The next game in a huge Chinese action RPG series has plenty of action, but I hope it hasn't totally abandoned the RPG

Do you remember the trailer for that gorgeous Chinese action game at this year's Summer Game Fest? No, not Blood Message. And not Phantom Blade Zero, which showed up at Sony's State of Play. I'm talking about Swords of Legends, which featured a boss fight against a flying magician whose body happens to be an ornate rug. I've played it, and it's every bit the lavish, Unreal Engine 5 rendition of Chinese mythology and folklore it appears to be. Five years ago this game would've floored me—but here in 2026, it's instead made me a little apprehensive about the influence Black Myth Wukong is likely having on the upcoming wave of big-budget Chinese games.

You wouldn't know it from the name if you don't speak Chinese, but Swords of Legends is the sequel to Gujian 3, a 2018 RPG in a series beloved in China long before Black Myth Wukong made a seismic impact on the country's game industry. The Gujian games started out as turn-based, Final Fantasy-esque RPGs before leaning more heavily into action with each sequel (as Final Fantasy has done, itself). When PC Gamer contributor Kerry Brunskill covered the first Gujian, they did what most of us do when writing about an RPG: focus on the characters and story.

"All six members of your playable party consistently contradict the obvious pigeonholes lesser tales would leave them stuck within forever," Kerry wrote. "If you’ve got the time for it—and you might not have—Gu Jian’s leisurely pace exudes confidence in its world building, the closest accessible equivalent perhaps being Falcom’s Trails of… series; you feel these extended scenes and the endless spread of ancillary characters are included because they enrich the setting and everyone living within it. To the game’s credit these details really are important and over time numerous plot threads weave into one beautiful tapestry, your own shock as everything falls into place as strong as the reactions found in any of the cast."

By contrast, I couldn't tell you the name of the beautiful-but-generic character I played in the demo for the new Swords of Legends. The first thing I did was fight a giant bull named Ox-Head, who called me "boss;" defeating him in a tutorial battle turned him into a summonable sidekick I could call in when I needed help against a tough enemy. I welcomed the help, but had to wonder how much of a role he'll play in the story. Does he have quests? Can he talk with other characters, or change his opinion of me based on any decisions I make?

Swords of Legends' demo, limited to a few boss fights and one chunk of a linear level, emphasized the "action" half of the action RPG equation so thoroughly that really the only sign of the latter was the column of stats on the inventory screen.

As action games go, Swords of Legends does seem promising! You've got your standard light and heavy combos, but my eyes lit up when I saw that it was eschewing dedicated block and parry for interchangeable weapon skills and artifacts, which each affect the abilities you have in combat. The starter artifact comes equipped with a guard skill, of course, which uses mana unless you pop it with perfect timing. But I started having more fun when I swapped it out for the Thunder Banner, which replaced that block skill with a crackling, damage-dealing dash with generous frames of invincibility. All of a sudden I had to play aggressively, because blocking wasn't an option.

Later I equipped a hard-hitting parry skill on a greatsword and baited one of the bosses into attacking me, consistently punishing him with the riposte. It was a defensive playstyle, but a higher risk one—each parry used up some of my mana, and mistiming it left me wide open for a wallop.

Swords of Legends offers enough choice from the jump that it's at least not living wholly in Sekiro's shadow. That's a relief, considering Nioh 2 and 3 and Ninja Gaiden 4 and Rise of the Ronin and Wo Long and Lies of P and Phantom Blade Zero and The First Berzerker: Khazan and *deep breath* Clair Obscur and Spider-Man 2 and Doom: The Dark Ages and Resident Evil 4 Remake and Onimusha and 70 other games I'm forgetting have all leaned into press-the-right-button-at-the-exact-right-moment reactions. I think Sekiro's a masterpiece, but too often parrying gets in the way of the more expressive, flow state combo mashing of older action games like Devil May Cry.

In the same way I hope the next five years of action games have ambitions beyond the parry, I hope the big budget wuxia games coming in Black Myth Wukong's wake don't mistake its success as a template and narrow themselves to the path it's already walked. From the bit I've seen (too little to judge definitively), Swords of Legends seems more Black Myth than Witcher 3—which is a shame, because a full-on RPG in an already established series seems like the perfect way to truly delve into China's thousands of years of mythology.

Swords of Legends does, at least, have some wonderfully creative designs in just the hour or so of scattered sections I got to play. In my favorite scene, my taciturn protagonist sat down in a roadside inn for tea, only to end up dueling a warrior wearing a teapot on his head like a helmet—who was also wielding a teapot with a comically long spout as his sword. Most of his attacks flung boiling water around the arena.

The flying rug boss likewise felt like a character ripped from a folktale I've never read but now very much want to—he hid himself in one of three spinning teacups once I did him enough damage, then angrily rained fireworks down on my head when I caught him. Classic magician stuff.

I hope there's a lot more where that came from, and that the fun characters we've yet to see aren't all just boss fights at the end of linear, Souls-lite maps. There's still a long wait ahead: Swords of Legends is on Steam, but it doesn't yet have a release date.