Wuxia video game - Ho Tu Lo Shu

[Madmarcus]

Does anyone else play these? That's a rhetorical question really as I'm fairly sure the answer is no. Once again I've been sucked into the world of wushu and wuxia.

This time it is Ho Tu Lo Shu: The Book of Dragons. Atom RPG is a Russian Fallout 2. Ho Tu Lo Shu isn't quite that close but it could be called a mythological Chinese Fallout 2 crossed with Skyrim. Turn based action point combat similar to Atom RPG but the leveling is divided into learning martial arts styles and progressing in a talent tree. The talents are similar to Skyrim skill trees although there are fewer choices to make. While you train styles with XP in most respects they are equipment as your real arms and armor aren't that important (until you obtain high end weapons!). Exploration is 3rd person wandering on a fairly large map. No HUD but the minimap does have quest markers for quests you are involved in.

The English mod (available in the Steam workshop) is decent. The character names are somewhat hard to remember for those of us not used to seeing Chinese names but really it is no different than running around Skyrim with fantasy names. I have no trouble following the story and most conversations make sense. There are a few places where the limited choices seem odd but when you think of them through the lens of old school D&D alignment (good - evil and disciplined - wild axes) they mostly work. A few words are odd - the weapons that normally get called broadswords or sabers seem to be called knives in some places and just blade most of the time.

There is some jank (perhaps less so if you read Chinese) and the build options aren't quite as open as they first appear. It looks like there are only 6 real talent choices and I'm not sure that all choices are viable with all weapons. The companions are strongly constrained by their morality and while I'm still pretty early in the game it feels like you are going to be funneled into either being good with one set of companions or being evil with a different set. One thing that is both terrific and annoying is that pickpocketing makes you evil and really annoys a couple of the good companions but has some great rewards. The main character is a fish out of water which adds a little humor and, at least for me, helps immersion in a game where you can't customize your looks. There is very little information available in English on the game which I find somewhat refreshing as I tend to be bad about playing for 10 hours and then diving into wikis to try to optimize my choices. I can't really do that here!

8.5 / 10.

[Kasey Chang]

I may check the game out later, even though I have too many other games.

Part of it may be someone dumped the text into online translator. A lot of Chinese weapons don't translate well.

For example, it's obvious that 劍 is a sword.

But what about 刀? Generally speaking, dao is a single cutting edge weapon (think scimitar, or katana), whereas sword is a two-cutting edge weapon. But dao can come in a variety of sizes, One of the fictional wuxia weapon was 小李飛刀, a flying dagger that apparently is an insta-kill weapon when wielded correctly. Should it be called dao? Who cares?

But enough of me mansplaining stuff.

[Madmarcus]

You're right that it is a machine translation issue but it is an odd at least to me. It feels like weapon names would translate well.

After some more time with the game I'm going to drop it to 8/10 or if I'm going to be less granular something like 8.3. I like the open world aspect but Tale of Wuxia the Pre-Sequel had a better pace of introducing new companions and arts. On the other hand Ho Tu Lo Shu has a mechanism where you can focus your XP gain on talents or arts. It's very possible that I am simply at a point in the story where I should be focusing on talents more instead of mastering all my arts quite as fast as I have done.

Shrug; some of it is the mental balance between enjoying the game as I dive in almost blind versus wanting to plan a build or a best route.

[rittchard]

I am a wuxia fan so you aren’t alone! I’ll take a look.

[rittchard]

I may check the game out later, even though I have too many other games.

Part of it may be someone dumped the text into online translator. A lot of Chinese weapons don't translate well.

For example, it's obvious that 劍 is a sword.

But what about 刀? Generally speaking, dao is a single cutting edge weapon (think scimitar, or katana), whereas sword is a two-cutting edge weapon. But dao can come in a variety of sizes, One of the fictional wuxia weapon was 小李飛刀, a flying dagger that apparently is an insta-kill weapon when wielded correctly. Should it be called dao? Who cares?

But enough of me mansplaining stuff.

Chinese can be difficult to translate in general, since many single characters are used in multiple contexts, and don't have the meaning attached until you add another character or two to them. Dao is most commonly translated as knife, and not really in the weapon sense. Like knife for chopping vegetables or meat. The flying dagger you mentioned is from a famous story/legend, I don't remember the details but I did see a movie a long time ago. The last two symbols are "fei dao" which does translate to flying knife/dagger. I don't know if there is an explicit translation for dagger, but it's probably another word in conjunction with dao. The first two symbols are "Xiao lee" which I think was just the guy's name but I don't know for sure.

Anyway the game sounds interesting, but I've found it hard to stay with any single game the last couple months. I want to blame Elden Ring but I'm not sure lol.

[Madmarcus]

It is certainly a game that requires sticking with it. I'm at roughly 40 hours on my real character. My guess is that I am about one third of the way through the story. Maybe closer to half way since it looks like there might be fewer side quests once you get past the first couple of hubs. Some of the translated Chinese guides suggest that you can clear all the quests in the first village in one game day. Which is probably true once you know the game and can run directly between quest markers in an efficient style. I am not being efficient!

Right after posting that the game seemed to be very slow at giving you new characters I ran into 4 new ones that have either offered to join or are clearly on track to join soon when I finish a quest. Plus the two that I have had for ages. Max party is 4 (5 if you select hard at the game start but I didn't). Loads of martial arts styles; it feels like I should make myself a spreadsheet!

[rittchard]

I bought it yesterday and installed, but haven't had time to install the mod. Hopefully it's not too difficult.