Black Myth: Wukong is "a stunning action game clearly inspired by the Dark Souls series," we said in our 87% review . It's also a new link in a very long, rich, and constantly evolving chain of mostly untranslated Chinese-language RPGs that have too often passed English speaking gamers by. The current star of this often overlooked segment of gaming may be a graphics card-stressing adventure that focuses almost entirely on the action, but Chinese RPGs have been steadily working towards this sort of breakout success for decades.
It just took a whole lot of slow, often turn-based steps to get there. Although it wasn't the very first, Taiwanese-developed Sword and Fairy, released on DOS-based hardware similar to the PCs English speaking RPG fans were using to play Stonekeep and Ravenloft: Stone Prophet on at the time, had a huge impact on everything that followed. The story charted a magically-infused romance from humble hometown to its tragic end, well-received not only in its original game form but also in the multiple luscious and lengthy TV adaptations made afterwards.
As timeless as the story is, the RPG that surrounded it followed a traditional town/dungeon formula familiar to gamers the world over, with action portrayed using isometric 2D pixel art. The battles in Sword and Fairy were strictly turn-based: Heroes on one side of the screen, enemies on the other, and all attacks handled using a simple menu system. But that was perfectly fine in 1995.
Sword and Fairy was more .