There’s no need to worry about jumping in several decades late either as the series’ tangle of mainline releases and various side-stories are mostly self-contained adventures taking place across a wide range of historical eras and locations rather than a single plot thread that hinges on you remembering something or someone present in one game, first sold twenty years ago. Happily some of these games are now available on Steam, in English, meaning the ridiculous hoops I used to have to jump through have been replaced by a few easy clicks on just about any PC on the planet – and that means Xuan-Yuan Sword 7, the latest in Softstar’s thirty-one year old series of RPGs, is something anyone reading this can buy and play right now (system requirements permitting, as always). They were a lot of trouble to buy, even more trouble to get running due to some nasty cases of highly aggressive always-online DRM, and should I somehow successfully navigate the install process I’d then find myself playing an RPG in a language I only have a very basic grasp of, a scrappy little notebook filled with freshly-scribbled new words by my side. I first became aware of Chinese/Taiwanese RPGs around fifteen years ago a few names tied to a smattering of barely-explained screenshots was all it took to spark an interest that eventually snowballed into a mass buying and playing spree thanks to a combination of Yesasia’s great selection of PC titles (as it was at the time), a deeply patient Taobao/Tmall proxy willing to deal with endless emails full of shopping links to random old games, and quite a lot of luck.

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Xuan-Yuan Sword VII instal