After centuries of peace, the Guer are invading your kingdom. As Shuyan, the princess of an imperial Chinese family, you must develop her character and sharpen her fighting skills to save her people from death, preserve their freedom, and restore balance to the world.

Shuyan Saga combines masterful classically inspired Chinese artwork and focused Kung fu action. The Graphic novel approach is impressive with over 1400 hand-drawn panels and a choose-your-own-adventure style narrative where your choices have consequences and you must think wisely and quickly to act upon impending threats and formulate cunning plans.

Punctuating these cinematic scenes are hand-to-hand combat sequences that drill down into the intricacies and split-second timing required to become a true kung-fu master.

Stunning Artwork, Curious Stories to Navigate

You begin the tale by selecting one of three books, each of which provides you with just over an hour of gameplay but each one draws you deeper into the overarching accounts of the Princess's character development.

Starting with the first mission, you desire to learn the way of the Vermillion Phoenix. Like superheroes such as the Power Rangers: each main protagonist has a spirit beast they can call upon to augment their fight, in this case a White Tiger and Vermillion Phoenix, who must defeat their evil antithesis, the Red Dragon.

The art panels pan, zoom, and flex around to the action and sounds, with each detail intricately illustrated for your visual pleasure. Throughout each story, you must make swift QTE-style decisions, whether it be to run across a roof rather than dart through the back streets, to maintain a stealthy approach or choose to tackle enemies head-on. It's engaging and exciting for the most part.

The sounds and foley are fantastic in crafting compelling environments filled with villages full of people cheering and chattering, armies of soldiers battling and invading, and story-critical combat sections really emphasise emotions and action perfectly.

Breaking up the cinematic artwork are various sections where you fight groups of attackers or defend critical POIs from hordes of enemy infantry, followed by more intimate one-on-one bouts of Kung-Fu action when you arrive at the obligatory boss fight.

Lifeless Combat Punctuates The Engaging Tales

The combat system is sadly where I have major issues with this title, and I also can't find much redemption in the choices you made throughout either. This troubles me greatly because it's the core mechanics, the gameplay, and ultimately the point of playing this game.

Regardless of which choice you select, you seemingly end up in the same scenarios, with little actual repercussions for your actions other than taking a slightly alternate route to get to the same conclusion or being slightly more condescending to other characters than you were during the last playthrough. Perhaps it's not branching enough, possibly not varied enough, but I found it rather uninspired in juxtaposition with the copious amounts of incredibly gorgeous art that emphasises the ongoing action.

The combat system, honestly, reminded me of a poor man's Grand Theft Auto Chinatown Wars, or an equally basic PS2/PSP-era beat-em-up but with remedial controls and even more basic gameplay.

With an almost top-down perspective for the group combat, and a side-on view for the close encounters, there are moments of fun, chaining together combinations of Triangle and Square, with the odd well-timed "greet" or dodge to avoid getting clattered, and a powered-up finishing blow on R2.

I feel it just devolved into a button basher way too quickly and any sense of accuracy and skill faded into obscurity. This was more because the waves of enemies run to you and then wait their turn, punches and throws miss and your character then points in the wrong direction altogether, and it all feels horribly clunky and unresponsive throughout. The net result is frustratingly taking punches that should have been avoidable had the combat been far more fine-tuned.

At least in the one-on-one battles, you can focus more on timing and becoming Neo from the Matrix, dodging everything enemies could throw at you and pummelling them with your various self-found combinations, though even then it is quite repetitious and stale in watching for an opening, then chaining the combos depending on their stance, and blocking incoming attacks with R1.

Questionable Appeal, Lacking in Discipline

Shuyan is a marvellous concept for a game, but for me, it massively falls short in terms of combat and replayability.

I cannot quite comprehend why the combat system that could be so integral to the gameplay is so incredibly lacklustre. Defending the city should feel epic, but it felt drab and repetitive, and the beat-em-up element feels tacked on and third-rate.

It feels like it's been converted from a mobile game to a console, but lazily, and with no thought to making the game as compelling and impressive as possible for more capable platforms. I could see this game looking and playing great on Android and IOS, but this is not a good outing for a console game.

The combat controls also confuse with the button at the very top of the controller, Triangle, as a low sweeping attack, and Square as a high attack, it's fundamentally upside down and isn't an obvious or comfortable input method.

If it weren't for Daxiong's stunning artwork masterfully breathing life into the characters and the battles throughout, this game would have scored very poorly indeed, as it stands I like it but I simply can't love it.