Gujian 3 is a great action RPG for those looking for something different than the usual Western fare

Tl;dr: A very well done xianxia action RPG. It isn't up to what we'd consider AAA standards, but very solidly second tier. I would highly recommend this game to anyone who wants to try something very different culturally than what typically dominates best-seller lists in the US or Europe. Pretty reminiscent of Final Fantasy or The Witcher.

For reference, a review article and previous threads on this game:

https://np.reddit.com/r/patientgamers/comments/hbsp3p/what_do_you_get_when_you_cross_witcher_kingdom/

https://np.reddit.com/r/patientgamers/comments/hnqeb0/followup_post_about_gujian_3_did_anyone_buy_it/

https://www.pcgamer.com/gujian-3-comes-close-to-being-the-final-fantasy-of-chinese-rpgs/

For those who don't know, Gujian is a ARPG series from mainland China. Gujian 3 is the first title in the series to receive a Western release with English subtitles on Steam. The translation is also well-done and comprehensible. It has native gamepad support and supports 3440×1440 resolution.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/994280/Gujian3/

If you want to know how the story starts out: The premise of the story is that the main character, Beiluo, who lives in an unspecified time in long ago China as the head student of a swordsmanship academy, is actually an immortal being from the "Spirit Realm". His clan, the "Shadowchasers", are the royal family of a city that guards the passage between the Spirit Realm and the mortal world to prevent incursions of demons from ushering in the thousand years of darkness. For reasons deliberately left mysterious, he fell out with his clan long ago and is dragged back at the very beginning of the game to help confront a coming demonic incursion and the degradation of the magics protecting the city. He is very much a reluctant hero. The story is nicely done with Beiluo's backstory being slowly fed to players through flashbacks and dialogue. There is no huge infodump of exposition, the game throws you right in and fills you in as you go.

Magic in this game is based on the Chinese fantasy genre of xianxia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xianxia_(genre) so instead of mages casting fireballs from staves, magic manifests as supernatural martial arts abilities. There's also elements like magic formations powered by feng shui or the Eight Trigrams.

The graphics are pretty decent, the music is good, the art direction is phenomenal enough where I will just walk around locations to enjoy the ambiance.

The action is decently challenging. I play on normal which feels fine. It's not Dark Souls, it feels a lot like Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, though fighting is a lot more mobile. It's definitely not a game where you can just mash buttons at random.

There is a card game you can play with NPCs, and Beiluo likes to fish.

I only have a couple criticisms. The towns are mostly static, there isn't a day/night cycle with NPCs moving around on schedules like has become more common in modern AAA releases. I don't see a 4k resolution option and not sure why. It isn't a big deal for me because I game at 1440, but seems like an odd omission. The in-game card game also references earlier games in the franchise, so us Westerners aren't going to really get it since those games don't have western releases, but it's simple and chance based so there's no issue playing and winning a few games if you want to. All in all, I think these are more than acceptable tradeoffs the lack of other games in this setting to compete with.