The Everlasting Regret Review, a Chinese Poem Puzzle Game

Written by

Are you looking for something new? Maybe like a poetry-inspired puzzle-solving experience? Then, this is the game for you. The Everlasting Regret is a must-play poem puzzle game. It is a new game released by Tencent’s Lightspeed & Quantum Studios.

The game was created by five fresh graduates, who hoped to present the unique charm of Chinese classical poetry in a game. It is an adapted version of the Chinese narrative poem, Song of Everlasting Regret. It was written by Bai Juvi, a great poet during the Tang Dynasty.

The game supports multiple languages; English, Japanese, Korean and Chinese. Everlasting Regret also features a tailor-made level. This level includes four chapters shaped into a puzzle-solving gameplay, stylized and inspired by the “original paintings” and the ink-brush style painting of ancient China.

Everlasting Regret is a blend of poetry, painting and cultural relics from the Tang Dynasty – the most prosperous period in Ancient China that popularized science and culture. It shows the classic story interpretation about love, loss and death. It also presents a historical linkage and embarks you on a truth-seeking adventure. The visual storytelling through the elegant artistry of ink-brush style paintings gives the players a truly immersive game experience.

It is rewritten based on the original classic poem. The game supports 6 languages – English, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Simplified Chinese, and Traditional Chinese.

Gameplay

The Everlasting Regret plays interactive poem puzzles. The players need to solve the puzzle to unlock every story.

Though its graphics are mainly inspired by paintings, it features an animated style transition for a more engaging storytelling. Each visual story runs a different type of puzzle with various choices, drawings and match solving.

The first puzzles in Chapter One and Two have three types of options to solve them; Vivify to animate specific objects in the painting, Bond to bind two objects in the painting and lastly, Erase to remove an object from the painting.

The story begins with a flower. To reveal the story, the player has to animate the flower to make it blossom. Animating is a game function that reveals the story of a specific object. Players have to use Vivify to animate it.

The next story tells of the fate of a flower and butterfly and what bonds them together. The Bond is an ink-brush used to bind two objects. In the example below, “These feelings about us, is it fate that bonds us?”. To get an additional clue, the player has to bond something within the painting. To complete this puzzle, he needs to connect the Butterfly and the Flower together by painting it with Bond.

Erase is used to remove something from the painting. In this example, the story goes “When life ceases to be, only memories go free”. This line means the player has to erase something from the painting to fulfill the story of the flower.

Erase is used to remove something from the painting. In this example, the story goes “When life ceases to be, only memories go free”. This line means the player has to erase something from the painting to fulfill the story of the flower.

Across all chapters, you are blown away by the beautiful animation painted all over the stories. The players even have an option to save the painting and share it with friends, or use it as wallpapers to your mobile phones.

The transition of events in the game is so fast but you need to pay attention to every detail. Some important pieces of the story can and will be used in the future scenes. The game is divided by 4 chapters. Each chapter scroll takes you 20 to 30 minutes to finish but it also depends on how you can quickly answer all of the puzzles.

In Chapter Three, the gameplay becomes more interesting. Instead of choosing just three options – Vivify, Bond and Erase, where you choose an item in the painting, puzzles can be solved differently. The player needs to paint the missing object in the canvas.

The clues are still in the story and the word you need to paint is highlighted. In the example below, “The moon viewed from his tent shed a soul-searching light, The hell’s head in drizzled rain made a heart-rending might.”. The moon is the highlighted word. It means you need to paint this object on the canvas to reveal the next story.

Lastly, in Chapter Four, the puzzle changes into a well-crafted wheel-solving game where an interactive wheel painting can be used to solve the puzzle. The player has to match the two wheel paintings to fulfill the story.

The references and achievements make the game more interesting. For a puzzle game, the story line is highly detailed and helps players to escape their struggles in the real world.

Players can also unlock lots of achievements like the Royal Grace Magnanimity (a hidden achievement). This hidden achievement can be unlocked by using bonds on the little emperor (by erasing him) and the jade ring. There are also non-hidden achievements like using the annotation 5 times. Other achievements to unlock are the painter, love for peonies, make way, “Will this please him?”, and more.

There are a total of 33 achievements (hidden achievements not included) in the game. In instances where your phone is unable to save the data, try saving the cache (android) and then log in to your Google account.

Storyline

The game flows through the chapters of the Everlasting Regret. The story line moves with big but brilliant changes, turning the poem into a historical puzzle game. It is an honest adaptation of the original classical poem. The song of everlasting regret has over 100 lines, and there isn’t much difference in the game from the original classic poems aside from its beautiful painting artwork. The transition of game events is fast-paced.

History lovers will find this game very appealing. Even if the story is all about love and loss, it also depicts the greatness of Chinese culture and literature and history; explained throughout great illustrations of animated painting and poetry mixed with puzzle games.

The Everlasting Regret starts out as a love story set in the time of Tang Dynasty. It is about an emperor seeking for love and a beautiful woman from the house of Yang who just came of age.

Over the course of the game, Emperor Xuanzong becomes so entranced by Lady Yang and they enjoy every minute of their love and time together that he forgets all of his responsibilities to the kingdom. The tragic part of the story begins when the uprising happened (we will end here so as not to spoil and we also want you to see it for yourself). The Everlasting Regret gives players a goosebump experience as it sets sail to an overlapping story and poetry game. The deeper you get into the puzzle game, the more interesting the story becomes.

The longer you play the game, the more addictive becomes. Unlocking the stories offers more surprises especially when players reach beyond chapter 3 where you get more hooked to the story line. The poem ends with the line, “The boundless sky and endless earth may pass away, but this vow unfulfilled will be regretted for aye.”

At the completion of the game, the serene rap song plays while the end credits and the behind-the-scenes are shown.

Graphics

The Everlasting Regret is one of the unique games developed by Tencent, a casual puzzle game embedded with paintings and literature.  The painting used in the gameplay gives off the vibe that it was done by professional painters. The oriental art style and high detailed ink-brush painting is just beautiful.

The soundtrack has a very positive impact on the rest of the game’s graphical output. You can clearly see the connection of the soundtrack to the story. The music running through the gameplay used Chinese traditional instruments. In terms of motion, you can see a seamless turn of events in every animated painting.

The graphics and soundtrack are the types that poetry and puzzle lovers would not expect but they were done tastefully and intentionally so that fans would only love it more.

Conclusion

This new game from Tencent, the Everlasting Regret, is the perfect mix of the classic and the modern. From a historical poem of love and loss to an enchanting puzzle game. Everlasting Regret shows a brilliant adaptation of the highly-detailed story, provides interesting references and achievements, and sticks to the original classical poem story line. This game teaches players the true meaning of love and care for history.

Everlasting Regret feels like you’re peacefully travelling back in time. It plays with your emotions as you play along. Each scene has different stories with different life lessons to be learned. It is truly a unique and innovative game.

Article Tags:
·
Article Categories:
Game Reviews

Leave a Reply