Xuan Yuan Sword: The Gate of Firmament (PS5) Review

Once upon a time, the heavens and the Earth were connected. This passage between the celestial realm and the mortal realm was known as “The Gate of Firmament”. Gods and mortals were free to wander between realms as they pleased. The celestial Emperor, in exchange for finding his daughter, granted mortals celestial powers. Shockingly, this didn’t work out well for anyone involved. And a huge cataclysm rent both worlds, causing the closure of the gate and the destruction of the land of Huaxu. Now, celestials are barred from entering the mortal world and humans have been left to their own devices. Which, as usual, is warring…

Centuries later, Sikong Yu, during a fight to rescue his adopted sister from barbarians, encounters a girl with a mysterious past. The monosyllabic Muyue seems to be searching for Huaxu, a land few have now heard of, and its Sikong’s job to help her get there. Their epic journey takes them across ancient China and is full of twists, turns, betrayal, mad gods, and magical weapons.

While The Gate of Firmament is a standalone tale in the Xuan Yuan Sword series, it sticks to a familiar narrative theme with a story that combines the destinies of humans and gods. And, as with both Xuan Yuan Sword and Sword and Fairy, the story is its strongest asset, taking you across the breadth of ancient China. The Wuxia feels is very strong here, yet again, as with other entries in the series, combining a good balance of martial art-styled combat with a script that feels straight out of an epic Wuxia movie.

It also suffers from the same issues that both the genre and other games in the series have: an in-depth and at times confusing and convoluted lore that’ll benefit from the player knowing some Chinese history and mythology. That, and a slightly wonky script with some poor translation and too much repeating dialogue that feels straight out of RPGs the 1990’s. For fans of these games and Asian cinema, however, this is par for the course. Thankfully, the story is engaging enough that these are minor issues fans of the series are more than willing to overcome.

Even when they’re sticking to traditional gameplay, or trying something new, Xuan Yuan Sword and Sword and Fairy have their own distinct flavour. The Gate of Firmament is no different in this regard. There’s traditional RPG gameplay galore as you explore environments, speak to people, buy items, and complete side quests. Experience gained levels up your characters stats, while a steady flow of new gear is a must to remain competitive in combat. The flavour comes from the relatively novel setting and narrative context.

Combat is where The Gate of Firmament tries its hand at being different. It combines standard turn-based gameplay with an almost MMO-like system of skill-linking to create combos with cool downs. Skill points earned at each level-up can be used to purchase your new skills in a limited skill-tree that highlights which attacks can be linked together. You can’t control your character directly to move them around the field, but you can time your attack combos for more damage. The same system applies to the rest of your party, and you can swop between each character on the fly, in combat or in the field. Each character has a specific element associated with them as well, such as wind that can be used for healing, and this factors into your party composition as well, with each element you’re using adding buffs to the group.

Out on the field, each character has a special skill. Muyue, for instance, can turn invisible which is helpful for avoiding enemies, while Sikong can smack encroaching monsters with his pole and stun them before initiating combat. This gives you a reason to pick a character to explore with beyond aesthetic choices.

Combat starts out easy enough but does become more difficult a couple of hours in. However, as with all traditional RPGs, you can grind your way to success along with equipment upgrades. For those that want to catch them all, there’s also a monster-capturing system that allows you to combine monsters to create more powerful beast variants. Of course, capturing one instead of killing it takes away from the experience you’ll gain at the end of a fight, so you need to be strategic.

Overall, combat is satisfyingly flashy from a visual perspective, with well-animated flurries of martial arts and magical attacks.

Where The Gate of Firmament does stumble is in its presentation. Despite originally being released in 2016 for the last-gen consoles, the visuals make it feel much older, sort of like a cross between a PS2 and PS3 game that’s received an HD upgrade. It’s not ugly mind you, but the environment texture quality often looks low res and far too many areas are bare bones when it comes to details.

The biggest visual stumbling block for me is the character animation outside of combat, and most specifically during cut scenes. The animation here is very stiff, making the characters feel like marionettes with limited range of movement. It’s very awkward, especially during emotional cut scenes, when the animation is close to robotic and characters stare past each other or don’t even look towards an object they’re supposed to be interacting with.

Audio wise, the game is great with some wonderful music, though the vocal performances vary from good to uninspired.

Although not perfect, Xuan Yuan Sword: The Gate of Firmament is another solid entry in a series that deserves more universal love and recognition. Despite the poor animations in cut scenes, low-res textures, repeating dialogue, and an awkwardly translated script, it still manages to tell a good story and offer a fun combat system. For fans of the series, this is a no brainer to play. For everyone else with a love for RPG’s, you should maybe start by first checking out Xuan Yuan Sword and Sword and Fairy series as soon as possible.

Xuan Yuan Sword: The Gate of Firmament was reviewed on PS5 using a code provided to gameblur by the publisher. It is also available on PC, Xbox One, Xbox Series S|X (backwards compatible), and PS4.