Xuan Yuan Sword: The Gate of Firmament Review (PlayStation 5)

by Jim Smale · December 18, 2024

Xuan Yuan Sword: The Gate of Firmament Review, Long ago, the Jade Emperor opened the gates of heaven so that worthy mortals could appeal to him and be granted divine powers in order to aid in the search for the emperor’s lost daughter. However, this holy gift was exploited and abused, bringing chaos to the mortal realm. The gates of heaven had to be resealed to protect from greater disaster, but since then, no mortals have been able to ascend and no gods could ascend at will to help them. Now it’s up to a small band of heroes in the mortal realm, each with their own motivations and led by the young Sikong Yu, to try and bridge the realms before peace is shattered forever.

Xuan Yuan Sword: The Gate of Firmament Review Pros:

Decent Anime graphics.
14.61GB download size.
Platinum trophy.
Two battle difficulties – Normal and hard.
Four voice choices including Chinese, English, and Japanese.
Can Invert axis and sensitivity sliders.
FMV and in-game cutscenes with portrait-like character interactions.
A full 3D game world with 360-degree camera control.
Action RPG gameplay.
You have a mini-map but can bring up a map overlay to help with navigation.
Many treasure chests are to be found in the world and range from basic ones to special timed puzzle ones or combination locks.
Take on main story quests and optional side quests.
You can save and load when you want.
There is a skip and fast-forward interactions button.
Vendors let you buy and sell items.
Bringing up the map will show how many chests are in the area and how many you have found so far.
World map level selects for locations.
Decent loading times.
When exploring a new location the map uncovers as you explore and pops up points of interest and chests etc.
Find materials and resources within the world.
Mission markers will show.
Turn-based combat with the end of a battle breakdown showing any loot gained and EXP earned.
Earn EXP and level up to increase your stats and get skill points.
The skill tree is split into – attack, defense, support, and enhance. A special seperate martial arts tree is also available.
Enemies freely wander around and coming into contact with them triggers a fight.
Combat turns are determined by cool-downs of actions for both you and your opponents, you can see everyone’s cool-down.
Luckily combat controls are simple, attacks, abilities, and items are all tied to a button or a series of buttons, you have these showing at all times.
Stealth sections get littered within the game.
The game is very basic and this could well be in its favor as you can plod along with little stress.
Straightforward Platinum trophy list.
Great looking locations.
Find and recruit party members and you can instantly swap between them.
Very open spaces.

Xuan Yuan Sword: The Gate of Firmament Review Cons:

You cannot remap the controls.
The game just starts and leaves you to wander around the huge hub area with no real clue what to do and it feels aimless.
The text is very small.
Not a lot of voice work and you notice it more with NPC.
A lot of broken English or grammar mistakes.
The whole pace of the game is slower than you would expect for the genre.
Fight locations are always the same.
Changing targets in combat is clunky.
Using the menus and the skills menu in particular is not great to use, it is not smooth or clear what’s going on.
The game is just not cohesive it splits up missions in a way that doesn’t make sense, the pacing is slow and the game overall lacks any atmosphere.
Stealth is not the game’s greatest addition as it’s very basic and the camera control gets taken away.
Chests that have been cleared will still show on the map as available.
There are a lot of invisible walls.