Gaming Project 2: 古剑奇谭 (PC/Simplified)

[Gleaves]

Welcome to the second thread of the Grand Gaming Project. If you are looking for a big PC RPG to play and practice Chinese at the same time, then this is your game.

《古剑奇谭》, roughly translated as Legend of the Ancient Sword, is a single player RPG from Shanghai’s Aurogon Studio (上海烛龙). It is set in a heavily Chinese-influenced fantasy world where you battle your way through a deep storyline. The game presents a few hurdles to potential heroes: it requires a decent computer to run, its a big download (8G), and the level of Chinese is difficult. But if you can get past those things like the 英雄 you are, then what you have here is an entertaining adventure and a Chinese bonanza. In addition to the normal plethora of RPG reading practice, the game has about 20 hours of voice acting (Mandarin), all with a full transcript available. It’s also cheap (Paypal $10).

Story: The game starts with a painted mural telling the story of a tragic prince, a dragon, and the gods. This back story slowly becomes relevant as you play the game. (You can view the intro here with English subs). You start the game as a young boy from a village that has long cut itself off from the outside world. After some commotion at the village, the game changes its point of view to a young man approaching a mountain outpost overrun by demons. As the game continues, you’ll continue to switch views between characters. This makes it feel like you are playing a TV drama at times (Indeed, the game is being made into an actual TV drama).

Gameplay: You’ll spend a very large chunk of your time talking to other characters. The rest of the time is spent exploring and battling. Battles are your typical turn-based affairs. You can see enemies as you are running around the environment so it is possible to avoid them (ie not random encounters). You can explore the environments, but the path is often pretty linear. In one huge open field area I decided to go exploring and was promptly greeted with a snake-lady thing and death. Outside of the main storyline, there are plenty of achievements, challenges, and side battles. The game is big. I’m guessing about 30-40 hours of play time for a native speaker. I am only about 12 hours in. Check out the videos below for a good idea of what to expect.

Videos -

. Gameplay. Dialogs.

Dialog transcripts - Walkthrough (Chinese)

Details:

Platform: PC (XP/Vista/7). Recommended specs here.

Download and purchase: I’m guessing this game is easy to find in stores in China. For those not in China, you can download the game from the publisher here (8GB). I’d suggest the torrent option. You then buy an activation key (激活号) online with Paypal ($10) here. I had to create a login at the site to do this. Once downloaded, install and you’ll be prompted for the code key at some point. (*Traditional version: you can buy the traditional version (on a disc) from yesasia for $26. The voice acting was added after release, so I don’t think it comes on the disc. It might be possible to patch the voice files onto the game, but I am not sure. I don’t think it is possible to download the traditional version.)

Difficulty: Upper intermediate to advanced level Chinese. Characters often speak in a classical style. The game marks your objectives on a map, so you could probably advance through much of the game with minimal Chinese knowledge.

Legibility: The game uses a smallish font. See this full sized pic.

Educational value: Tons of reading and listening. Basically the equivalent of a TV series or book.

I think that covers many of the major details, but there are plenty of things I am still trying to figure out. For instance, I have some magical pet pig thing that I need to feed. It helps me grow plants, or something. There is also a cooking mini game, but I have only managed to cook burnt coal thus far. I'll post updates as I progress.

保重。

[Mike N]

I'm getting absolutely abysmal transfer rates downloading this game via torrent. 20kb/s and below*. According to my BitComet, there are 3 seeders and over 900 leechers. Has anyone tried downloading directly from the studio's website? Results?

*I am in the USA, and I'm sure this is adversely impacting transfer rates.

[Gleaves]

I just tried the direct download and it is pretty slow for me. I'm getting about 50-100kb/s on the torrent which is not great, but should get the job done if you leave it run in the background. The transfer rate is definitely spiking up and down. I threw it back into my utorrent, so I should be seeding it now as well, so hopefully that will help. Let me know how you make out.

I haven't been gaming the last week or two, but I hope to get in some sessions this week.

[Gleaves]

I'm still only about 15 hours into this one, but I just started 仙剑奇侠传, so I'll need to come back to this.

If anyone wants to play but just can't get the download working, I could probably throw the needed files onto a couple DVDs. Drop them in the mail to you for the cost of shipping. (You would still need to purchase the activation code online).

[Mike N]

Hey Gleaves, this torrent still isn't cutting it for me. Let's talk offline about S&H charges for the DVDs, if you're still willing to help out!

[yersi]

Thanks for putting up this thread!

Me and my significant other are about fifty hours into this game, with no end in sight. Estimates I've seen put the game's length at around 90-100 hours (and again, those are numbers from native speakers), so if you start this and want to see it all the way through, you're looking at a huge time commitment.

We're really liking it so far, aside from the fact that it's so verbose. Two-hour-long cutscenes are not outside the norm for this game, and the sheer amount of dialog is just overwhelming. I can understand the "dumb" characters like Fang Lansheng and Xiang Ling just fine, but whenever Bailitusu or Ouyang Shaogong start talking, it's time to pull out the dictionary. Supposedly, a lot of the vocab is staple Wuxia fodder, so if you're planning to read Jin Yong or Ba Jin in the future, this might prove to be good practice.

It's a beautiful game, and there's so much to do and so much attention to detail everywhere. You can spend hours cooking food, reading letters, tending fields and furnishing rooms in Peach Blossom Valley (your "homestead", which you receive later in the game), or improving your "knight ranking" by fighting battles - doing everything but advancing the story, basically.

If I could recommend just one game for Chinese learners, it would be this. Just keep in mind that it's extremely long and dialog-heavy.

[Gleaves]

Wow, 90 hours. That is frightening because I'm guessing I play at half the pace of a normal player (to slow down to read). I haven't picked this one back up for a while, but I intend to get back to it at some point. Good to know you've put a bunch of time into it and are still enjoying it.

[yersi]

Another note: If anyone here wants to play Gujian, please make the effort to buy a physical version or at least a CD key. Chinese warez groups refused to crack it for the longest time, but supposedly there's now a patch out there.

For fear of getting off-topic, I won't get too far into the events that preceded the production of this game, but the company that produced Gujian (Aurogon) is pretty much the last remaining standard-bearer of the Chinese single-player RPG market. Most of the team are former employees of Softstar's Shanghai division, which some of you may know as the company that made Chinese Paladin 3 and 4. Even though those games sold well (really well, in the case of CP3), Softstar Shanghai was always denied their rightful share of the profits, and had to deal with chronic underfunding right until the time they were dissolved by their parent company in Taiwan. Add to that the rampant piracy levels in China, and you have to wonder what kind of passion the team has to bother producing a new single-player RPG.

Gujian got a lot of attention and even had some government support at its release, but rumor is that Aurogon and Gamebar (the publisher) still ended up losing money on it, so every sale counts and please don't pirate, even if it is a hassle to buy a CD-key or get it shipped over to where you are.

[Tangmu]

Thanks for the great thread everyone - I've been incredibly busy at work for the last few months and have made frustratingly slow progress with my Chinese, these will be a great way to have some relaxed study over Christmas. I'm downloading 古剑奇谭. I tried 雨血之死镇， but I kept on getting the error message "找不到文件AUDIO/BGM/此很绵绵". As far as I can tell the audio files downloaded, although I'm using a UK computer (in China) so not all the names of the files are fully readable. If anyone has any suggestions please let me know. 多谢。

祝大家圣诞节快乐！

[Gleaves]

I'm not sure off the top of my head. I won't be near my computer for a few days to try anything out. Only thing i can think of if is that you have to run eveything from the folder as it unzipped, so you might runinto this if you moved things around. Be sure to check out the main thread for other game ideas as well (link at the top). Stuff like gba games are easy to get working.

[tooironic]

Don't suppose there is a Mac version available? ^_^

[muirm]

a Mac version

No, but it runs fine in Parallels (and probably VMWare Fusion as well). And then there is always bootcamp, which would also almost certainly work.

[Tangmu]

Sorry for the further question...but to register for 古剑奇谭 you need to put in a 有效身份证号码。 How did everyone else get round this (not being Chinese I only have a passport number). Thanks a lot!

[muirm]

I used a Chinese ID generator (google for 身份证生成器). I'm sure it is breaking the rules to use a falsified ID number, but my co-workers assured me there was no chance of 麻烦. They only want the ID number because of some requirement to limit the gaming time of kids under 18 (they can figure out your age from the ID number).

[Tangmu]

wow - that's something I hadn't thought of! I was a bit less inventive, I had a chat with support people (very helpful and friendly) . Apparently you don't have to put in a code, but if you forget your password..you may not be able to get your account back apparently...

[Gleaves]

I think i made up a random number. Im impressed you spoke to support. Nicely done

[bloodymoon]

Hi, original poster. I am glad to search this tread in google. I am a Chinese who also like to play 古剑奇谭. I want to know does any organzation or fansub group translate 古剑奇谭‘s trancripts into English? I hope to find out a team and join in it. Because I am trying to make the Chinese game translate into English version. I know only one can't complete it and my English is not enough to handle this. So I hope find a team who are hobbists to translate it, especially whose mother tongue is English. If you know something like that, could you please introduce me one? Thank you in advance.

[Gleaves]

bloodymoon - Unfortunately, I have not heard of any Gujian translation projects. The English Xinjian forums have some folks interested in translations projects, such as for 仙劍 here and 幽城幻劍錄 Castle here. I have never worked on translations myself, so I do not know much about those projects. Good luck.

[bloodymoon]

Oh, that's so pity. But thanks for your information. I appreciate it.

[Zephys]

For programs overseas, I find that using a download manager, such as FlashGet speeds things up back to normal speed.