The main storyline is insultingly bad

[ThePrelate]

Well, I find the story to be good. It has a lot of memorable characters, even though some come later and I can't, for the life of me, recall them (not Dochun, or Yehara and people like them). I even like the way they depicted us as 'evil' because we weren't evil to begin with. What Mushin did was purge the Light inside of us, esentially forcing us to embrace the Dark Chi and has set us on a similar path as Jinsoyun. I wouldn't have liked if we went all evil and started killing our friends because that wouldn't make any sense later in the game a.k.a. it would take several more chapters to finsih the whole story properly. What NCSoft did was merely put us on a path of revenge (duh, we were there the whole time!) and caused us to basically forsake our teachings. IMO it was well depicted in the first few chapters where we refused to help that girl. And ofc, Karma then took care of giving us a slap for that.

 

I did see a few versions of the ending with Jinsoyun arc and trust me when I say, all of this later will make good sense. I don't wanna give away more info for spoiler, even what I already said was too much. As for Act II I kinda like the Tomun Range because it was a story unto itself, unlike the rest of the Cinderlands. It had its beginning there and also its end, albeit with few characters that were reccuring there and appeared again later on. Also I like side quests and how they end with everyone saying their thanks to you in the end. Oh and how Yunwa was mentioned in the story long before we've met her.

 

What I don't like is the inconsistency with side-quests. Like, in one quest I hear about someone, like Yonkai, for instance and then I do another quest and someone mentions Yonkai and I ask again who this Yonkai figure is. Like, what the Hell? Can't you at least put some condition in the code to pull out a different flavour text?!

[Erovianni]

This is what happens when you leave too much liberty in the translations for localization, in the Other versions your character is actually much smarter and the story is much different with it being more on grey areas with your character choosing to either get consumed with hate or doing the "Right" thing as self fulfillment as the story goes. Oh and Jinsoyun was never truly that evil character as we see in this version.

[Titania Zero]

Oh how I have issue with the plot.

 

The Character should be paranoid and bitter by now.  And why?  Because every group you help... has a handful of jerks waiting to stab you in the back.  By the time Cinderlands came around I was like... come on... I have a rather bad ass fireball here... and they have junk.  Why have I not torched every jerk and would be traitor from the get go?  I would have nuked Yokai and his boys ten ways to tuesday because man did I want to tear out his heart or roast him over an open fire.  I would have hung some lyn by their ears and slapped them a few times for being dense.  I would have left a trail so vast that no one would want to screw with me.

 

But... no.  I get to be stabbed in the back every story arc.  >>  I think perhaps... only Act 4 spared me from back stabbings and just gave me silly stupidity on the path to kill people only to be smacked around.  If the game doesn't want us to win against Jinsoyun then don't allow us to bring her to half life only to have her reduce me to less than 0 hps...

 

I suppose my favorite parts are the past parts.  The only thing that makes me want to stay this course is to learn how these things happened.  The past exploration events were cool as well as a great big tease.

[Rina Lockhart]

I'm still enjoying the story so far. It has so many unexpected turns, though I agree they could lighten up on the betrayal aspect. It turns out that almost every tom, dick or harry seems to be betraying this thing or that. And I really didn't get the treatment towards Lycan the Mighty. Just seemed odd that we should kill it & get its life force after its heroic deeds against the dark forces. Overall, it's a good story for a free to play game. I think anyone who enjoys anime should like this story.

[Ellisande]

The more I play the story, the more I feel like I am playing the completely inept Fable 2. Your character, despite being in the game, has no more agency than you do from outside the game. You're both simply there to watch other people do cool things and then get beaten up and sold down the river time after time so that you can watch the other characters do cool things and get constantly more pissed off at your complete lack of agency.

 

I'm just going to copy my 2 favorite part's of Twenty Sided Dice's review of Fable 2:

 

"[Reaver]’s standing in his study. He murders your friend in front of you. He laughs at trying to steal your youth. Then he explains to you that he’s betraying you to your (previous) worst enemy [Lucian]. You arrived thirty seconds ago and he’s given you three reasons to kill him already.
There is simply no rational way to explain not killing him on the spot, except that the game won’t let you. Reaver is an obvious author-insertion character. The writer has just pranked you and is now taunting you because you’re not allowed to hit back.

This is the worst case of railroading in the entire game, because nearly everyone gets to this point in the game and says, 'To hell with Lucian, I’m killing this *cricket* right now.'

And Reaver, author-insertion character that he is, is obviously aware of how the game mechanics have hamstrung you. Only an idiot would tell a heavily armed champion that they were betraying them while the champion was still free to act. Reaver rattles on about betraying you, fearless of what you might do because the game won’t let you do anything."

 

"It’s the classic tabletop gaming trope: The entire game is just the author wanking off as he pits his Ultimate Evil Guy against His Ultimate Awesome Weapon. You win not because you were brave, strong, or resourceful, but because you did what you were told. The artifact did all the winning for you. This story isn’t about you. This is a story about the writer’s ultimate evil bad guy versus his author-insertion know-it-all and his Artifact of Mysterious Destiny. You are a supporting character – a silent one at that – and what you think or feel is unimportant.

And so the story ends with the writer laughing at you. 'Ha ha! I got you! You totally fell for it! She totally pwned you, dude!'

If you were wondering why your character obeyed this idiot woman no matter how much her goals ran contrary to yours, now you know: The writer didn't actually have the brains to outsmart you, so he simply railroaded you into doing stupid things."

[Ellisande]

On 3/25/2016 at 1:58 PM, Yolie said:

It is not surprising that some of you don't have the IQ to grasp the story.  Sorry, I don't mean to be insulting, but if you take off your FF5 gear for a moment you may see a good story here.  

 

This is reminiscent of a traditional Chinese Epic, the foundation which makes up many of the greatest epic novels and movies today.  It is this type of story that gave you Star Wars, LOTR etc. etc.  

You are woefully uneducated here.

 

The basis for many stories has been summarized by Joseph Campbell as an unintentional use of a single story structure which he summarized as:

"Campbell explores the theory that important myths from around the world which have survived for thousands of years all share a fundamental structure, which Campbell called the monomyth.

• Departure
  • 
    The Call to Adventure 

    The hero begins in a situation of normality from which some information is received that acts as a call to head off into the unknown; a forest, a kingdom underground, beneath the waves, or above the sky, a secret island, lofty mountaintop, or profound dream state; but it is always a place of strangely fluid and polymorphous beings, unimaginable torments, super human deeds, and impossible delight. The hero can go forth of his own volition to accomplish the adventure, as did Theseus when he arrived in his father's city, Athens, and heard the horrible history of the Minotaur; or he may be carried or sent abroad by some benign or malignant agent as was Odysseus, driven about the Mediterranean by the winds of the angered god, Poseidon. The adventure may begin as a mere blunder... or still again, one may be only casually strolling when some passing phenomenon catches the wandering eye and lures one away from the frequented paths of man. Examples might be multiplied, ad infinitum, from every corner of the world."

  • 
    Refusal of the Call
  • 
    Supernatural Aid
  • 
    Crossing the Threshold
  • 
    Belly of the Whale
• 
  Initiation
  • 
    The Road of Trials
  • The Meeting with the Goddess
  • 
    Atonement with the Father
  • Apotheosis
  • The Ultimate Boon
• Return
  • 
    Refusal of the Return
  • 
    The Magic Flight
  • Rescue from Without
  • The Crossing of the Return Threshold
  • Master of Two Worlds
  • 
    Freedom to Live

 The structure of such stories is not derived from ancient Chinese epics, rather ancient Chinese epics are derived from the same source as the great epics of other ancient civilizations such as the Epic of Gilgamesh. In order to be good fiction each work needs to obey certain rules of good story telling such as having events flow as a natural result of prior events and characters acting consistently with their characterization. "In the characters too, exactly as in the structure of the incidents, [the poet] ought always to seek what is either necessary or probable, so that it is either necessary or probable that a person of such-and-such a sort say or do things of the same sort, and it is either necessary or probable that this [incident] happen after that one. It is obvious that the solutions of plots too should come about as a result of the plot itself, and not from a contrivance." If you create a character who willingly and enthusiastically shoots men in silly costumes for a living then that character should not lecture the main character about how it is wrong to kill someone who commits far worse crimes than wearing a silly costume.