This is a cute little Hack&Slash RPG. The combat is fairly simplistic - you run around and hit the single attack button, occasionally jumping if you feel like it. As you proceed through the plot, you'll gain a few Shaolin skills to spice things up. These have cooldowns and use up Chi (i.e. Shaolin Mana) which regenerates quite slowly unless you chug potions, so you usually don't feel like abusing them much except for with boss battles. You also find 4 spirit companions, each of which gives you an Elemental Skill (i.e. spell) which uses no chi, but has a longer cooldown than the Shaolin skills.

As you complete quests and kill monsters, you gain experience, which of course lets you level up. Every time you level up you get a stat point to spend on your Health, Mana, or Combat stats, as well as a Shaolin skill point to spend on the Shaolin skill tree. The Elemental Skill points for upgrading the spells can only be aquired by destroying special lamps. There are not enough of these to fully upgrade all of your spells, so choose wisely!

The game uses a save point system. Buddha Statues sprinkled throughout the levels save your progress as you approach them, and act as shops to boot. It's often a good idea to run back to the last statue after every couple groupes of enemies that you defeat, so that you don't lose progress if you get killed through carelessness. Don't worry, the statues are frequent enough that you never need to run far.

You'll find plenty of loot in the game, but it doesn't have any randomized stats/modifiers, so gets quite boring when you find the same exact ring/sword/armor/whatever for the 5th time.

The combat is actually very easy, even on Hard difficulty, if you abuse the mechanics and enemy AI. The baddies lose interest with you very quickly, allowing you to whittle them down with hit&run tactics. Once enemy healers show up, it gets harder, but as long as you can take out at least one enemy per "hit" before "running", nothing can stand in your way.

And almost all the bosses can be brought down at no risk to yourself by simply kiting them with your ranged attack spell. However due to the long cooldown, you'll still want to get into melee range, preferably while buffed by abilities/spells, and keep a close eye on your health because it can go down very quickly indeed. This all holds true for even the final boss battle, which cost me quite a few of my saved up Chi and Health potions.

I also find it strange that the developers never bothered to link up the in-game acheivements with Steamworks. Seems rather lazy...

So while all this does sound kind of boring, I'm recommending the game because I did enjoy playing it. Take risks, get into the thick of combat against multiple opponents and get out in the nick of time with a sliver of your HP bar left (or reload the game and try again.) Sell all the useless loot to be able to afford that expensive armor, or better yet, that even more expensive sword. Enjoy the cute story, and have fun killing those nasty monsters as a little chicken! (well, technically a rooster.)


I played with the 360 controller, which worked great for me, but cannot speak to mouse & keyboard controls as I did not try them. The game does switch control prompts depending on which method you use, and that's always nice to see in ports like this.

For those interested, the game also has co-op play, with a second player being able to drop into the action whenever you're near a save point statue, but I never tried it.

One more thing of note: there is a crashing bug relatively early on which always happens when you fight a certain group of enemies. The best solution is to simply ignore that group, but I wonder why this was never patched.

This is a cute little Hack&Slash RPG. The combat is fairly simplistic - you run around and hit the single attack button, occasionally jumping if you feel like it. As you proceed through the plot, you'll gain a few Shaolin skills to spice things up. These have cooldowns and use up Chi (i.e. Shaolin Mana) which regenerates quite slowly unless you chug potions, so you usually don't feel like abusing them much except for with boss battles. You also find 4 spirit companions, each of which gives you an Elemental Skill (i.e. spell) which uses no chi, but has a longer cooldown than the Shaolin skills. As you complete quests and kill monsters, you gain experience, which of course lets you level up. Every time you level up you get a stat point to spend on your Health, Mana, or Combat stats, as well as a Shaolin skill point to spend on the Shaolin skill tree. The Elemental Skill points for upgrading the spells can only be aquired by destroying special lamps. There are not enough of these to fully upgrade all of your spells, so choose wisely! The game uses a save point system. Buddha Statues sprinkled throughout the levels save your progress as you approach them, and act as shops to boot. It's often a good idea to run back to the last statue after every couple groupes of enemies that you defeat, so that you don't lose progress if you get killed through carelessness. Don't worry, the statues are frequent enough that you never need to run far. You'll find plenty of loot in the game, but it doesn't have any randomized stats/modifiers, so gets quite boring when you find the same exact ring/sword/armor/whatever for the 5th time. The combat is actually very easy, even on Hard difficulty, if you abuse the mechanics and enemy AI. The baddies lose interest with you very quickly, allowing you to whittle them down with hit&run tactics. Once enemy healers show up, it gets harder, but as long as you can take out at least one enemy per "hit" before "running", nothing can stand in your way. And almost all the bosses can be brought down at no risk to yourself by simply kiting them with your ranged attack spell. However due to the long cooldown, you'll still want to get into melee range, preferably while buffed by abilities/spells, and keep a close eye on your health because it can go down very quickly indeed. This all holds true for even the final boss battle, which cost me quite a few of my saved up Chi and Health potions. I also find it strange that the developers never bothered to link up the in-game acheivements with Steamworks. Seems rather lazy... So while all this does sound kind of boring, I'm recommending the game because I did enjoy playing it. Take risks, get into the thick of combat against multiple opponents and get out in the nick of time with a sliver of your HP bar left (or reload the game and try again.) Sell all the useless loot to be able to afford that expensive armor, or better yet, that even more expensive sword. Enjoy the cute story, and have fun killing those nasty monsters as a little chicken! (well, technically a rooster.) I played with the 360 controller, which worked great for me, but cannot speak to mouse & keyboard controls as I did not try them. The game does switch control prompts depending on which method you use, and that's always nice to see in ports like this. For those interested, the game also has co-op play, with a second player being able to drop into the action whenever you're near a save point statue, but I never tried it. One more thing of note: there is a crashing bug relatively early on which always happens when you fight a certain group of enemies. The best solution is to simply ignore that group, but I wonder why this was never patched.