Let's Play: Heroes of Jin Yong! (Update VI: 5/12)

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Awesome update MisterStone!

The 'weights' you mentioned tied to his yamato cannon is actually a pail of water! It's heavy + he needs to balance it haha. And I think the fact that you found the sabre in his house, maybe... it's meant for him to equip it?

Relevant link:

http://www.kungfumagazine.com/magazine/ ... rticle=315

Well usually you can at least try to equip something, but when I try to use this nothing happens at all.


It's OK though, because my bro Wei Xiaobao sold me a nice sabre and the "Secret Handbook of the Five Poisons". Tian can have the sabre for now (and the "raging wind sabre manual" which I stole from his house), and I'm learning the poison manual... muhuhahah...

One thing I am not sure about is, is there any point to equipping a book once you have learned the knowledge within it? Or do you just practice afterwards by using the skill in combat?

Also, my boy just made some free medicine when he leveled up recently; did he do that because he has the poison handbook equipped, or because he had medicinal materials in his inventory, or both?

Anyway, pretty fun but weird game.

One thing I figured out is that you don't need to equip weapons to fight with them. If you know a sword kungfu style you can simply attack with that style at combat without equipping anything- the game just assumes you have a generic sword. But there are nice unique "treasure" weapons out there that can augment your fighting power.

Also, "use poison", "cure poison" and "medical aid" commands in battle are the same way- you don't need to expend an item to use these. The "surprise" weapon command expends an item, which is often something like a small needle, pebbles (?) "cash darts" (sharpened coins?) or some kind of chemical compound pellet, I think... These tend to do more damage than I could do without them, and are ranged. "Use poison" lowers max HP I believe, and it attacks from a distance. If I am not mistaken, the "light body skill" gives you more movement points. Anyway, you'll see combat in the next update; I've kicked some modest ass so far.

Combat is kind of odd because you spend a lot of time attacking, then running off and healing yourself or allies. These cost stamina and internal strength points, so combat is often won when someone is too tired to heal themselves, or so it seems.

Man, I wish I'd remember but the whole equipping manual thing I am not sure about. A little trial and error might sort it out though:

1) equip manual, go in combat -> check that you can use the skill, and that at the end you get the xp for that skill.

2) unequip manual, go in combat -> check if you can still access that skill, and if at the end of combat you get xp for that skill.

I distinctly remember 'use poison' causes a damage over time element? Or was that part of the use of An Qi (sneak weapons; needles and cakes of powder or whatnot)? Also I think you can stack the damage over time element so it makes for quite a formidable tactic.

Sorry for not being of more help but it's been more than a decade .

Continue kicking ass! When I played it I was running around the map like a headless chicken and kept coming up against expert pugilists that killed me in a single round .

An aside: The game has fixed amount of combat scenarios and it would have been so much more awesome to tune these scripted fights upwards in terms of difficulty and implement some sort of random encounter system while in the overland travel mode. Some amount of grinding would have been fun.

After you've learnt the skill you won't need to keep the book equipped, just level the skill up by using it constantly.

On a side note, yin/yang internal energy determines if you can learn certain skills. Some skills can only be picked up with someone with yang energy, and the same applies for other skills. There're a couple of manuals that will allow you to harmonize your energy so that you can be compatible with both yin and yang skills.

And then there's the "Castrate yourself to learn this technique, Y/N?"....

Wait, I can learn the Kui hua bao dian? Oh shit, I gotta do this... I will become a super-trannie! This is my new powergoal!

若练此功
必先自宫

"If this art is to be learnt,
One must first self-castrate."

Or as the joke goes...

(1st page ) 欲练此功，必先自宫

(2nd page) 若不自宫，也能成功

I believe you can get the manual from Ren Woxing (who I'd much rather fight) and not the Undefeated Tranny of the East (strongest character in the game).

Further on about skills, your morality/alignment also plays a role. Besides there being a good/bad axis, there's also a lawful/chaotic axis, though in this case I think 'orthodoxy' is a better translation. Some skills can't be learnt unless you're chaotic, such as the "雙手互搏" skill that allows you to attack twice for free.

I don't really find the system complex, but coming off a fresh play of Dragon Age this definitely feels very old school. Modern RPGs are quite a bit more streamlined.

The double attack skill IF I remember correctly comes from Lao Wan Tong aka the Old Kid. Not only do you need to be a virgin (not implemented in this game not grimdark enough), you also must come with a fresh slate of mind aka learnt no other skills other than Wild Ball Fist.

Wait, according to the strategy guide I read, the stat prevents you from learning the retarded guy's kungfu is 资质 zizhi "IQ/aptitude"... if you're too smart you can't learn it. Also, there is athletic talent that determines how much HP and Inner Strength you gain when you level up.

So are you sure there is more than one "moral" axis?

Looks like I can’t just wing it by memory anymore.

-downloads game from link in first post-

-checks-

Yeah you’re right. >_> Sorry. My ten year old mind was under the impression that the stat was zhengzhi (正质) for some reason, which I'm sure isn't even a proper word, and the misconception stuck. Chinese language. Argh.


...But I'm still quite sure the Sunflower Manual is learnable. And since I have the game right now I might as well check.

edit: Yeah, it's learnable. Pretty good stats boost.

You should go get Zhang Wuiji first. Hes one of the best characters and you can get him without fighting.

HO man, all kinds of crazy adventures have been happening; the hard part of this LP is keeping track of what is going on. The world and the number of individual places is pretty huge. It's going to take a while to stitch all this together; I'll have to start summarizing things, leave things out until they become significant.

Yea it gets very confusing if you try to imagine the entire game with a single storyline. I think the only coherent 'central' story is your character finding a way out of the virtual world. Other than that, it's just a giant remix of the novels, happening at different stages at different times. Not to say that it doesn't make sense, but it's bloody hard to piece things together. Good luck!!!

Maybe you can streamline them by the 14 Novels in the game that you have to get.

I agree, focusing on getting a single book before moving on to the next one might help to keep the narrative focused. Many of the side-quests are tied to the party members that you recruit, so maybe you could decide beforehand on which characters you want, since you're on the evil path, and try to stick with that for the entire game.

Thanks for the advice guys, it's good to have help.

I am trying to do it book by book right now; following the old man's suggestions I went and found Hu Fei, and we eventually went and killed Yan Ji. Now I presume I need to find Miao ren Feng and take him/her out. I wonder, would it be cheating to just use a world map to find stuff? On the one hand I hate to do that, on the other I'd just be bumbling around at random until I hit upon the place I need to go to next. Which is actually kind of fun, since I have had all kinds of weird stuff happen. But it's still annoying when I go around and find half or more of the local areas are closed since I haven't activated them yet.

It's also fun when I talk to a big martial arts sect leader, the game forces me to fight him, and he nukes the party; got a good example of that for the next update coming soon.

Right now I'm on grind island; it's kind of annoying that I only get 30 exp for fighting the old lady each time, but I guess that's why they call it grind.

PART III) The Great White North?
Leaving the Tian’s place, I head a bit to the north and northeast. After all, I need to go find Hu Fei the flying fox somewhere far off to the Northeast, right? Well, before long I come across an odd-looking place. Turns out it’s the “Fu Wei Caravan Guard Agency”!


Whitey: That’s odd, this is such a big caravan guard agency compound, so why is there no one here?


Well, no people means no one to stop me from looting these suckas. I find a map of some place I don’t know anything about yet, some other stuff, and a manual on using jian (double-edged swords)!



Prowling about, I come across this young lad, practicing his sword on a giant acupuncture dummy.



I ask him why the agency is not in business today, and this Lin kid gets all huffy. Looks like I’ll have to teach this punk a lesson!




WHITEY is not a very tough customer right now, so he decides to avail himself of these nice Divine Black Blood Needles. A couple of these and the punk goes down like Prince to Alphabet Street.


Little Lin tells me a sob story about how the Qingcheng sect killed his mother and his father’s disciples, and kidnapped his father. He tells me that if I can help him get his father back, he’ll let me have whatever I want in his home, including a sword manual. The sword manual I already looted! Haw haw.


A bit more wandering takes me to Hengshang, where the Hengshan sect is preparing a party of some kind. Turns out that their sect leader is going to take part in a “hand washing in the golden bowl” ceremony, meaning he will retire from being an active martial artist in order to live the rest of his days out peacefully without people dropping in to challenge or assassinate him. Whatever, I can’t get in without an invitation. :? Actually I think I can fight the guards and force my way in, but what's the point if I don't know WTF is going on?



A bit more wandering to the north brings me to Iron Palm Mountain. This is the domain of the Iron Palm Sect [“Tee hee, nice flag guys, I bet your palms are really hard and calloused, aren’t they? Keep up the training guys!”]

For some reason WHITEY recognizes that these people are a bunch of dorks, and immediately insults the gate lackeys, calling their style “monkey paw” style or something, instead exploiting the more obvious masturbation jokes. A bit of martial arts novel humor for you. :? Anyway, we are forced to kick their ass.





Luckily Tian Boguang is there to help out. The punks get their asses handed to them readily; though really Tian does most of the work, Whitey manages to get a couple of “baseball fist” punches in there. And he heals himself once or twice. At the end of the battle, level up for Whitey! Also, he learned that sword style from the manual he stole from. To bad my jian skill sucks so much. I’d rather learn other stuff, even though the sword style is actually pretty cool.

The Iron Palm wankers don’t have much to say to me at this point.


I head on up to the main hall. The old geezer in the chair there is the sect leader. I decide not to talk to him and get my ass kicked. (OK, I know from a previous save that he will destroy me, because he can hit for 300hp or so in a single strike. And if I talk to him I am force to fight him!) Rather, I just get to looting, since no one seems inclined to stop me. 


A manual for Iron Palm kungfu! Soon the secrets of the Iron Palm will be mine! If I practice long and hard, that is.


Whitey equips the manual and begins to learn the style. Each time he gains experience points, more points go towards learning the style. As you can see in the bottom left of this status screen, right now he has 0/150 points towards learning it.



I come across another mountain, Mt. Emei. As I head into the building, I listen in on a demented old nun lecturing the other nuns about the need to exterminate a sect of “devil worshippers” or something. Anyway, when she finishes Whitey mouths off to her for a bit, then leaves (after determining there is nothing to look there). Whatever…



Finally, another inn. The signpost says “Gao Sheng Inn, known far and wide. Celebrating our one-year anniversary. Now arranging “self-service” travel to Mt. Wuliang, speak to the inn attendant if interested.”


It’s my homey Wei Xiaobao! What’s in the sack, bro?



He’s got the “Raging Lightning Sabre”, and the “Secret Handbook on the Five Poisons”. Money changes hands, triple fist-bumb handshake, and these are now MINE!

The sabre is an object that someone can equip to improve their damage with sabre techniques; I give it to Tian Boguang of course, since I haven’t had a chance to learn any sabre techniques yet.

However, I am interested in learning from that poison book. Turns out that I can equip it. Sweet! Whitey is good at poisoning and medical treatment, so he’s going to beef up his stats if he can level this up.



In the inn I come across this dork sitting at a table in the corner. He tells me that he ran away from home because his father was forcing him to learn martial arts, and he prefers to study Buddhism and the Confucian classics. Dork.



NO DAMMIT I DON’T WANT THIS DORK IN MY PARTY!



Next I speak with the Inn attendant about that “self service travel”. Turns out that paying for this simply causes him to tell me some compass coordinates where I can find a cave in Mt. Wuliang. When I complain, he threatens to report me to the “National Trade Association of Inn Attendants”, and Whitey backs down like a puss. Hilarious!



I visit the cave…



Nothing in there right now except a room with a Go table and a ratty old bed. Guess this quest has not been “activated” yet. :?



A bit more wandering takes place. I visit briefly a bunch of tents out in the grasslands that are the home of the “Constellation Sect”, but nothing happens there but some dumb jokes. There’s nothing to loot, so I move on and eventually arrive at this place, another inn.


There’s a monk here named Xu Zhu (Hollow Bamboo). He tells me that he got lost while travelling with his master and fellow monks from the Shaolin Temple. Shaolin Temple!? I’ve got to get this guy in my party, right? Well, no. He’s kind of a dork. He tells me that he says a mantra before taking a drink of water, because the Buddha could see thousands of “bugs” in each cup of water, and he does not want to harm life. Dork. Stay away from me. (I suppose at some point I’ll need to hold his hand and take him back home, whatever…)



Some random dudes are here talking about the “Ming Sect” (Zoroastrians? The cult that the founder of the Ming dynasty belonged to?) and how it was very powerful, until it’s leader disappeared recently. This means nothing to me since I haven’t read the books; I’m sure it will be significant later on.


Some yapping between me and the Inn Attendant takes place. He tells me that this region is kind of dangerous or something. Sounds good to me.


A bit more wandering brings me to this place. Cool pagoda bros! Let’s have a look.


“Big Wheel Temple”


Lamas! Surly, rude Lamas no less. Surly, rude lamas looking for a beatdown!




These lamas aren’t all that tough, it turns out. With Tian’s help, I managed to take them out.


What’s this? Whitey just manufactured some “Yang Replenishing Five Dragon Paste”? Turns out that when you study a medical manual like this, you start to produce various kinds of medicine as you improve in the disciple and level it up. Since Whitey is learning from a manual about poison he produces poison curing medicine. In order for this to happen, certain other conditions have to be met; for instance, here Whitey needs to have a certain amount of “raw medicinal materials” in his inventory, and a certain level in curing poison or whatever. Cool! Still haven’t fully studied the discipline yet though…



The lama fools just keep on steppin. More asskicking takes place… Whitey levels up, makes more “Yang Replenishing Five Dragon Paste”.


We find a key which opens a jail that the lamas were guarding. This fellow is Di Yun. He tells me a sob story about how he travelled with his shifu and sister-disciple to visit his shifu’s brother-disciple (his “shifu-uncle”, are you getting all of this down?!). His shifu’s brother-disciple (the “shifu-uncle”, pay attention!) murders his shifu, and Di Yun is framed for it some how. He goes to jail, where he meets some other guy who teaches him a powerful kind of kungfu. They escape; the guy from jail is poisoned by someone; Di Yun learns his girlfriend (his “sister-discple”; they’re not really related so it’s not as gross as it sounds) married the evil shifu-uncle who murdered his shifu, and is bewildered as to how this could have happened. He also gives me some coordinates of a mountain cave near his hometown. Cool story, bro. Want to join my party? Nope! He considers himself too unlucky, and doesn’t want to ruin my shit as well. Yeah right, sounds like a lame excuse to me; probably I’m not “virtuous” enough for him. Ptah!

NEXT UPDATE: Male Model Beatdown in the Snow!

Sororitas?

So the plot and quest right now are "you need to travel around, kick ass and take names"?

Also, a little more detailed expository/explanatory showing of combat would be good.

Sorry about that. I did talk about how combat works in an earlier post that was not a LP update, but I suppose I should do a more visual explanation....



As you can see here, tactical combat takes place on a grid; you can move and attack in two dimensions, and this does play a significant role in combat.


On the right you can see Tian's combat statistics; The top number is his stamina which runs out as you perform attacks and take certain actions, or sustain certain kinds of damage. The middle number is his "life points" or hit points. The final number is his "inner strength" points, which are like mana points in other games. Tian's inner strength score is colored blue because the kungfu he practices causes him to align more with the yin/feminine internal power. Which is kind of odd considering what kind of guy he is...



As you can see in this image I have a long menu of things I can do or look at during combat. From top to bottom, they are:

*Move - You can move along a square grid in four directions. How far you can move is based on "light body skill" I believe.

*Attack (this gives a sub menu of various martial arts styles I can use; each "technique" I have learned from a book has a different attack. Some techniques can do area damage and so on (jian techniques can attack through a row of enemies in a straight line). The more skilled you are in the technique, and the higher the appropriate stats, the more damage you do; also you increase the range of your attack if you have higher skill in the technique. For instance, Tian can attack with his "raging wind sabre technique" from 3 or more squares away. It seems like the weapon skills give you longer range, and boxing/unarmed skills less. Also I think boxing skills do less damage at lower skill levels, but a lot of damage at higher skill levels. Just a general impression so far. Attacking uses stamina, and also inner strength points for most techniques.

*Use Poison - This is similar to attack, but it can cause damage over time and I believe also waste away your opponent's stamina and inner strength. It seems to naturally have a longer range than the "attack" command. I am not sure if there is a sub-type of poison attack for certain kungfu disciplines.

*Cure Poison - Used to help yourself or another if they are poisoned. Uses skill only, no item is consumed. Also works from a distance which increases with skill I believe.

*Medical Aid - Used to heal yourself or another. Uses skill only, no item is consumed. Also works from a distance.

*Equipment - You can use this to consume medicine (which can restore life points, stamina, inner strength, or combinations of all three) OR attack with a hidden weapon, such as those Black Blood Needles. In both cases this consumes an item; surprise weapons do damage based on both the item's stats and your skill. Right now WHITEY does a lot more damage with these than his conventional attacks, and some surprise weapons can poison people or sap their stamina I believe. They also do not require stamina when used, so you can throw these at an opponent if you are too tired to attack.

*Wait - lets another enemy take an action before you do.

*Status - brings up the status screens, the same as outside of combat.

*Rest - allows you to take no action, and regain stamina.

*Automatic Combat - allows the computer to initiate auto-combat, controlling both PCs and NPCs.

One thing I mentioned in a previous post is that the game is not very detailed in how it handles inventory. For instance, if you know a jian technique, you can attack without having a sword "equipped" in your inventory; the game just assumes you have a generic sword equipped. If you find a special sword, however, you can equip it to augment your sword techniques' power. Poison, cure and medical aid likewise do not require any items to be equipped or expended.

A single inventory is shared by everyone in the party, so if we have some medicine or throwing knives, any character can use them during combat regardless of where they are on the map, and they are expended from a common source.



***

The plot is not very structured; it was _suggested_ that I look for Hu Fei (the Flying Fox guy) by the old man, but the truth is anyone wandering around trying to find him will definitely stumble into a dozen or so other places/plots before reaching him, many of which can be engaged from the very beginning of the game. It's a huge jumble of storylines and events that make no sense until you stumble on the thread again somewhere else, often halfway across the world map.

Thanks for the update MisterStone! Great and nostalgic read as usual . Alot of the mechanics you explained I didn't even realise existed haha, and it's interesting to actually know how they work now!

Running around and stumbling into things was exactly what I remember the game to be like, and though all of the game is linear if you draw it out in an organised manner, it does give a very effective illusion of exploration and choice.

By the way some areas, like the Iron Palm sect's HQ (I think), which is surrounded by vegetation you can't cross, have secret paths to loot and stuff. You have to keep bumping against the border of the area until you find an accessible path covered visually by the grass and trees. So you might wanna do that for every small area you come across, just a suggestion!

This reminds me, when I first heard of Jade Empire I was hoping that, it being a "martial arts" RPG with heavy Chinese influence and all, Bioware would actually place it in real China instead of a badly stereotyped caricature.

edit: Baseball fist is the weakest fist/palm-based skill until you hit about level 8. At level 10 it's the strongest skill, period. The scaling on most other fist/palm skills are about on par with the weapon-based techniques though, except probably in terms of range. There's few dao skills in the game and the best one scales as badly as baseball fist. Then again, most of the famous techniques in Jin Yong novels were based on either chi-usage or swords.

One problem I am having is figuring out which manuals to study. I think that despite starting with low jian skill, I will use that since it at least gives good strategic advantages based on what the skill is (like attacking several opponents in a straight line, or in all 4 cardinal directions). I tried Iron Palm and got it to like level 4, but it still sucks bigtime, doubt it is worth continuing.

I also noticed that Tian Boguang's Dao technique doesn't seem to be very good. He has it trained to level 8 or 9 right now, and Hu Fei, who've I've ground until he has like a 6 in his family's style of Dao fighting seems to do about the same damage to the same opponents, despite having a lower level and lower stats/skills IIRC. Does it matter that much which skill they use?

Also, baseball fist is damn hard to train! I beat on that old woman for like 20 fights before it went up to lvl 2.

Also, it seems worthwhile training lots of disciplnes to 1 just to get the inital stat bonus. Do you get more stat bonuses for learning them past level 1?

Right now I have a book that increases my surprise weapons skill a bit and lets me make lightning pellets, but I am wondering if surprise weapons aren't a waste of time by the mid-point of the game. It seems like having a good weapon/fist skill is much better and does not require an item to use.