The Legend of Tianding Review for PlayStation

I don’t know if the month of January is the month to be releasing Beat’em up Action Platformers, or that’s all I’m given to review so far (or both), but as a fan of the genre, I sure am getting a heavy dose of it so early in the year. Fortunately, the games I’ve reviewed this year, including this one, are all very unique to themselves so life hasn’t felt super repetitive for me yet. For this game specifically, “The Legend of Tianding” serves up not just good gameplay, but an overall cool style/presentation, as well as bringing awareness to an old folktale that just so happens to be true. Originally having come out back in October of 2021 on Steam and the Nintendo Switch, it’s now time for its PlayStation release.

Set in Taiwan, back when it was a Japanese state, back in 1909, a time when villagers were under a turbulent rule and police corruption/brutality was way too common. You play as Tianding, who is essentially the Taiwanese version of Robin Hood. Stealing from the rich and giving to the poor, and kicking a lot of butts while doing it. In the village of Taipei, the police force is ravaging its people and it’s up to Tianding to do whatever he can to help.

With a very cool comic book or manga style presentation, cut scenes are shown off as panels from a book. The voice acting is all done in Taiwanese, but the word bubbles thankfully are all in English. The gameplay itself is fairly straightforward, the action and combat can be fast paced, and the platforming can often be a fun challenge. The majority of your enemies consist of street thugs and police officers. You’ll be able to pick up their dropped weapons, such as police batons, rifles, katanas, and even rocket launchers! You will come across six different bosses during the entire game, each with their own unique move sets that make for a challenging fight and like many Beat’em ups, will probably involve some trial and error at the cost of multiple deaths. Using evade is the key to staying alive and perfect dodges get rewarded.

“The Legend of Tianding” is not a very long game, you will likely beat it within four hours. There are different difficulty settings and even side quests throughout the story to help with replayability, unfortunately I don’t think changing difficulties is what will make players give this title a second go, nor would the side quests, as I found them to be monotonous and recycled fetch quests. What I enjoyed most about my experience was honestly it’s a really compelling true story that I knew nothing about until I played this game. I love it when a medium such as games or movies shines a light into a specific point in history that could be easily forgotten by many. “The Legend of Tianding” can be fairly by the book and doesn’t reinvent the wheel in any way, but I’m glad it exists.

7/10

The Legend of Tianding is available for PC and consoles. For more information, visit: HERE

Related: Nick Navarro Reviews

Nick Navarro

Gaming since I was given an original Nintendo as a kid. I love great storytelling and unique ingenuity. When both collide in a single game, I'm a happy gamer. Twitter/IG @NickNavarro87