Xuanyuan Jian 5: Yi Jian Ling Yun Shan Hai Qing

Xuanyuan Jian 5: Yi Jian Ling Yun Shan Hai Qing is the eighth installment (including the side-stories) in the long-running Taiwanese role-playing game series Xuanyuan Jian.

The last five games were all set in concrete time periods of Chinese history. This time, we are taken to the era of legends and ancient Chinese mythology, thousands of years into the past, to the legendary Shan Hai (Mountain-Sea) epoch. It was the time when the Yellow Emperor, also known as Xuanyuan, was wielding the powerful sword that was later named after him, in the cosmic struggle against his archenemy Yandi.

The player takes the role of a young man named Lu Chengxuan. As the game starts, he is being chased away from his village for killing his own parents. He doesn’t have any memory of the dreadful event, and realizes there is a terrible power inside him which he cannot control. Seeking for answers, Lu Chengxuan leaves his village, hoping to meet someone who is willing to help him on his quest and stop the mysterious power from taking over him.

The game retains the basics of the combat system that was introduced in Xuanyuan Jian 4: the player can see the turns of battle participants on a special bar, and each character “moves” on it according to his/her speed parameter. As in all Xuanyuan Jian games (except the first), magic and stamina-depleting attacks are available. The game abandons the magic pot system, which allowed the player to merge items and capture monsters in previous games. Also, unlike the two previous games, there is no Heavenly Book for building utilities and forging own weapons and armor. What the game offers instead of all those features is a larger amount of party members. The player can recruit up to 15 different characters, and also switch characters within the same battle.