreword】
I still remember a few years ago, when I was still a primary school student, one day when I was watching TV, I suddenly saw CCTV8 was playing a sitcom called "Wulin Gaiden", it was this drama that opened a door called "Jianghu" for me, although it was not the first martial arts drama I came into contact with in memory (the earliest I watched should be Li Yapeng's version of "The Legend of the Condor Heroes"), but it began to make me have an endless yearning for the "Jianghu" from Tong Xiangyu and Bai Zhantang.
Although I am not the most fanatical "Jianghu" element, I am constantly fantasizing about various scenes of my own walking in the rivers and lakes - I accidentally entered a dark cave in a certain year and a certain month and occasionally got a martial arts mastery, I worshiped a certain sect in a certain year and a certain month, and became famous since then, and I met someone in a certain year and a certain month, and have been together for a long time...... Imagine that there are many people like me, after all, the "martial arts dream" has always been a romantic feeling immersed in the bones of Chinese, who can refuse the casual and happy life of "holding a sword and walking the end of the world"?
Because of this, the martial arts theme has always been a distinctive category of domestic games, and it is also the advantage of domestic games. In recent years, martial arts games have begun to try to integrate into the open world of "large quantities and full management" to cater to the appetite of players, but rather than "catering to players", it is better to say that "open world" should be the most suitable form for the theme of martial arts.
It's a bit of a pity that martial arts games with "open world" gameplay are currently dominated by MMORPGs and are more social.
As for stand-alone martial arts, there are also, but not many, such as "The Legend of Heroes" and "Jianghu Eleven", the quality of the game is not so exquisite, and there is a lot of room for optimization, but there are also commendable points.
Now the stand-alone martial arts team has added a new member - "Next Station Jianghu II.", which is also the game I want to talk about today, the previous work has reached 450,000 followers on TapTap, 310,000 single-channel sales, and a rating of 8.2, while this new work has reached 350,000 followers on TapTap, 370,000 reservations, and a rating of 9.4, and it is also one of the most played games in Steam's October 2023 New Product Festival. So what is the quality of this open-world martial arts stand-alone RPG game with no network, buyout system + DLC fee, and listen to me slowly.
[If it is the plot of Long Aotian]
The background of the game is set in an overhead world of the Three Kingdoms, Yan, Chu, and Qi are three times in a three-legged trend, and there are many rivers and lakes in this troubled world, among which Bodhi, Xuanmen, and the Academy are the three religions, and the five major factions with them as the key are leading the rivers and lakes. The constant struggle between the sects of various countries to demonstrate the national strength is under the surface of this turbulence, and there is an undercurrent waiting for an opportunity......
In the identity line of the game's first release "Jiangmen Huzi", the protagonist chose to leave the division to break into the rivers and lakes, and found the long-lost martial arts mastery at the beginning.
Fortunately, this is a game, so it's unlikely that you'll be "finished" in the first few minutes. The protagonist is rescued by a well-wisher from a nearby village, and after recuperating for a while, he starts a new life.
The story revolves around the troubled times and grievances in the rivers and lakes, and the experience is a bit like the cartoon "Big Hero Di Qing". Following the main story, you can explore most areas of the game world, and it also has the taste of traveling through the rivers and lakes.
In terms of the plot, I feel pretty good at the moment.,It's done in the atmosphere that a martial arts game should have.,For example, Long Aotian's Xiaoshuang opening and story development really meet my desire to be a big male protagonist of online cool literature.。 I also hope that the identity line plot that will be opened in the future can still maintain a high level of completion.
[Write "solution + formula" to get points]
When I was in middle school, I believe most people would hear the science teacher say something like this - if you don't know how to do this problem, then write a solution and write the right formula, then you can get some points.
If you look at this sentence more than ten years later, you will find that it is full of philosophy and can be applied to different occasions, so it is not impossible to use it to evaluate a game.
This is exactly what I felt most intuitively after experiencing "Next Stop II" for three days. As for how to answer the question of "open world" martial arts, the production team gave a fairly standard set of formulaic answers.
Break down and refine the answers to this set of formulas, which can be listed as world exploration, combat development, life system, and favorability.
When it comes to the open world, it's definitely about content exploration. The game's open world content is quite rich, to the extent of "large quantities of full", this game adopts a seamless large map design, players can go wherever they want, and the degree of freedom of exploration is quite high - you can choose to stay in the novice village to concentrate on cultivation and become a generation of ten-mile slope sword gods;
In addition, there is also a side quest called "Adventure" in the game, players can trigger adventures by talking to NPCs or going to a specific location to encounter specific events, after triggering the adventure, players need to complete the task step by step according to the only clue in their hand, which includes treasure hunting missions, there are also bizarre cases, and you can be blessed with all the knights who like treasure hunting and solving cases. Of course, "Adventure" is not limited to these two ways to play, and its number and variety are quite large, which is sure to satisfy the appetite of all kinds of players.
The exploration content is "full of quantity", coupled with the design of weakened guidance, the degree of surprise of exploration has been significantly improved, and to a certain extent, it also motivates players to continue to explore, so that players will not guess what will happen in the next second.
This is also the most satisfying thing about the game, after all, the rivers and lakes are like this, full of unexpected encounters.
In terms of combat, the game uses swords, knives, guns, and fists that are common in martial arts games as weapons and equipment, and you can switch weapons and corresponding moves at any time during the battle. Players can choose one or two to specialize, or they can become a scattered person who knows everything with eighteen weapons like "Jun Moxiao". The combat method is a bit similar to the "Destiny of Heaven" series, which is mainly based on releasing skills, but it is not a blind pile output, and you need to flexibly apply dodge and light skills and other moves to avoid the opponent's attack in battle, and if you are skilled enough in operation, you can do "cultivation is not enough, operation to make up", and then you can complete the very challenging "following grams".
But it's not that you can defeat all opponents by relying on a variety of coquettish moves, the character still needs to continue to cultivate and improve, and the combat development content is divided into two parts: opening up the meridians and cultivating martial arts, players can get through the meridians by obtaining [cultivation], and cultivate martial arts skills by consuming [perception]. In the cultivation process, lighting up the corresponding acupuncture points can unlock some martial arts moves, and learning martial arts can provide true qi value for the operation of the meridians, and then obtain better gain effects.
△ Players can also consume various cultivation props to add additional attribute values (if the attribute values are not good, they can also repeatedly "wash points" to brush).
The martial arts in the game can be obtained in a variety of ways, as long as fate arrives, someone may send you martial arts cheats when you walk (of course, this situation does not really exist in the game). After learning martial arts, players can freely mix and match moves with the same weapon, but it is not a matter of which one is forced, because the game has a subtle mechanism of mutual restraint. This set of mechanisms can be somewhat analogous to the five elements, the moves are divided into yin, yang, rigid, soft, poison, five attributes, when the player opens the internal strength of the mind to enter the corresponding attribute of the move state, attack the restraint attribute enemy to get a damage bonus, attack the resistance attribute enemy will reduce the damage output, the attack will also trigger additional combat effects after accumulating a certain attribute value;
This equipment system adopts a similar "Diablo 4" entry equipment system,High-quality weapons have several entries that provide buff effects,Through extraction-forging and crafting, you can continue to filter equipment entries,Finally, create a magic weapon suitable for your own routines。 Coupled with the refining and rolling points of character development, some players also have a game content that is quite worth experiencing in the late game.
As for the life system, fishing, mining, playing chess, drinking, there should be, and they are all very conventional things, the more cumbersome point is that when a certain skill of the character reaches a certain value, you need to find a person with the corresponding identity to complete the specified task to upgrade, the task is not difficult to do, but you have to find a designated identity NPC in the vast sea of people in the game, it will take some time.
Is there a favorability system...... At present, it seems that it is not very perfect, and it still follows the routine of "you give more gifts, then you are my brother", and the content of the relationship with the opposite sex is not satisfactory, so I can only wait for the follow-up update and optimization.
[Evaluation Summary]
It seems that Bai Yujing Studio has given a set of unsatisfactory open-world martial arts game standard formulaic answers, but in fact, the performance of "Next Stop II." is somewhat unsatisfactory, and the "mixed reviews" after the release also prove this. After all, the open world is a challenge, and the production team tried to make a seamless open map, which is also known for its scale and difficulty.
If there is one word to describe the current quality of the game, it is "rough", which is a kind of poor "roughness", and it is also a kind of "roughness" that has more than enough power ,All kinds of bugs and problems need to be optimized and solved,The content is rich in gameplay but still needs to be improved,But at least the framework of the game is there.,The general direction is also right.,Because in the early stage of the game, I was also made big by the bugs that flew all over the sky and some unpopular setting operations.,But after slowly getting used to the bugs, I began to gradually experience the fun of the game.,So I still prefer to believe that this is a stone.,After continuous polishing,It's become an amazing peerless jade.。
Of course, if you can't tolerate AI vertical drawing, poor optimization, and such and such problems, then it is recommended to continue to maintain a wait-and-see attitude.