Info about Beast Saga: Official game description: Roadmap ======= Update Schedule for the Early Access Version of Beast Saga ---------------------------------------------------------- As the game is currently in Early Access, please note that the final version will not only include the prologue but also Chapters 1 through 6 of the main storyline, along with the narratives of the seven major martial sects. In addition, a wealth of interconnected side quests and hidden storylines will be featured, bringing the total narrative content to over one million words. Our studio is committed to offering a non-linear, multi-ending experience with a unique web-like narrative structure. The Early Access version, which launched on March 6, already includes the prologue, Chapters 1 and 2, and numerous main quests, side quests, and hidden storylines from several sects—specifically Bibao Villa, Qiong Kong Sect, Kunlun Divine Cult, Huang Yu Valley, and Bailingyu. Moreover, the first parts of the storylines for Wuzisi Temple and Po Dao Tian Gong have been completed. Over the coming year, our team will continue developing the remaining content and will roll out Steam Workshop. **Planned Updates:** **April**: Update with the concluding parts for Wuzisi Temple and Po Dao Tian Gong. **June**: Main storyline update for Chapter 3, along with a host of new side quests. **September**: Main storyline update for Chapter 4, including additional side quests. **December**: Main storyline update for Chapter 5, with further side quest content. **March 2026**: Main storyline update for Chapter 6, plus a fresh batch of side quests. Note: We are considering an English translation for the game, with translation work planned to commence after the Chinese version is essentially finalized. Given the vast amount of text, if any players are interested in contributing or learning more, please feel free to contact us. Twitter: Discord: About the Game ============== From the very beginning of the game, you can start forming alliances with companions. Through your choices in the story, you can invite up to 10 different female characters, both heroes and villains, to join your team. The majority of quests can be influenced by altering your decisions, uncovering hidden clues, and affecting the direction of the plot, ultimately changing the fate of the characters involved. The village where your character was born, which was destroyed in the prologue, can also be gradually rebuilt. As you encounter homeless NPCs or retired martial artists wishing to withdraw from Jianghu, you can invite them to settle in, breathing new life into the once-destroyed village. Seamless Open World Exploration – A Martial Arts World of Seven Factions and Eventful Storylines ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ In Beast Saga, the seamless world map brings to life a vast, dynamic world filled with seven major factions, various other forces, and hidden sects. You are free to explore this new world and embark on adventures. The Seven Factions—such as the Breaking Dao Heavenly Palace, Wuzi Temple, and Huangyu Valley—offer opportunities to become a disciple and master their unique martial arts. Each faction has its own specialized, multi-layered questline, enhancing the variety and depth of faction gameplay. You can also unlock hidden storylines to become a manor lord, engage in trade and commerce to earn wealth, or join secret factions that focus on theft, assassination, and other dark objectives. Through free exploration, you’ll encounter numerous events, revealing hidden secrets in this original martial arts world, and gradually uncover the ultimate truth. Real-Time 24-Hour Cycle & Dynamic Weather ----------------------------------------- Beast Saga features a true 24-hour day-night cycle, where the changing times of day significantly affect gameplay. For example, during the night, locations like inns and banks close, and you'll no longer be able to find shopkeepers to buy goods. However, you can use life skills like lockpicking to sneak into places if needed. Certain creatures, like specific types of insects, only appear during certain times of day. Most NPCs are active during the day, while those involved with the underworld might only be found at night. Additionally, some story events and quests can only be triggered during specific times, allowing players to experience different gameplay and narrative outcomes depending on the time of day. Non-linear, Unlimited Open-Ended Story – Diverse NPCs and Choices ----------------------------------------------------------------- While Beast Saga offers a main storyline and side quests tied to the Seven Great Factions, you are free to explore the world at your own pace. With no time constraints, you can engage in events that interest you. Your decisions will directly affect how NPCs respond to you, with most quests offering multiple solutions. Most of the story quests allow you to influence the direction of the narrative by changing your choices, discovering hidden clues, and altering the course of events. These decisions not only shape the story and character outcomes but may also pull you into the tangled web of Jianghu conspiracies, trigger hidden quests, unlock secret treasures, or lead to unexpected adventures. Your choices may even impact the progression of other quests. Form Alliances with Jianghu Heroes - Over 300 Martial Arts Skills to Mix and Master ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- In Beast Saga, you can recruit characters from the Seven Great Factions to join your team. Each of these characters has their own unique backstory and can become invaluable allies in uncovering the truth of the world. The game offers over 300 different martial arts techniques, including not only those taught by the Seven Factions but also hidden legendary skills passed down by martial arts masters, mysterious factions, and royal secrets scattered across the world. You can freely combine these martial arts to enhance both your character and your companions, tailoring your skills to suit your playstyle. As you form bonds with your companions, your choices will affect how they respond to you, shaping the development of your relationships with them. Additionally, through open-ended story decisions, you’ll have the opportunity to invite dozens of other diverse characters into your team, each with their own unique traits and abilities. Gathering, Cultivation, Fishing, Medicine, and Commerce – Unlock Diverse Life Skills ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ In Beast Saga, you can gather various resources and fish for ingredients that are essential for crafting weapons, gear, potions, and delicious meals. Characters can learn a variety of life skills, including medicine, lockpicking, commerce, persuasion, cooking, and fishing. The Lockpicking skill allows you to sneak into buildings during the night when they are closed, while Persuasion can open up new dialogue options throughout your journey, helping you earn NPCs’ trust. Commerce impacts your profits from trading and lets you easily spot traps in business dealings. These life skills not only enhance your character’s abilities but also offer unique ways to interact with the world and uncover hidden opportunities. Release date: 5 Mar, 2025 Categories: Open-World Exploration, Non-linear Narrative, Choice-based Narrative, Character Customization, Base Building, Turn-based Combat, Life Simulation, Wuxia RPG - Hardware Profile: No data Feature extractions: - Community Price: No data - Playtime Metrics: No data - Time-to-fun: No data - Player Archetypes: No data Below are summaries of things people say about the game per category. Each point is assigned a weight that represents how often it is mentioned across all reviews. What players like: - Rich narrative, high freedom (weight 0.96): The game boasts a rich and engaging narrative with branching storylines, meaningful choices, and well-developed characters. Many reviewers highlight the high degree of freedom, immersive world, and the sheer volume of content, including main quests, side quests, and hidden elements. The developers are also very responsive and dedicated to fixing bugs and improving the game based on player feedback. - Authentic, unique Wuxia experience (weight 0.3): The game successfully blends Wuxia (Chinese martial arts fantasy) themes with unique elements like furry characters, creating a fresh and immersive experience. Reviewers appreciate the authentic martial arts world, the wide array of skills, and the overall feel reminiscent of classic Wuxia stories. - Meaningful, well-designed side quests (weight 0.14): The game features well-designed and rewarding side quests that enrich the story and feel integral to the open-world experience. These quests offer multiple solutions, impact the main storyline, and contribute to the game's world-building, making the world feel alive and engaging. - Appealing and well-executed art (weight 0.12): The game features an appealing and well-executed art style, with detailed pixel art, hand-crafted assets, and a refreshing aesthetic. The art style contributes to the game's immersive atmosphere and evokes a sense of nostalgia for classic RPGs. - Vast world, non-linear narrative (weight 0.09): The game features a vast and interconnected open world with a non-linear narrative structure, offering players a high degree of freedom and choice. The world is rich with distinct sects, hidden forces, and opportunities for exploration. - Personal enjoyment expressed (weight 0.07): These points reflect individual reviewers' personal experiences and enjoyment of the game. While positive, they lack specific details about gameplay mechanics or features, making them less informative for potential players. - General praise for plot (weight 0.04): These points offer general praise for the game's storyline and plot, but lack specific details or examples. While positive, they don't provide much actionable feedback or insight into the game's strengths. - Recruit companions, shape story (weight 0.04): The game allows players to recruit companions from different factions, who can assist in quests and decisions. The game offers non-linear story choices and allows players to act as heroes or villains, creating a dynamic and engaging experience. - Decent writing, occasional memes (weight 0.04): The game's writing is generally well-done, with witty dialogue and occasional use of internet memes. However, some reviewers feel that the inclusion of memes can sometimes feel out of place. Common complaints: - Poor guidance and unclear objectives (weight 0.7): The game suffers from poor guidance, unclear objectives, and a lack of helpful information. Players frequently get lost, struggle to find quest locations, and miss important details due to the absence of clear map markers, tutorials, and dialogue logs. This leads to frustration and a reliance on external guides. - Shallow, unbalanced combat system (weight 0.67): Combat is shallow, unbalanced, and relies too heavily on stats. Dynamic level scaling negates player progression, while a lack of tactical options and meaningful character customization makes encounters feel repetitive and unrewarding. Some reviewers also noted the lack of a respec option exacerbates early-game stat allocation mistakes. - Unrewarding and shallow crafting (weight 0.41): Crafting is unrewarding and lacks depth. Crafted items are often inferior to those found or purchased, and the system is hindered by limited skill points, unbalanced resource availability, and a lack of meaningful impact on gameplay. Some reviewers found crafting skills to be essentially useless. - Poor inventory organization (weight 0.4): The inventory system is poorly organized and lacks essential features. Item categorization is illogical, making it difficult to find specific items, and the absence of sorting options further exacerbates the problem. This leads to frustration and wasted time managing inventory. - Poor map design and navigation (weight 0.37): The map design is flawed, with unclear layouts, collision issues, and a lack of useful features. Players frequently get stuck in the environment, struggle to navigate the world, and find the map unhelpful for locating objectives or points of interest. This makes exploration tedious and frustrating. - Numerous bugs and crashes (weight 0.35): The game is plagued by numerous bugs, including crashes, glitches, and progress-blocking issues. The lack of manual saving and autosave features exacerbates the impact of these bugs, leading to significant progress loss and a frustrating player experience. Some reviewers felt the game was unpolished and far from a complete version. - Restrictive and unbalanced skill system (weight 0.23): The skill system is restrictive and unbalanced, with limited skill points, high costs, and a lack of meaningful choices. Players are forced into specialized builds, and the system lacks depth and tactical elements. Some reviewers also noted the UI for managing skills is cumbersome. - Inflexible and inconvenient saving (weight 0.09): The saving system is inflexible and inconvenient, with unnecessary pagination and inconsistent save/load logic. Saving is restricted to fixed locations and is not possible during battles or story choices. The game lacks a dialogue log, making it difficult to recall conversations. - Irrelevant teammates, poor autosaving (weight 0.08): Teammates feel irrelevant and lack meaningful interaction. The game doesn't allow teammates to assist with skill checks, and the combat system often leads to repetitive gameplay due to limited skills and restrictive team composition. Some reviewers felt the automatic save system was poorly implemented, potentially losing up to twenty minutes of progress. - Awkward controls and poor UX (weight 0.08): The game suffers from awkward controls and a poorly designed user experience. The stamina bar for running is frustrating, and many small details need optimization. Some reviewers questioned whether the developers playtested their own game. - Poor controller support (weight 0.06): Controller support is poorly implemented, with inverted button configurations and limited functionality. The game only displays PlayStation button icons, making the Xbox controller nearly unusable. Some reviewers were unable to remap the controller buttons. Gameplay feedback: - Extensive character customization options (weight 0.17): The game offers extensive character customization through martial arts, skills, and equipment. Players can learn various martial arts from different schools and combine them with internal skills to create unique builds. Matching weapons to martial arts is important for maximizing damage output. - Combat lacks strategic depth (weight 0.16): The combat system is turn-based with some real-time elements, often compared to games like "Persona 5 Tactica" or "Baldur's Gate". However, many reviewers find it lacks strategic depth due to simple mechanics and an over-reliance on stat checks. Suggestions include expanding tactical options or simplifying the system. - Encourages open-world exploration (weight 0.09): The game features an open-world design that encourages exploration, with a seamless map containing diverse terrains and accessible buildings. However, some reviewers find the accelerated running mechanic tedious and suggest mouse click movement would be more suitable. - Branching narrative, multiple endings (weight 0.07): The game features a branching narrative where player decisions impact the story's progression and lead to multiple endings. Some reviewers note that the branching is not always significant, mostly offering different routes to the same points or additional dialogue. - Classic CRPG character stats (weight 0.06): Characters have a variety of attributes (Strength, Perception, Dexterity, etc.) that affect their abilities in combat and exploration. The game uses a classic CRPG system of physical shields, magical shields, and health bars. - Martial arts UI needs improvement (weight 0.05): The martial arts interface relies heavily on text, making it difficult to quickly identify useful information. Reviewers suggest improving the interface by adding tabs or boxes to better organize the different types of skills. - Strategic character progression system (weight 0.03): Players earn experience to level up and allocate attribute points to improve character stats. Certain quests and story options require specific attribute levels, encouraging strategic point allocation. - Life skills lack usefulness (weight 0.03): The game includes life skills like cooking, fishing, business, and blacksmithing. However, some reviewers find that only persuasion and lockpicking are useful for the story, while others are pointless or easily bypassed. - Level scaling feels awkward (weight 0.03): The game features dynamic level scaling, but some reviewers find it awkward, especially when combined with level suppression and martial arts training. - Side quests well-designed, but isolated (weight 0.03): Side quests are generally well-designed, with multiple solutions that bypass tedious processes. However, some reviewers note that side quests do not affect the main story flow or how NPCs perceive the player. - Time system lacks interaction (weight 0.02): The game features a dynamic time system with day/night cycles and weather effects. However, some reviewers find that these systems lack meaningful interaction and only affect certain tasks and NPC performances. - Unique insect raising system (weight 0.02): The game features a system for raising insects, with different types offering varied effects and strategic options. This system has the potential for unique attack styles. - Decent CRPG with rich content (weight 0.02): The game is a decent entry in the CRPG genre, with a large amount of text and content that provides a lot of playtime, even in Early Access. Performance notes: - Getting stuck in environment (weight 0.05): Players frequently get stuck in the environment, including caves, markets, and even trees. This issue disrupts gameplay and requires workarounds to resolve. Additionally, character movement feels clunky, and controller support is poor. - Visual glitches on maps (weight 0.03): Some players have encountered visual glitches such as black screens during quests, overlapping images on area maps, and completely black maps after updates. These issues detract from the game's visual presentation and can hinder navigation. - Runs well on low-end (weight 0.02): The game runs well on low-end hardware and the Steam Deck. This indicates good accessibility and optimization for a range of devices. - Laggy crafting interface (weight 0.01): The crafting interface experiences lag when there are a large number of recipes available. This makes crafting a frustrating experience for players. - Freezing during teleport (weight 0.01): Teleporting can sometimes cause the game to freeze, interrupting gameplay and potentially leading to lost progress if the game doesn't save frequently. - Monsters stuck in environment (weight 0.01): Monsters sometimes get stuck in the environment, which can affect combat and gameplay. This can make encounters trivial or create unfair advantages. - Quick bug fixes (weight 0.01): The developers are fixing bugs quickly, which is a positive sign for the game's future. - NPC interaction bug (weight 0.01): One player experienced a bug where interacting with a specific NPC resulted in an empty dialogue box and a game freeze. This type of bug can halt progress and disrupt the player's experience. - Loud footsteps sound (weight 0.01): The reviewer suggests adjusting the background sound effects, specifically mentioning that the footsteps sound is too loud. - Motion sickness (weight 0.01): One reviewer experienced motion sickness while exploring the map in 2K full-screen mode. This may be due to camera movement or field of view settings. Recommendations: - Wait for updates/full release (weight 0.73): Many reviewers recommend waiting for updates and the full release due to the game's incomplete state, numerous bugs, and optimization issues. They express optimism and hope that the developers will continue to improve the game, address the problems, and deliver on its potential. Some reviewers suggest that purchasing the game now is essentially paying to test an unfinished product. - Appeals to Wuxia/furry fans (weight 0.53): The game is praised for its Wuxia (martial arts) theme, story, and unique character designs, which appeal to enthusiasts of the genre and those who enjoy furry characters. Some reviewers suggest that Wuxia fans should not be deterred by the animal avatars, while others suggest adding modding support for character customization. - Support the developers (weight 0.52): Many reviewers express support for the developers and encourage them to continue their hard work on the game. They give positive reviews to show their support, hoping that the game will sell well and continue to be optimized. Some reviewers acknowledge the challenges of developing indie games and are willing to trust another domestic Early Access game. - Anticipate future content updates (weight 0.48): Reviewers are looking forward to future content updates, especially regarding the main story, side quests, and overall expansion of the game world. They anticipate a substantial amount of playtime upon completion and hope that the quality of future updates will match or exceed the initial impressions. - Improve combat/controls (weight 0.03): Reviewers suggest improvements to the combat experience, such as optimizing the controls and adding features like auto-battle or skip buttons. Some reviewers also suggest implementing a 3x battle speed to enhance the gameplay experience. - Potential for masterpiece status (weight 0.03): Reviewers express hope that the game will be carefully polished into a unique and high-quality title, drawing comparisons to other successful games in the genre like 'Seeking Immortality' and 'Yi Jian'. They believe that if the development team doesn't abandon the project, it has the potential to become a top-tier masterpiece. - Frustrating later gameplay (weight 0.03): Some reviewers find the game increasingly frustrating to play later on, with one even stating that it's unplayable without a cheat engine. The game relies too heavily on side quests, which may not be a positive aspect for all players. - Save the game frequently (weight 0.01): Reviewers emphasize the importance of frequently saving the game, suggesting that players should get into the habit of pressing F5 regularly. This likely indicates that the game may have stability issues or that progress can be easily lost. - Add achievements/Workshop support (weight 0.01): Reviewers suggest adding more Steam achievements to the game to provide additional goals and rewards for players. The addition of Steam Workshop support is also highly desired, as it would allow players to create and share modifications, enhancing the game's replayability and customization options. - Improve resource allocation/exploration (weight 0.01): Reviewers suggest streamlining resource allocation and adding treasure chests distributed in the open world to improve exploration and reward players. The addition of a roguelike mode with randomly generated enemies is also proposed to provide a challenge and purpose for character builds in the late game. - Willing to support with DLC (weight 0.01): Reviewers express a willingness to financially support the game through DLC purchases, indicating their belief in its potential and their desire to see it continue to grow and improve. They believe the game has a future if it can survive and the developers continue to add content. Other player notes: - Early Access, awaiting full release (weight 0.06): The game is in early access, with the full release expected in 9-12 months. Players acknowledge the limited content and look forward to future updates, bug fixes, and the complete storyline. The current state is considered acceptable for early access. - Martial arts story and setting (weight 0.05): The game's story centers on Jiu Si, a protagonist with a special mission in a martial arts world. The game blends martial arts themes with an open-world setting and furry characters, offering a unique experience with potential for future content expansion. - Support for domestic development (weight 0.02): Reviewers express support for domestic game development, particularly for CRPGs. They appreciate the studio's efforts in creating a unique game in a genre with limited representation in the domestic market. - Ongoing game optimization (weight 0.01): The developers are actively optimizing the game based on player feedback. Examples include adjustments to team-wide shared comprehension, removal of the running stamina bar, and unified level settings. Emotions: No emotions}