Genuinely a thumbs sideways. There's good and not so good.

Here's some notes and thoughts:

Controls are cumbersome and you can't reassign buttons on a controller. (left bumper to pick up items and talk to NPC's) It's weird.
The inventory system is a hot mess. It's convoluted and confusing.
The translation isn't terrible, it's just not great. It does appear most (of what I played) is translated.
The tutorial is trial by fire and can feel brutal (it cannot be skipped). But, it will teach you the basics
*Anyone that completes it on the first try is a god.
Combat is pretty fun, once you get used to dodging and initiating. There's 4 styles from the start that you switch between using the d-pad. You have QI, which is basically stamina (that regens slow), so you do some kiting...
Some of the cut scenes are pretty bad, like badly directed (graphically, it looks good) and little attention to how the characters are acting.
Only runs 1080p and even looks upscaled at that. There's actually an option to play it at lower than VGA res...

It does have some charm and I'm interested to see where the story goes, because I don't know much about it yet. If you like Chinese martial arts dramas, i'd certainly recommend it on a discount. The more I play, the more I'll know though.

Update: Resolutions have now been fixed apparently

I don't recommend this:

1. Everything feels very laggy & delayed (Movement, animations, combat, etc..)
2. Doesn't support any resolution above 1080P
3. No borderless mode.
4. The english translation is terrible. (Its not even an official translation, its a 3rd party translation, which was very clearly rushed)
5. The map design feels very clunky (Lots of invisible walls).

I really don't recommend it until some of the above issues have been fixed or improved.

The Wind Road is fun so far and it includes many nice features that players look for in ARPGs but it still needs a lot of work.

The audio needs to be redone. The narrators voice is super scratchy at high volumes, there's lots of not needed high pitch audio whines and and other annoying sounds. The audio is my biggest complaint, most of the voice overs sound like they were recorded on a fisher price mic, overall the game has a tinny quality to it.

Why does the game punish combo play but includes a combo meter, it's like these two elements are working against each other.

Some of the game fonts and assets looked like they're ripped straight out of resident evil

Inventory and skill management is a convoluted mess.

Controls feel off and there's no way to remap them from in game.

Battle animations need to be adjusted, some are too slow and some are just awkward. For example some NPCs have the unfair advantage of being able to animation cancel, going straight into blocking from a combo. It makes the game artificially difficult and tedious.

I'm going to give TWR a thumbs down for now and revisit this review in a couple months. Please fix the audio.

6 hours in and I believe I will be playing this until Ghost of Tsushima drops.
Thus far, this game has exceeded my expectations and is a dream come true as a NYC kid raised in grindhouse theaters that ran kung fu flick double-features and was glued to the TV for Sunday kung fu marathons on local stations.

The Wind Road lovingly pays tribute to elements of Resident Evil (puzzles, finding objects, inventory management), Sekiro (fluid skill based combat... combo button mashing is punished) and Dark Souls (brutal difficulty, sparse saves, instant death everywhere) in terms of gameplay.

It is set in a wuxia world that should make fans of Come Drink With Me, One Armed Swordsman, Crouching Tiger and Hong Kong Kung Fu cinema grin ear to ear.

FFS, you can discover drunken boxing and getting drunk ups its effectiveness and power! That alone + this combat system is worth the price of admission. Lei Wu Long type Chan glorious drunken boxing.

The animations for combat are great - character models ok, though no facial animations will be noticed but easily ignored given how rich everything else is.

I'm done typing. Going to play more. May update if any game breaking bugs occur, but other than the difficulty, and needing to pay attention at all times or die horrible deaths, this game has run without problems and IMHO - you should play with a controller.

Quick update: Some people have complained about the lack of customizable controls and foolishly refunding due to lack of 2/4K. In regards to 2K & 4K, it has been added.
As for the controls...
I'm not sure if it is due to me growing up playing games from Kojima (Metal Gear and Zone of Enders series), legacy RE games with their tank controls and the Capcom oddities like P.N.03 - all of which had more cumbersome until mastered control schemes, but as with any new control scheme it takes a little time to get used to it before it becomes second nature.

Like games I listed, the controls in TWR may seem "awkward" to those accustomed to FPS and western action games only, but it makes absolute 100% sense given the way combat flows and the emphasis placed on movement/dexterity and finding openings. They are terribly intuitive, and after my first death to the opening Golden Buddha, everything clicked. The controls should not be a deal breaker and once you understand flow of combat, you'll find what is mapped to shoulder, face and trigger buttons are logical and gives you incredible flexibility in combat.

TLDR: Very linear, performance issues, poor audio, cheap combat, poor and missing translations, bad UI.

I won't refund as I want to see this poor mess through till the end but I felt I had to write a review once I failed an early mission because the messy placed English UI covered the actual control section for the cart mission. I literally couldn't see what the unique controls were for this mission, nor can they be checked in the option menu.

Story

The story has many plot holes, fails to introduce or explain characters, and is extremely linear. You will find many translations to be poor, and dialogues are often entirely skipped. There are points where you will be stuck in a soft-game over due to engaging an immortal enemy because you didn't do the quest how the developers wanted.

Exploration

There is no. When journeying outside of an area, you will encounter a rapid progressing bar that will immediately kill you once filled.

Audio

Audio quality is extremely varied; from volume to the actual quality of the audio - there are issues. You may find some audio to suddenly become quiet/loud, you may hear echo'd voice recordings (cheap production value), other times there are background sounds that play separate from other sounds that can't be reduced in volume and sometimes are louder than any other audio taking place.

Combat

Combat involves 1 of 2 methods. Stun locking an enemy in 1-1 with fists or one of 2 sword methods, or using the counter system (which of course isn't ideal because of animation twitching, cut animations, instant damage, hitbox issues, FPS based issues for animation canceling etc.). In large crowds you can potentially be stuck in a stun-locked position unable to react until beaten to death slowly. To avoid this, you end up circling, poking 1 enemy, repeating. There is no lock-target and the game forces auto targeting on you - in practice, this means you may be forced into a total 180 or whatever direction the game wishes. You don't choose your target, the auto-target system does. Crafting can be done in-combat as well, which means you can spam consumables throughout any fight. In summary, combat is cheap and suffers from the performance limitations of the game.

Translation and UI

Majority of books and lore found in the world are not translated. Those that are, are done so briefly and poorly. Quest and dialogue text is of the same quality, with many parts of dialogue not included in translations . The reason for this becomes apparently. There is no sliding or scaling of text.

What does this mean? For example, when you first arrive at the inn rather than seeing a few characters in vertical traditional style, they have attempted to do this in English. So you get Ir-on-bar-ki-nn vertically down the screen. Whilst I appreciated the "can you spell out the name" game that they've created - this is childishly unprofessional and shows a total misunderstanding of English. I do hope they did not pay anyone for this translation work.

How much can this impact the game honestly? It is genuinely crippling. During the early section that made me write this review - it is one of the common "sit at the back and shoot the enemy from your car" missions. The issue? The English translations strapped onto the UI actually cover the controls for this mode. I still have no clue what key is needed for the "fire penetrating shot" because this actual text covers the instructions entirely. This isn't the first time, and often you will be left to rolling on your keyboard to find the key that actually works. This is the result of lazy developers adding in text without doing the simple work of scaling or re-positioning the text.

Other

The control section only shows basic controls, and not even all of them. The majority of the controls are left to pop-ups that can even last less than a second on screen. This is lazy and unacceptable.

Sound options go from full to silent and barely anything in-between.

Menu's are clumsy and you can not freely toggle between them.

Performance jerks occur from poor optimization (played on 2060 RTX Super, 16GB RAM, installed on an SSD with a 3.7 i7 CPU).

Do not purchase unless more than 60-70% on discount. This is simply a poor quality, low production value game that was rushed out of China. General bad design, and a clear disinterest in non-Chinese customers is apparent and the game suffers often for it.

I will put it as "thumb in the middle with a bit up" as encouragement.

Yes, the game has plenty of problems atm. I feel like the game still hasn't tutorial me enough especially the special mechanics such as counter and block. Sometimes during the fight my chains combo forced me to go out of the fighting parameter and I forced to brake my combo or straight-up fail me. In gang-up situations, you barely survive it cuz everyone will just gang up on you (which is realistic but frustrating af). I would love it if dev can add a lock-on target function.

The translation are fine and since the dev has said they are working on a more polished English version, I will give them a pat of encouragement. For me I can understand everything, besides some fancy terms which is understandable with context or you are used to these types of game. So I won't be nitpicky :D

Story is tricky. Maybe I'm so spoiled with The Gate of Firmament, Chinese Paladin 6 and Gujian, this one's feel rather meh. BUT I'm only about 1/3 in it so it could get better. Our protagonist is definetely not flat. He has his own "inner issue" and I'm looking forward to see more of it. Overall the plot seems like "Journey to the West". We are basically guarding a monk so he can deliver a scripture. But the road is bumby af after all xD

I remember that the game was teased back in 2018, it has been a while so the graphic can feel "outdated". I personally don't mind much. So it's all good for me.

The side-quest system is... just bad. You can't track the quests. If it's a fetch quest from a shop, if you already buy everything from a vendor and consume it? Say good bye to that quest. We only have 6 inc space with 6 more for personal box. But that's no where near enough, especially with special items you HAVE to have to proceed the story. Thus you only have 2-3 free spots for your medicines which run out rather quickly.

Overall: It's an ok game. It has its problem but I believe the dev will improve on it. At least they add an English translation, which is might not be the best but perfectly understandable, for non-Chinese players :D

Not a bad game, but it is rough around the edges.

The good:

- Beautiful art style
- Very immersive. You feel like you are in a Wuxia novel
- Very original character levelling-up and skill system
- Beautiful soundtracks
- The game doesn't crash

The average:
- The combat animations are awesome, but the fighting is not very fluid and sometimes more frustrating than fun.
- The story's pacing is uneven. The opening chapters are awesome, but the mid to late chapters are slow and consists of a bunch of fetch quests.
- The graphics is mediocre. The model of the main character looks good, but all other NPC models are bad. The textures are low.
- The side quests have the best items, but they are boring and linear.
- The game feels like there are a lot of potentials but never quite reach it.

The bad:
- The game auto saves and there is no manual save.
- The corners and trees don't auto fade. This can be frustrating during combats when you stand next to a wall or a tree because your views are obstructed.
- The story finished at a cliffhanger. There should be one more chapter to end it properly.

The Wind Road is very atmospheric and it successfully made me feel like I am in a Wuxia novel. There are a lot of good things about this game but there are also a lot of issues. Overall the game feels rough around the edges but underneath it all there is a good game if you are willing to forgive some of its flaws. I give this game a 7.5 out 10.

8/10 would Recommend

If you enjoy tougher RPGs and don't care about reading subtitles *Game is not voiced in English yet but most conversations and Lore are translated to mostly legible English* This is a pretty good and fun pickup. The movement is a little odd to get used to and the inventory system isn't the best, but who plays games for their menus. Scenery in game is beautiful but parts of the towns seem like copy pasta. Will update as I get through the game.

Just finished my first playthrough and those are my thoughts right after i beat the game.
For some reasons Steam counts 17hours in game but when i finished the New Game cycle it says my playtime was roughly 10 hours, what happened to those 7 hours? no idea.

To sum it up, it's a similar to Nioh visually and in the atmosphere but everything is simplified (upgrades, progression, combat system, etc.)

Anyway, the game is good and not that good at the same time i would say.
The good parts are the visuals (gorgeous landscapes, the main character is well designed, cool outfits and flashy combat effects, etc), made with Unity but really nice to look at.
Combat is interesting, a good mix of complexity that can also sometimes fall down to button mashing your way through. It really depends on who you're fighting and what kind of technique you use (fists or sword)
But i loved the combat and it gets really tough towards the end (with some ganking during boss fights and even a double boss !)

On the "meh" side , the story and all the talking can be a bit boring sometimes, dialogues can be a bit cheesy (just a personal taste)
The english translation is not great but you can understand 90% of what happens.
Tutorials that pop up sometimes are not translated at all but there´s a video that makes it easier. No biggie

On the bad side, I had a drastic framerates drop during the very last battle that basically ruined the fun in the challenge it is supposed to provide and made this fight a complete mess. But besides this moment the game runs well.

So in the end i had fun playing it and i might play the NG+ but not right now...
Didn't try the DLC though, so i don't know about it.
With a couple of optimization and some patches it could be a really good Nioh-like game

Just bought this - 1 hour in and it's been interesting ! I'm using the english translation and yes it's not 100% but I believe it adds to the feel of the game = like watching a kungfu movies with subtitles ... There are some translations missing , like in the cave there is a manuscript surrounded by statues -- no english for that one :(

So far so good - word of warning , stick to 'beginner' as combat can be quite challenging on other modes - especially during the tutorial ...

I hope the developers continue to improve on this game and hopefully can get some proper english translations done - plus some cases where you can see the engine renders chinese symbols - but then the english is sort of mashed in there vertically ...

All in all so far so good - the sound track is nice and fits the setting -- I'm busy with my first quest , so we will see how it goes.

For fans of The Witcher and other RPG/ARPG's this is a nice addition in an unexplored world of China - we should see more games in this setting - thus far only japanese settings ("ghost of shushima"/"sekiro") have featured in the mainstream -- nice to see a Chinese entry.