The history of Gujian and its relationship with Chinese Paladin

The unknown but brilliant stories and developing history of two most famous RPG games in China
The fixed edition with pictures.

Prologue

As a native Chinese and hardcorn fan of Gujian game series,I am very proud to see so many people on steam from other countries to enjoy the Gujian3 game and send amounts of compliments.It would be a pleasure for friends all over the world to introduce the beautiful Chinese traditional culture and ancient civilization.
But I found many people also know another Chinese RPG game series called Chinese Paladin.By coincidence Chinese Paladin and Gujian has a very deep relationship,it is a very intersting story and kind of famous in Chinese native players,but very few people outside China has heard of it.So I decided to introduce it to all of you and contains as more details as possible.

About Jian、Wuxia and Xianxia

First of all you need to know the full name of Chinese Paladin and GuJian.Neither translation of Chinese Paladin and Sword Fairy is accurate,the full name of it is Xian Jian Qi Xia Zhuan,it means Tales of fairy sword and strange masters,and GuJian's full name is Gu Jian Qi Tan,it means Tales of ancient sword.One is "fairy" and another is "ancient".
And a little correction,thanks to @匡扶漢室不二人選 ,in the context above,when I said sword I mean Jian（剑）,but the translation is not accurate either.Actually Jian（剑）is just one kind of Chinese language defined swords,it has double edges; as for the sword has single edge,it is called Dao（刀）. They are both Chinese language defined swords.Of course, in the topics of Chinese Paladin and Gujian,there are both Jian（剑）a.k.a double edge sword.Jian is a very important kind of weapons in ancient Chinese cultures,just like the Japanese and their katana. Their is an old saying in China that said"Sword is the gentleman of the hundred weapons".
Secondly, in the modern Chinese fictional cultural products about ancient China,such as literature、TV series、Movies Animation and video games,there are two different kinds,one is called Wuxia（武侠）,one is called Xianxia（仙侠）.
As for the difference,Wuxia is a story about people practice martial arts,also known as KongFu. They fight with weapons or their own hands and legs;But Xianxia is a story about people practice the magic arts of Taoism,they are like the sorcerer of the western fantasy,but believe in Taoism.
Wuxia and Xianxia also has something in common.First of course both happened in ancient China,some is based on the real Chinese history,some is based on a fictional universe;The other thing is,they both have Jian（剑）a.k.a double edge sword as an important element.For Wuxia, Jian is a kind of weapon and has schools of arts.For Xianxia,the Taoist usually prefer Jian as their weapon and rarely used other kind of weapons such as Dao（刀）a.k.a single edge sword or Qiang（枪\Spear）or Gun（棍\Stick）.The reason?No doubt about it,cause Jian（剑\double edge sword）is the gentleman of the hundred weapons.

Chinese Paladin 1

The story begins in 1995.A man named Yao'zhuangxian went into a game company in Taipei Taiwan,it is call Dayu information Technology Inc.At that time he just broke up with a girl and apparently very upset.But he is also a talented programmer and game maker.With the sadness and missing with the ex-girlfriend,Yao'zhuangxian create a RPG game in Windows Dos,almost by his own,with just few help from others.
Yeah,that game is the famous Chinese Paladin 1（《仙剑奇侠传》） .It tells a very touching love story,there is a boy who wanted to be a hero,one day he met a beautiful girl which is taking a bath in a riverside,naked.After removing the misunderstanding,they went to adventure together and failed in love with each other gradually.However,the end was not that happy.Although the boy eliminated the big villain and stopped him from ruling the world,the girl died of difficult labor and only left him a daughter.
Since the Chinese Paladin 1 have been released,it quickly became a huge success in all over China,thousands of Chinese teenagers were moved by the touching love story and the end of tragedy.And the creator of the game,Yao'zhuangxian,is famous because of it and known as "Father of Chinese Paladin"for many years until now.

The Argue of the Sequel

Although Chinese Paladin 1 was a huge success,the development of its sequel was falling into serious.Because Yao'zhuangxian had a big argument with one of his colleagues named Xie'chonghui. Xie thought Chinese Paladin 2's story should be happened at the time right after Chinese Paladin 1 ends and made the daughter of the main character of Chinese Paladin 1 to be one of the main characters of the sequel. However Yao insisted Chinese Paladin 2's story should not have any connections with Chinese Paladin 1 except in the same background world.
The divergence lasted for several years,they cannot find a way to agree with each other.Eventually there is nothing else but going separate ways.
The time arrived 2000s,The headquarter of Dayu company made a wise decision:to go to the Mainland China and establish a branch company in order to expand their business. Yao'zhuangxian seized the opportunity right away,after getting approval from the HQ,he went to Mainland China to strive for his new career.But he didn't go alone,a man also in Dayu company but younger than Yao followed him into the Mainland China.
This young man's name is ZhangYiJun,he is the man who led a group of people created the Gujian RPG game series many years later.But let me continue,please be patience.
The first stop is in BeiJing,the capital of China and economic and cultural center of northern China,Yaozhuangxian established a new company called Softstar. And he recruited amounts of local game makers into the company. Yaozhuangxian had the authority of development of many IP programs.Besides Chinese Paladin,there are Richman（《大富翁》\Da Fu Wen）,a Chinese version of Monopoly and the Chinese Paladin and Richman's online version games.

Two "Chinese Paladin 2"s

So Yaozhuangxian came up with an idea,to let the younger man ZhangYiJun which followed him from Taiwan,to go to the city Shanghai,the economic and cultural center of southern China,an essential port city of the country.Following Yao's order,ZhangYiJun established another company Softstar Shanghai,and just like Yao did,he recruited another amounts of local game makers from southern China.And Yao gave the authority of Chinese Paladin sequel's development to ZhangYiJun and Softstar Shanghai,to develop his version of the Chinese Paladin 2.
But back in Taipei at the same time,Xiechonghui also gathered many people in DaYu company,to develop the his version of the Chinese Paladin 2.So there was a very rare phenomenon in game history:both in Shanghai and Taipei,two different teams were working on the program of the same game series's first sequel.It is sort of a competition.
The "competition" ends in 4th January 2003.The team in Taipei finished their job first and released the version of the sequel. It got the name Chinese Paladin 2 eventually.But the sequel hadn't achieved a big success like the previous one,because it used the same 2D graphic technology with Chinese Paladin 1,but the latter is released in 1995,8 years ago,and on a MS-DOS windows system.And Xiechonghui left Dayu company at the half way of development. Yaozhuangxian had to go back to Taipei to clean up the mess.All of the factors above led to the failure of Chinese Paladin 2.The game series were in crisis temporarily.
But the situation got better seven months later. In 1st August,Softstar Shanghai released Yao's version of the sequel,it is Chinese Paladin 3.Contrary to the Chinese Paladin 2,Chinese Paladin 3 used a brand new 3D graphic technology.Its story、graphic effects and gameplay also promoted a lot compared to Chinese Paladin 2 in chaos.
Since than the HQ of Dayu company at Taipei tacitly consent to let Yaozhuangxian give the authority of Chinese Paladin sequel's development to Softstar Shanghai.And at the leadership of the Softstar Shanghai's CEO Zhangyijun,employees of Softstar Shanghai developed two Chinese Paladin sequels after that,and some other games like Tun Town 2（《阿猫阿狗2》\A Mao A Gou 2）and Han Dynasty and Rome(《汉朝与罗马》\Han Chao Yu Luo Ma).

Softstar Shanghai

For your information,the new Chinese Paladin's developer,Softstar Shanghai.It is a splendid developing team,their production Chinese Paladin 3 prevented the series from being a failure,after that they developed an unorthodox sequel,called Chinese Paladin 3 extra:Asking for love.It is not as good as Chinese Paladin 3,but not that bad either. Softstar Shanghai's biggest reputation,is Chinese Paladin 4 released 4 years later.The story and graphic has been improved again and led the series into a new level.However,Softstar Shanghai comes to its end.
That is all because the headquarter of Dayu company in Taipei,had never given them enough money to them for developing games.During the developing progress of Chinese Paladin 3,headquarter of Dayu company only gave them 6 million RMB,that can be explained,cause Chinese Paladin 2 is developing almost at the same time.It is really a huge budget for supporting two developing teams.
As for the distribution of the profits,Dayu company took the profits in Taiwan and Softstar Shanghai get the profits in Mainland China.It seems fair but at that time,the video games' market share in Mainland China is occupied by online games and pirate copies.So Softstar Shanghai didn't get paid enough for their great achievements.
Without enough money,during the developing progress of every Chinese Paladin sequel,all of the Softstar Shanghai employees including the CEO Zhangyijun,need to work under a lot of pressure.They need to face very hard work and lots of overtime,but got paid pitiful wages,while the price of food and houses in Shanghai was rising rapidly.
After finished Chinese Paladin 4,Zhangyijun and the whole Softstar Shanghai employees are disappointed to the headquarter of Dayu company,they had enough. In September 2007,just one month after Chinese Paladin 4 released,Zhangyijun and the whole Softstar Shanghai employees resigned from the branch company,and Softstar offical claims Softstar Beijing incorporated Softstar Shanghai. Actually everyone know Softstar Shanghai was dismissed.

Zhangyijun Shanghai Aurogon

But sooner after that,Zhangyijun found another investor in mainland China,and a much more generous one than Dayu company in Taiwan.His name is Mengxianming. With his support,Zhangyijun gathered some of the previous Softstar Shanghai core backbone employees established Shanghai Aurogon Information Technology.The company that create a new Chinese RPG game series——Gujian.
What happened in Chinese Paladin series and the taking over developer after Softstar Shanghai dismissed,I will talk about it later.Let' us switch topic to the Gujian first.
First thing first,I need to talk more about Zhangyijun,the CEO of Shanghai Software,who is in charge of all three Chinese Paladin sequels developed by ex-Softstar Shanghai company.And he also took control of developing Gujian1 and Gujian2.
Zhangyijun is very strict with his work and his subordinates. In some of the employees' eyes,Zhangyijun looks like a tyrant,sort of James Cameron in his movie set.
And he get a very interesting nickname called 工长君\Gong Chang Jun, it means Work Long Man, cause he is always working for so long.
Another distinctive feature of him,it that he has a very different opinion with Yaozhuangxian.

The Unique Game Style

Has anyone remmenbered what I talked about Wuxia（武侠） and Xianxia（仙侠）? In this case,Yaozhuangxian,the founder of the Chinese Paladin series,he prefers the style of Wuxia,and ZHangyijun prefers Xianxia.Yao wants a simple romantic love story and adventure,but Zhang has a very different opinion,he thinks the core of Chinese Paladin should not be a man and his story,it should be Jian（剑）a.k.a double edge sword.
And Zhangyijun putted his idea into practice on the game.Chinese Paladin 3 expands the world of the game,added more elements from Taoism and Chinese mythology. He also had more demands about the story line. Instead of Yao's romantic adventure,Chinese Paladin 3's story is based on a big conspiracy hidden at first and showed up gradually as the story goes in order to make a astonished reverse.
But all of above is not the most exciting thing for Chinese native players,Zhangyijun and his team's favourite thing and the best they can do is combining Chinese traditional cultural elements with modern video games.For example,all the names of the main characters comes from one certain kind of Chinese traditional items.Chinese Paladin 3's main characters' names are medicines；Chinese Paladin 3 extra:Asking for love is XIngxiu（星宿）a.k.a constellation；Chinese Paladin 4's main characters' names are mine stones.
And the Gujian series inherited all of the special abilitis from Chinese Paladin 3、Chinese Paladin 3 extra:Asking for love and Chinese Paladin 4. Gujian 1's main characters' names are Chinese wines;Gujian 1's main characters' names are Chinese ancient musical notes;Gujian 3 is XIngxiu（星宿）same as Chinese Paladin 3 extra:Asking for love.
With more money from the new investor,Gujian's graphic technology and art design has improved substantially. Aurogon（The Gujian maker's company name）has created a much more bigger game world and more details transformed from Taoism、Chinese mythology、Chinese history and ancient traditional culture.That made Gujian 1 a success in 2010,and gave the new series a great start.
This is the opening CG of the Gujian1
A famous book of Chinese ancient mythology, many Chinese RPG games has gained ideas from it.

The Transformation of Combat Mode

In Gujian 2, Aurogon made a bold decision, to change the combat system from turn-based to real time combat.Turn-based game is the majority of Chinese RPG Video games for a very long time,Chinese Paladin is the typical example. Gujian 1 is also turn-based because first generation of the series must not be a failure.
However,because of the lack of real time combating developing experience,Gujian 2's combat system is a terrible disaster.At the same time, Aurogon started the program of Gujian Online, so Gujian 2 must squeeze in a lot of extra statement about the Xianxia world in order to serve the Gujian Online,which made its story very lengthy.And for the reason of preventing pirated copies, Gujian 2's player need to be connected to the Internet at the whole process, that still be a problem in Gujian 3. But Chinese video games had almost died becasue pirated copies, it is not all their fault after all.
After Gujian 2, Aurogon put all their effort into the Gujian Online program temporary. But Aurogon's experience about online games was as few as real time combat system before Gujian 2.So the early version of Gujian Online is not that good,until recently it has eventually getting better.
And one big thing happened after Gujian 2 was released,that is the founder of the Softstar Shanghai、Aurogon and one of the creators of Gujian series,Zhangyijun,resigned from Aurogon because of health problems.Someone worried about the following Gujian 3. Without Zhangyijun's great leadership, the rest of Aurogon employees would able to maintain the Gujian series' average level?
Gujian1 still use the traditional turn-based combat.
Gujian2 started trying to use real time combat, but it was not a success.

Gujian3's Success

5 years after Gujian 2, the sequel Gujian 3 was released in 23th of November 2018.During the five years Aurogon fixed all its mistakes made in Gujian 2 and uses the old Havok Vision Engine to achieve a graphic same of the early PS4. That is the Gujian 3 you see today. In Gujian 3, you can combat with enemies very smoothly, you can fish, plant, cook, made medicine equipment and buildings.
It really makes a big new success by the time being released, for so many years Chinese native players has suffered from every kind of homemade video games with at least one obvious defect.Some has very poor graphics, some has poor game play, some has bad program optimization, and someone had them all. For the first time since 2000s, we can be able to play a homemade game without any obvious defects. So many years of tolerant and money support has finally paid off.
And the application of Chinese mythology and traditional culture has promoted again by Aurogon to a whole new level in Gujian 3. Has anyone remembered there is a map in Gujian 3 called Undersea Palace? That map's art style comes from a Chinese traditional nongovernmental art called PiYingXi（皮影戏） a.k.a ombres chinoises\shadow play. And the dialog of the crabs and shrimps as well as the old lady is Beijing Opera. Except for the main character teams we control, all of the other things of the Undersea Palace is a flap 2D. Yet sometimes we can go into the wall to transform from 3D to 2D and combat. That is really a shocking innovation for all of the Chinese native. Trust me you can never see something like that in other Chinese games neither in video games nor online. That is the only surprised thing Aurogon can bring up.
Another shocking surprise is the main theme of Gujian 3, It is no more romantic love story of the floating destinies of individuals in the old times. It is about the whole race,it tells about the inheritance of Chinese civilization. The inheritance lasts for thousands of years, generations by generations, both in the games or in reality. That is something that the game makers in western countries or Japan never show up for you. It is deeply serious, it is mighty great, and it makes us proud.
Gujian3's real time combat has promoted a lot more compared to Gujian2.

The Theme

Since I talked about themes, let us say a little more: in fact every generation of Chinese Paladin and Gujian series has its own themes. Chinese Paladin 3 is reincarnation, it means when you died you soul can go into a new living creature; Chinese Paladin 3 Extra's theme is in its subtitle:Asking for love; Chinese Paladin 4 is Seeking Fairy, because the main character and two girls want to be Taoists to be immortal.
But as for the themes of Gujian series, it becomes more interesting: every generation of Gujian series is related to the currently situation of Aurogon company.
Gujian 1's theme is rebirth: in the game, there is an elder fairy man whoes souls split in two parts, one comes to the main character and another one comes to the boss; in the real world Aurogon is a kind of rebirth from the former Softstar Shanghai, Zhangyijun and some core backbone employees from the former Softstar Shanghai that support him had to start a new career under a very big pressure.
Gujian 2's theme is looking for the methods: in the game, the main character is a Yanshi（偃师） which is a job of controlling Yanjia（偃甲）(A kind of structure made of metals and woods).He set foot on the journey to find a very famous legendary Yanshi master; in the real world, Aurogon took the first step of exploring real time combat which they had never tried before. They paid a big price for mistakes and gained a lot of valuable experiences.
Gujian 3's theme is inheritance: what its meaning in the game is I had told you in the section above; as for the meaning in the real world,although the great leader Zhangyijun left Aurogon, but his spirit of developing Chinese style video games has been inherited by the rest employees of Aurogon company and carry it forward successfully.

Chinese Paladin5's Success and Failure

Let's switch the focus back to Chinese Paladin series and the time back to 2007 September the time Softstar Shanghai been dismissed. Now that Softstar Shanghai was no more and Zhangyijun and his core backbone employees never come back, the authority of Chinese Paladin series' development had nothing but go back to Yaozhuangxian and Softstar Beijing in his charge.
However there was a big problem that the employees of Softstar Beijing didn't have any experience of developing 3D RPG video games. During the time Softstar Shanghai is taking charge of Chinese Paladin series, the main work of Softstar Beijing is developing Richman series(Chinese version of Monopoly) and a few other online game programs.
All of the factors above caused the upcoming sequel Chinese Paladin 5 to be a very defective game for its quality. The map designing is disappointed too, almost every maze contains one main road and several branches with just one treasure at the end of every branch.
What make it more unbearable is the ugly art style of the game. The art designers of Softstar Beijing showed the public how bad their art taste can be, from the game scenes to the characters' cloth and the color application.
And do not forget, one of the biggest differences between Yaozhuangxian and Zhangyijun is Yao prefers Wuxia and Zhang prefers Xianxia. During the work of Chinese Paladin 3、3 Extra and 4, Zhangyijun had put so many Taoism elements into the game series and player were used to it. But when Yao took over the development back to his hands, he had no attention to follow the style of Xianxia Zhang founded. Although Yaozhuangxian changed the style of the game from Xianxia back to Wuxia, it seems Softstar Beijing failed in telling a good story. There is no more a hidden conspiracy and astonished reverse, some of the plot is not even reasonable.
Compared to failure of its quality, Chinese Paladin 5 achieved a great commercial success, That is very ironic. Less than one month after Chinese Paladin 5 was released, it sold over one million copies at full price which made it the first Chinese video game to make the achievement.
But it is based on the fraudulent propaganda by Dayu company and too much expectation from Chinese players. After Softstar Shanghai been dismissed, almost every Chinese video game player thought too much pirated copies is the reason that make Softstar Shanghai vanished. If they are willing to buy more legal copies, they can prevent more tragedies happened like Softstar Shanghai been dismissed. And Dayu company used this emotion to sell more Chinese Paladin 5 copies.
But Softstar Beijing is nothing like Softstar Shanghai, Chinese Paladin 5's bad quality doesn't deserve the record-breaking value of sales.
It is more ironic that Gujian 1 was released one year before Chinese Paladin 5, but Gujian 1 is better than Chinese Paladin 5 in every aspect: the maze, the art style, the plot. Besides that Gujian 1 has more details of Chinese traditional culture, mythology and Taoism and the turn-based combat system is more interesting than Chinese Paladin 5. So someone thinks the real Chinese Paladin series died after Chinese Paladin 4, and Gujian series is the real sequel of Chinese Paladin series.

The Reverse Reputation

After Chinese Paladin 5's big failure in quality, Softstar Beijing and its CEO Yaozhuangxian realized their first RPG game is not a perfection, they need to do something in response to the players' criticisms.
In that situation, Chinese Paladin 5 Prequel was born 2 years later. This time Softstar Beijing fixed a lot of mistakes they made in the Chinese Paladin 5: the characters' personalities become distinctive instead of the ones in 5 which was typical stereotypes; the art design promoted a lot, although the color is still too bright but it looks a little soft than 5; the most important thing is for a prequel story happened 20 years before Chinese Paladin 5, it makes up all the questions and incomplete point of the Chinese Paladin 5's story line, and the prequel story itself is marvellous. Softstar Beijing also started to know how to hide a big conspiracy and show it gradually with the story put forward and make a surprising reverse.
However Chinese Paladin 5 Prequel is not innovative enough as it still has the same engine with Chinese Paladin 4 and 5(it is Renderware engine, Need For Speed 9 Most Wanted also used it too), and it still used turn-based combat mode but added some more interesting details on the gameplay.
But it is enough to save the reputation of the series and Softstar Beijing, in that time people didn't question if Chinese Paladin to be the no.1 of the Chinese video games. They all thought Softstar Beijing has make it through the difficulties and will lead the series to a new future.

The Biggest Failure

But after 2 years the beautiful dream was broken. When Chinese Paladin 6 was released people founded that the same disaster happened again just like 4 years ago the Chinese Paladin 5 was released, and it became even worse.
The first problem is the new game engine, in most of the peoples' expectations, the Chinese Paladin 6 should use Unreal 3 engine. Because soon after Chinese Paladin 5 was released, Yaozhuangxian made a promise to the customers that if Chinese Paladin 5 sells over 1.5 million copies, they will use the Unreal 3 engine for Chinese Paladin 6. And at the beginning of the Chinese Paladin 6's development, Softstar Beijing did make the preparation for the Unreal 3 engine, the programmers of Softstar Beijing was working all day for writing codes about Unreal 3.
But Dayu company didn't make a agreement with Epic games, because Dayu has been in a big deficit that year and the authorization fee of Unreal 3 is too high for them. So they change the idea to use the cheaper Unity 3D engine.
When the order came to Softstar Beijing, the programmers were all P I S S E D O F F because they found all their hard work day and night through several months was finally in vain. So most of the programmers resigned immediately. There were only three or four programmers left to deal with tremendous amount of code work in a short time.
So they had to copy the digital modeling from Unreal 3 to Unity 3D without any optimization or debugging. The result is Chinese Paladin 6's original version was full of ridiculous bugs: someone found in a pool there is a fish which was a giant cube like classic Japanese anime EVANGELION's fifth angel Ramiel; some guys found sometimes in the immediate calculus cut scenes, one character became really huge like a giant and other time another one became really small like a gnome.

More Other Scandals

More ironically, a player published a post on a game forum that his computer has Intel i7 6700K for the CPU and four NVIDIA Titan X GPUs, but it still didn't run Chinese Paladin 6 fluently. Sooner after that, people use the name of a famous game series from EA to make a new nickname for Chinese Paladin 6: Titan-Fall 6.
And it is only the beginning of the nightmare. The new combat system is as bad as the program optimization. In order to get rid of the traditional turn-based combat mode, Softstar Beijing came up with a very lousy idea: copying the ATB(active time battle) system from Final Fantasy 13. But for its creator Square Enix it is already an immature system, not to mention Softstar Beijing the clumsy imitator. The ATB-like system is basically no fun.
Chinese Paladin 6 is also the first Chinese Xianxia RPG game that used 2D animation for the scenes. Cause the programmers had no time to make real time calculating ones. However that is not a good solution. Many players blames that it make the game more like Japanese style instead of the traditional Chinese style.
What made players to be bitterly disappointed is the attitude of the game issuer. A few days after Chinese Paladin 6 was released, the game issuer Beijing ChangYouYueDong published a notice on their offical Weibo account. It said they doubted that the criticism to the game is an organized defame by the competitors. That was obviously ridiculous, Chinese Paladin 6 do have a lot of problems and It can't be covered by a blame notice.

Suspected Plagiarism from Japanese Anime

As for the plot of the Chinese Paladin 6, Softstar Beijing prepared a story that has more suspense conspiracies as well as upsides and downs, But it might not be original. Some ACG fans discovered that the plot of Chinese Paladin 6 is similar to several Japanese animes including Guilty Crown\ギルティクラウン, Vampire Knight\ヴァンパイア騎士<ナイト> and ツバサ-RESERVoir CHRoNiCLE.
Besides that, the first female of the Chinese Paladin 6 has the same first name with the one in Guilty Crown. The name of the Guilty Crown's first female is ゆずりは いのり/ YUZURIHA INORI, her Chinese translation name is Ye Qi/楪祈; and the name of the Chinese Paladin 6's first female is Yue Qi/越祈. And they both have the same function of being a vessel of an powerful energy weapon, and the first male of each story are both their weapons' users.
This caused huge controversy among the players, some of the Chinese Paladin series' crazy fans refused to admit the plagiarism and insist it is a defame against Chinese Paladin series; and the critics thought it is a shame on the entire Chinese cultural industries that a Chinese classical RPG game plagiarized the ideas from the Japanese anime.
Check out the belts

Epilogue

With all of the events above, Chinese Paladin 6 became the biggest scandal in Chinese game industry, an lead to the reputation of the Chinese Paladin series declined to the bottom once again. Until today when game players mention Chinese Paladin series, the first impression in their head is a garbage game which sticks to the past and has bad game qualities, except for the crazy fans of course. When Yaozhuangxian made a promise that Chinese Paladin 6 will use Unreal 3 if Chinese Paladin 5 sells over 1.5 million copies, no one can predict that Dayu company will change it to Unity 3D, and this unfulfilled promise made Yaozhuangxian and the game series a big laugh.
It gets worse when 3 years later Gujian 3 made a success in their innovation and managed to combine the modern video game technology with traditional Chinese culture into a perfection. Now most of the Chinese native players think Gujian series is the only one potential candidate to be the first 3A level video game from local Chinese companies.
The most ironic thing is back in the times when Zhangyijun was still in Softstar Shanghai, once in an interview he said he wants the Chinese Paladin to be the Chinese Final Fantasy. And now I saw someone in the steam English comment area said Gujian 3 is much better than the piece of junk FF15, while Chinese Paladin itself become a clumsy imitator of FF13.
In my point of view, learning and plagiarizing have a difference. The smart one can study the advantage of the excellent ones and add their own specialties; the dumb ones could only copy the ideas from top to bottom without making any sense.

[小折腾]

哇 这篇文章写的太好了！作为只玩过仙四和古剑系列的玩家可以说完美避过了仙剑系列后续的骚操作哈哈~很多幕后我第一次听说，当年上软解散我也很内疚来着因为当初年少无知玩的也是盗版，后来还补票了两次（官网售卖一次steam一次），估计那钱也都进大宇裤兜里了哼。现在我最喜欢的两部国产游戏就是仙四和古剑3，期待古剑4！！！

[HAZZARD]

I'm an american who has no knowledge of anything Chinese besides Hong Kong action and martial arts films, and limited knowledge on Journey To The West, The Monkey King, and Romance Of The Three Kingdoms, but I ended up buying Gujian 3, Sword and Fairy 6 and 7, AND Xuan Yuan Sword: The Gate of Firmament & Xuan Yuan Sword VII, on this steam sale just because to me they looked like they could be great experiences. And I thought that as someone who isn't big into Asian culture like anime and I have never even really played a JRPG like Final Fantasy. I also bought my first final fantasy games (7, 13, and 15) on this sale, and I did really notice the similarities to Sword and Fairy 6's combat system with Final Fantasy 13's, and I'm glad to see it clarified in this guide. This guide is amazing and well written, and really helped me grasp the history of Gujian and Sword and Fairy. Thank you for writing this!

[Fried Puppy]

Thanks for your write up

[BuggyWuggy]

Thank's for sharing this!

Lot's of insight into the chinese game industry I never knew I needed until I read it.

[medion_no]

Chinese Paladin its one of my favorite series i would kill to have the rest of the series on english even with the obvious issues of later entries.

[Oblomov]

Gujian 3 was great. I did buy Sword and Fairy 6 and yeah... lets just say it has issues. Anyways, what's the chance of Gujian 4 simultaneous English release?

[Nintendo]

Now I'm playing Gujian 3, Like Yao, I actually prefer WuXia than XIanxia, but Gujian 3 got me hooked and I like it, the graphics, the art style, the clothing, the combat. etc. But it kinda has pattern like stages then a boss, it has another element tho, crafting, and a BASE/HQ, that's what I like in a game, but I like GUjian 3 even before that part so its a bonus. Sure it's not perfect but it has most stuffs that I like in a game. I hope if they make Gujian 4 in the future, it will improve, and most importantly, has Eng Sub.

[Nintendo]

That is a lengthy story, so that's what's going on there. Back in the days I played Chinese Paladin 1 even though I cant read Chinese, till the end (I cheated at last boss because it's so impossible to beat). Funny that I liked the story even though I cant read Chinese, I guess I like the story that I made up in my head from what's presented in the game, and the music help set the mood for imagination.

I tried to follow the next series but I gave up coz later I prefer a game that I could actually understand. Glad that I didn;t, knowing this story.

[Faleeria]

Thank you very much for this analysis! I just bought Gujian 3 (after it had been on my wishlist for too long) and am genuinely excited to play it! It was interesting to read a little about the Chinese gaming industry beforehand. All those details you included made up for a very nice... I would even say essay. Once again, thank you for the effort you put into this text!

[Amnixx]

Thank you for taking the time to lay out the history so well. I enjoy the game very much so this background, especially on the Names and Swords, is appreciated. I do hope they will publish more of these type games for English speaking players.