The biggest deal breaker in the case of Sword and Fairy 7 is the fact that the game doesn’t have English voice acting. You get the option of choosing from English, Chinese, and Japanese in terms of subtitles – but voice acting is limited to the original. The lack of additional voice dubs is a bit of letdown considering that this is supposed to be a global release, even though the voice acting itself is pretty expressive and mostly well done. That said, I did find many grammatical mistakes in the English translation, which can also distract a bit from the immersion at times. Furthermore, some parts of the menus are still in Chinese, which is a clear sign of shoddy execution on this front.

"It’s a fairly played-out prospect of good versus evil, but that formulaic tale is made enjoyable through some well-written characters. "

While Sword and Fairy is a long-running franchise with plenty of entries under its belt, Sword and Fairy: Together Forever is a self-contained story that requires no prior experience to fully grasp – which makes it a perfect candidate for newcomers to the series. The game takes place in a mystical world of the Six Realms which are inhabited by humans, and demons, alike. The story itself revolves around your party trying to save the world from the wrath of Vicious Beasts that have escaped from Heaven Prison, which leads you down a rabbit hole of discoveries and conjured out evil conspiracies that could very well lead to the end of the world. It’s a fairly played-out prospect of good versus evil, but that formulaic tale is made enjoyable through some well-written characters. 

You start the game by playing as Xiu Wu, who is sent on a mission to eradicate evil. Then we are greeted by Yue Quingshu, the lone disciple of a crumbling Mingshu Sect who gets symbiotically attached to Xiu Wu in the Human Realm, which makes sticking together with each other essential for the Diety’s survival in this realm. There’s also Bai Moqing and Sang Yo, a pair of young lovers who also accompany Yue and Xiu in this dangerous quest. While the story itself has a fair bit of twists and revelations that keep the plot interesting, the biggest draw is undoubtedly the journey that these characters undertake. With the exception of Que Yingshu, the remaining trio of protagonists seem very distant from you when they begin as they seem to clearly fit into the stereotypical RPG character box all too well – but as revelations about their past open up, they start becoming more relatable and likable. These story beats proved to be essential as they kept me going on through this expansive adventure which doesn’t have the best of pacing as the narrative tends to go off on a ton of inconsequential tangents.

"Sword and Fairy 7 ditches the turn-based roots of prior entries, and features a dynamic real-time combat system that places the focus on unleashing a flurry of hard-hitting combos on your enemies. "

Sword and Fairy 7 ditches the turn-based roots of prior entries, and features a dynamic real-time combat system that places the focus on unleashing a flurry of hard-hitting combos on your enemies. Each character has his or her assortment of light and heavy attacks, which can be chained together to create different combos. The right trigger allows you to switch over to your special moves, which consume magic and are associated with a cooldown timer. The abilities themselves are plentiful, and you gain more of them as you progress through the game.

You can switch between party members at any time during battle, which opens up a bunch of tactical options during fights. Xiu Wu is a master swordsman, Yue Quingshu is a Spirit Controller and team healer and the two specialize in close-range combat while Sang Yo and Bai Moqing excels at dishing out damage from range. Some characters are more effective than others, but they all serve a distinct purpose in the combat proceedings nevertheless.

All in all, it’s a simple but effective combat system, but it’s also pretty light on feedback. Enemies rarely react to your hits, and telegraphing can be hit or miss. There are times when the game smartly uses the PS5’s DualSense capabilities to help gauge boss attack timings, but these instances are more exceptions than the norm. Most enemies don’t react at all to your hits, as they soak up tons and tons of damage without batting an eye. Particle effects also tend to fill the screen during tense battles, which makes seeing enemy attack telegraphs difficult. 

"There are times when the game smartly uses the PS5’s DualSense capabilities to help gauge boss attack timings, but these instances are more exceptions than the norm."

The game starts off pretty easy, but there are some really annoying difficulty spikes throughout the experience. This was one issue we put forward during our review of the original version, and there seems to be no change to that aspect. Many boss battles end up being tests of your endurance rather than skill, which can make chipping through those gargantuan health bars a frustrating experience. Much like every other RPG, the game places a lot of focus on progression – but Sword and Fairy 7 does very little to explain to players about how it all works. You have to constantly upgrade your weapons, swap out weapons for stronger variants from merchants, equip armor sets that provide different buffs, upgrade Spirits, and cook different kinds of food that provide different status effects for your party – and many of these mechanics are poorly explained or completely left out for you to discover on your own. Thankfully though, crafting materials and battle rewards are generous – and any excessive grinding isn’t required to keep up with growing enemy power levels. 

While Sword and Fairy isn’t an open-world game, it is split into multiple open sections and dungeons that you can explore at your will. Apart from the general assortment of merchants and loot supplies, you can also partake in side quests from NPCs. These mostly amount to fetch quests, and while the rewards can be generous – thankfully they aren’t required to progress through the main story so you are free to skip them should you choose. 

"Side quests amount to fetch quests, and while the rewards can be generous – thankfully they aren’t required to progress through the main story so you are free to skip them should you choose. "

Sword and Fairy: Together Forever looks and performs really well on the PlayStation 5. The character models and materials are of high-quality textures, and the lighting and reflection can also combine to make certain areas absolutely breathtaking. Briefly comparing it to the PC version, I don’t think the PS5 version features ray-traced shadows as they are markedly blurrier than the maxed-out PC counterpart. I should also mention here that there are no performance profiles to choose from, which is also a bit of a letdown.

Thankfully, Sword and Fairy: Together Forever features a great deal of variety amongst the environments as well, which range from frosty peaks to tropical beaches to hellish landscapes and whatnot. Many of these are an absolute treat to explore, thanks to the gorgeous visuals. Performance was mostly solid during my experience which was a major problem with the original, but the game does suffer from poor draw distance. I saw multiple instances of characters popping in and out of frame during introductory shots of new maps, which distracts from the otherwise impressive technical make-up. The load times are also pretty snappy, thanks to the PS5’s ultra-fast SSD. 

Sword and Fairy: Together Forever is a good enough package of this intriguing RPG, and while Softstar hasn’t added much content or drastically changed up gameplay mechanics – it doesn’t detract from the fact that this is a solid experience that’s worth seeing through to the end. The lack of an English voice dub is a downer, and so is the lack of proper explanation of character progression mechanics and an uneven difficulty curve. Those who have previously played through the game might be tempted to skip this version, but if you haven’t and are even passingly intrigued by the concept or gameplay – you might just end up loving this one.

This game was reviewed on the PlayStation 5.

Softstar has announced that Sword and Fairy 7 will launch for PS5 and PS4 sometime this year, with a specific release date currently unconfirmed. On PlayStation, the game will launch under the name Sword and Fairy: Together Forever, while a physical edition of the game will also be made available in Japan and Asian markets.

The game will feature Mandarin voice overs, with support for subtitles in English, Japanese, Traditional Chinese, and Simplified Chinese. Check out its PlayStation announcement trailer below.

In our review of Sword and Fairy 7, we awarded it a score of 8/10, saying, “Sword and Fairy 7 is a notable improvement for the series despite falling a bit short in some small ways.” You can read our full review of the game through here.

As you might expect, the graceful blend of ancient Chinese mythology and genuinely well-crafted video game characters is pulled off in Sword and Fairy 7 to an impressive degree. Everything from the game’s various locations, characters, and deep lore that surrounds everything is portrayed with elegance and style. Despite not knowing much about Chinese mythology myself, and only being passingly familiar with the last couple of games from the series, I immediately felt at home in the game’s villages, while also feeling adequately trepidatious in its more sinister areas. I also felt an immediate sense of comradery with Xiu Wu and Yue Qingshu as they grew their sect and reckoned with matters both past and present. It’s a story that takes you in a lot of directions, but ultimately feels more focused on providing a fun journey than anything else.

"Sword and Fairy 7 might just be the answer to those who want a little more story and world-building out of their RPGs without sacrificing too much in the way of combat and exploration."

Granted, many of the text-based conversations can threaten to drag the game’s momentum – especially if you partake in the game’s many, many side quests and optional conversions that can – and will – escalate the amount of text dialogue you encounter to preposterous levels. It’s not uncommon for Asian-developed RPGs to be like this, so veterans of that space should generally know what to expect, but if you’re coming from a western-style RPG to this game then prepare for a bit of a shock. Once that initial shock passes though, you’ll often feel like you’re being treated to genuinely well-written conversations that span all across the spectrum of endearing to malevolent. It also does a pretty good job with knowing when to pepper in some rather well-done cutscenes that break up the long sections of talking just before they get too dry. They also have the additional benefit of reminding you that you are in fact playing an action RPG. Aside from a few minor typos in the translation here and there, if you’re in the mood for it, Sword and Fairy 7’s story is truly an excellently portrayed full-throated fantasy epic that is at its best when taken slowly and thoroughly.

Grand story-telling is aided by fantastic visuals in Sword and Fairy 7. The various color palettes of different areas are vivid and bring out the flavor of each location wonderfully. This isn’t done any favors by the game’s lack of optimization, though. Despite the fairly basic graphics and lack of demanding effects, Sword and Fairy 7 seems to struggle to hold on to a stable framerate in a consistent way. There’s no denying that the graphics of the main characters and the more important locations in Sword and Fairy 7 are often sublimely rendered, and most modern rigs should be able to run things well at medium settings, but it should really be better than that considering the art style here. There’s not a lot of detail on any one thing, which fits the game’s tone just fine, but because of that there’s really no reason for it to struggle to hang on to 45-ish frames a second when I can easily play far more demanding games with a lot more going on at a solid 60.

I won’t tell you that it was a major problem throughout, but I did find myself fiddling with settings more than I would have liked. A few times I found myself bringing them up during calmer sections to appreciate the graphics only to be forced to take them back down during combat – but eventually I just settled with medium settings. Obviously, your mileage will vary depending on your rig, but a more even-keeled approach would have helped me avoid multiple frustrating moments when I would take a devastating blow, that, had the game’s framerate not suddenly plummeted, I probably could have avoided. That said, the sacrifices you might have to make in terms of ray tracing or resolution to get the framerate to hold steady are undeniably worth it to see some of this game’s absolutely gorgeous locations and enchanting combat during battles when it’s performing well.

"Grand story-telling is aided by fantastic visuals in Sword and Fairy 7."

Some Sword and Fairy fans might be a bit miffed with the decision to drop the turn-based combat that defined so much of the previous game, but I implore those fans to give this one a shot regardless. While the combat has certainly taken a deliberate turn towards a more mainstream sensibility, it’s not without depth and strategy. At its basic level, you have a fairly typical action game combo structure, light and heavy attacks, the ability to mix them up for different combo results, and holding down a trigger also gives you access to different special attacks and abilities that are unique to each character. It’s a familiar system that we’ve seen different shades of in games for a long time, but that’s because it works.

Overall, I liked combat a lot. It’s easy to pick up and play but also incentivizes experimentation. Sword and Fairy 7 also makes assigning different buffs to your party members and switching between them in real-time is a breeze thanks to the streamlined, instantly-understandable gameplay language. This is something that the last game struggled with a bit and sometimes made that experience feel somewhat unkempt, so I’m glad to see that so acutely addressed here. Whether you prefer the old style or not, there’s no denying that Sword and Fairy 7’s combat is perhaps it’s strongest element. The game also smartly breaks up its various environments into disconnected sections that still feel vast and explorable but without the time-consuming traversal of a true open-world.

That’s not to say there aren’t some issues here – namely in the combat’s general balancing. For the first couple of hours, most enemies range from being barely a threat to a complete doormat. Obviously, enemies should start out being somewhat easier to give the combat a sense of progression later on, but Sword and Fairy 7’s earlier enemies can often be completely wiped out before they even make an attempt to strike you. Then, seemingly out of nowhere, a strong enemy encounter will seem like it expects you to have been diligently upgrading your abilities this entire time – despite being given no real reason whatsoever to do so up to that point. Thankfully the game’s combat is flexible enough that it allows you to adapt to things like this after a little bit of trial and error, but that doesn’t make sudden spikes and plateaus in difficulty any less jarring.

"When viewed through its own lens, Sword and Fairy 7 also an exceptional example of what can happen when a talented developer takes feedback to heart, time to sharpen its approach, and balances out their original vision with just a dash of universal palatability."

A game like this would be sorely let down if the soundtrack was just a collection of unremarkable, vaguely Chinese-sounding tracks. Thankfully, not only does Sword and Fairy 7 not struggle in this area, this is one of the better RPG soundtracks I’ve heard in a while. Powerful melodies soar over important battle sequences while intense bass and brass rumble underneath them. Thoughtful conversations with the elderly or children are made all the more endearing with authentic music backing them up. But just as well, when a moment is suited best by minimal background music or even silence, Sword and Fairy 7’s soundtrack wisely backs off and lets the moment breathe. While no one track or melody completely swept me off my feet, it’s a masterfully handled arrangement nonetheless.

Sword and Fairy 7 isn’t going to be everything to everyone, nor should it be. Comparisons to Tales of Arise and the like are bound to happen, as unproductive as they are. Compared to most mainstream RPGs of today, the lore and storytelling might feel a bit excessive, it’s difficulty spikes might feel clumsy, and the performance could be a turn off. But when viewed through its own lens, it’s also an exceptional example of what can happen when a talented developer takes feedback to heart, time to sharpen its approach, and balances out their original vision with just a dash of universal palatability. It improves upon its predecessor in meaningful ways while taking the franchise into a direction that should help ensure its survival in an increasingly crowded genre.

This game was reviewed on PC.