Chinese Paladin 7
Softstar's seventh generation work in the Chinese Paladin series, an attempt to transition to action RPG that failed. Disastrous story performance, extremely failed character development, low technical standards, the series' biggest failure in history.
Art Appreciation
Rating Breakdown
Deductions
A complete failure of a transition: neither traditional turn-based nor a successful action RPG, but a mishmash of a design.
Map routes are linear and simple, barely qualifying as mazes, completely losing a series hallmark. The minigames are a failure.
It blindly imitates FF's transition, but the gap in quality is enormous, and it shows no self-awareness.
The disastrous storytelling completely breaks immersion; it's like reading a cheap web novel.
Characterization is an utter failure; it's impossible to relate to anyone.
Deductions
It runs stably for the most part, but the overall technical level is low.
Deductions
It has lost the Chinese Paladin series' distinctive art style and become utterly mediocre.
The male lead has an influencer face like something out of a cheap Chinese browser game, and the modeling overall is extremely poor.
Highlights
The music team is passable, above the series' average.
NPC voice acting changes as the story progresses, a step up in attention to detail.
Deductions
The story is dead simple; every step is predictable, with no suspense at all. The villain is far too simplistic, just plain evil.
No growth, no buildup, no setup; it's clearly rushed and feels half-finished.
The character designs are utterly unoriginal and the characterization is completely flat. They didn't even put effort into the character poems, completely losing the xianxia flavor.
The characters' logic and motives are murky, and the second male and female leads make no sense.
Yet another dead-parents cliché, and the story moves so fast that the pacing falls apart.
The life-for-a-life scene is toe-curlingly cringey and completely fails to build emotion; it's sentimentality for its own sake.
The pacing is breakneck: as soon as someone is poisoned there's a new plot device, as soon as someone leaves there's a succession to take over, with no setup at all.
The worst romance in the series: the leads' life-sharing bond is utterly abrupt, and the second male and female leads are even more absurd.
Shuttling back and forth between gods and demons, it grows ever more “immortal”, with no more “sword” and no more “hero”, losing the series' spirit.
Deductions
Content is extremely thin; Easy difficulty takes only 15 hours, clearly a half-finished product.
Quest design is monotonous and lacks variety.
A 15-hour playtime is too short for an RPG; content is severely lacking.
The disastrous story leaves no replay value whatsoever.