Normally when I see a game like Shining Sword 2 with its mediocre graphics and Peoples Liberation Army (PLA) inspired characters, I immediately snub it and walk away. This is especially true now that I've started Diablo III. Alas, it is my job to play games, even ones that turn me off like Shining Sword 2 did.
Shining Sword 2 has been in the Chinese news a lot recently for two reasons because it is one of the bigger red games to come out in recent times and because it was given support by a major game hater turned hypocrite. Unfortunately for Shining Sword 2 and other purveyors of these type of mediocre "red games" the extra attention to Shining Sword 2 only shows how much of a rusted piece of crud that the game really is.
Taking place during the second Sino-Japanese war Shining Sword 2 lets the player take the place of a Chinese soldier. This period of Chinese history was rife with turmoil, and it was during this time that the Communist Party really took off. I could go on and on with the history lesson but Kotaku isn't the place for that.
There are five available classes to choose from, from the super sniper that never misses, the incredible soldier with a big sword, regular soldier, super medic, and captain of the guard, Shining Sword 2 has a little for everyone. Personally I chose to the sniper because what really baffled me was that more than half the characters to choose from carried swords. This is a World War II era game where the weapon of choice is swords... Granted of course that Chinese soldiers at that point in time were under supplied and may have used swords, but seriously a war game with swords, it doesn't make sense.
Getting into the game, the story starts off with the player thrown right into the middle of the war against the Japanese. There are battles going on, people are dying and people are getting shot, and then the first thing you notice is that the Chinese NPCs all look very peaceful and that the people dying and getting shot are the Japanese soldiers.
Upon venturing out into the field to test out combat I noticed that unlike traditional games the enemies don't come towards you, in fact they won't even start attacking until I started attacking. The combat system is a very simple point and click but like many red games simple equates to boring. For every hit I landed on the Japanese soldier, I did about 10 to 15 times more damage than I received. If I hit the enemy I would do 15 damage but when I was hit, which was around 1 out of 5 times, I only lost 2 health points. This quasi super-mode made the battle boring really really quickly, changing my weapon from a rifle to a sword helped kill the monotony of battle but it could only go so far.
After my dreadful attempt at killing Japanese invaders I nearly gave up playing but I could not. Seeing how some players were able to ride horses and motorcycles, I decided to keep playing till I could get my own mount.
After about an hour more of fiddling around searching for NPC's and trying to read Chinese really really fast, I gave up and tried the in game store. Interestingly the in game store was free, for the most part the items cost in game currency but it was close to impossible to purchase anything as the store functioned like an auction house, items would appear and then disappear.
The makers of Shining Sword 2 tried to emphasize three things then they first marketed their game, they wanted to say that their game had 3F's, Fun, Fair, and Free. After spending most of my weekend playing this game, I can say this much, Shining Sword 2 a free and fair game does not equate to a fun game. Shining Sword 2 's whole game just felt lazy and boring, sure there maybe some people who are interested in the skewed history lesson that the game provides but all in all I do not recommend this game.
(photos: Baidu.com | Baidu)