 The HD2D style has become more and more prevalent, especially in RPGs. When done right, these games can look incredible, and because a certain company is taking forever making a certain HD2D remake of a beloved game we've all been waiting for, I've instead been filling the void with games like the Live Alive remake and Octopath 2. But what's most interesting is that some indie devs are releasing their own HD2D titles. This week I got a chance to look at the newly released Wandering Sword thanks to Spiral Love Games, which you can check out on Steam, the link's in description. I also wanted to mention that the creators of the game are giving away some free Steam keys, which you should definitely try to get. If you're interested in the game, check out the official Twitter page for Wandering Sword for a chance to get a free code for the game. I've linked their Twitter in the description below. So now to discuss the game. Wandering Sword is an RPG inspired by Chinese martial arts that I think has a lot of potential. First I'll talk about what I like, and then I'll discuss what I think could be improved. The first thing you'll notice when looking at this game is just how much they really nail down the HD2D style. The game honestly looks amazing. If you didn't know any better, you might think Square Enix made it. It just understands how to make the HD2D style work. It looks better than a lot of indie games trying to mimic this style. The world looks great, the character sprites are all very unique and have a wide range of emotions, and the art for the game's character portraits look really great as well. And as far as art direction goes, I really can't complain. It's on the same level as Live Alive. They did a really good job in this regard. In fact, even the battle system is like Live Alive. Like, it is very similar. You have the turn-based system with the grid and the various moves that have different ranges and power, and I like that system a lot. And I honestly really wanted Live Alive to have some kind of successor, so I'm glad at least some games are trying to expand upon some of its ideas. I like how in this game you can really build your character up. You have access to different weapons and armor, and you can upgrade paths for those weapons with different moves that you can also upgrade. There's even martial arts-inspired skill trees in the game. There's just a lot of options here for different play styles. The world of Wandering Sword is also very detailed. This is obviously a rich world with its own sort of lived-in history and unique characters. The story really isn't too bad. You play as this martial artist who's traveling the land, fighting bad guys, learning new skills, and meeting new people in typical JRPG fashion. And the world itself has just a ton of towns you can visit right off the bat, and each of these towns has a bunch of named NPCs with their own character art and description. Every character has a backstory, and they fit into the world in some way, which is impressive. A lot of thought and attention clearly went to developing these characters. Interacting with NPCs is unique because you can not only talk to them, but you can also observe them, which allows you to see what items they have, you can spar with them, and some characters can actually be recruited, exploring is a good way to build your party up. The level of interactivity is something I wish more RPGs would have. One of the first things I did in the game was challenge this little girl to a fight and proceed to get my ass kicked. So that was nice. I have to say, this game does have a lot of cool ideas. For example, on the overworld, you can actually see characters walking between towns, and you can actually interact with them, which is something I've never really seen a JRPG do before. Usually the overall will be still and lifeless, which never really made sense to me. Like why would there be these roads between towns and you don't even see people walking on them? This at least gives you the impression that it's in ancient China back when people traveled around the world on foot, going on journeys between cities on actual roads. The game just feels very open-ended. A lot of attention clearly went into these towns as they are loaded with unique characters that give you side quests. Some of them do lead you into the usual pitfall of one quest requiring you to complete another, which can often require finding some kind of material or collectible, but I still appreciate the attention that went into them. Wandering Sword is a cool Wuxia-inspired JRPG that takes notes from some of the best and really delivers the HD2D aesthetic. However, I do have some small issues with the game. I honestly think that the game has a lot of potential from what I've played. However, there's definitely areas where the game could improve on, and the problems mostly boil down to issues with the UI and UX design. It feels like they rushed the game a bit in this regard as the menu navigation and just the overall user experience is a bit of a mess compared to the amazing aesthetics of the actual game. There's a lot of goofy issues such as the way status bars pop up in the middle of screen and overlap, the lack of auto dialogue, font not scrolling. You know, when there's three lines of dialogue, there's a scroll bar for some reason that isn't needed at all. There's no dialogue log in case you miss something. The menu navigation is a little bit weird with no exit button to click on. During battles, there's also some distracting UI issues, like when you hover over a move and immediately displays this huge text box that covers half the screen. The game just has a lot of basic UI issues that any decent UX designer could have fixed, but they didn't. Like, when you try saving indoors, you get a pop-up message telling you you can't do that. I mean, why not just gray the option out so that players can't select it? This is basic stuff that game developers have managed to incorporate into their games for decades that they somehow missed. It's a bit disappointing because the game is genuinely fun and has a lot of potential, but in this state it's in, it doesn't really feel complete or professional. The actual game feels like it could have used some more user testing because there are some gameplay issues. Some side quests, if you refuse them at first you can't accept them later on and that's something almost every RPG lets you do which is odd. You can't deselect track quests, the innkeeper doesn't tell you how much it costs to stay at the inn, so you end up getting surprised by the bill. The stats are overly large, they're all in the hundreds to begin with, which is really hard to manage when they could have just divided all these giant numbers by 10 to make it more manageable. And because there's no overall battles, you could easily wander into a high level area and get destroyed, getting sent back to your last save because there's no autosave. And did I mention that you can't heal during battles? Yeah, you have access to all these healing items, but you can't use them during battle, only on the overworld, which makes battles a bit frustrating at times. You know what, I can appreciate a game that's trying to do something unique and this game definitely has a lot of potential. Any game that takes inspiration from Live Alive is good in my book and I want the best for this game, so if they ever decide to release it on Switch or something, there are some obvious areas where they can improve on, but as it stands, aside from some small issues, it's a fine RPG and better than most indies on the market. It clearly has a lot of heart and I feel like given a little more time, it could be something very special. If you love the AHG2D aesthetic or in the mood for a turn-based RPG, I still think you might enjoy this. If you like hearing me talk about wandering sword and want to hear about some similar RPGs, you just start with this video right here. I think you'll enjoy it. I'll see you there.