The Legend of Tianding casts you as a Taiwanese folk hero fighting against Colonial Japanese authorities using Kung Fu, a grappling hook, and your waist sash.
The game fights through the Dadaocheng area of Taipei city in 1909, and there are a lot of crooked, nasty people to fight at the time. Greedy rich landlords, corrupt politicians, and the aforementioned authorities are creating a lot of trouble for the people of Taiwan. Thankfully, you’ll be cleaning up much of it with your fists and feet. While doing so, you’ll also be learning a bit of Taiwan’s history, as the thrilling action and story elements all draw from real people, places, and events. I really love learning about stuff by beating the tar out of bad people, myself, so I’m beyond down for this game.
You have a few tools available to you that make for a more acrobatic beat ’em up. While you can beat down your many (MANY) opponents using Tianding’s Kung Fu skills, staying on the move is more effective. Especially if you’re a single opponent facing down multiple people. For that, you have a grappling hook that will let you flit around the environment, staying out of reach or surprising your opponents from other directions. Even neater is the waist sash, which you can use to tangle up opponents, grabbing them to keep them from attacking AND opening them up to your own hits. When it all comes together, you’re just flying all over the place, demolishing foes before they can hope to react.
The Legend of Tianding is a fantastic beat ’em up with some wonderful locales and character designs, and makes for a wonderful introduction to this historical figure and time. Also, it has some downright stunning boss fights, which make it even more of a must-have game for me. Why did it take me so long to dig into this?
The Legend of Tianding is available now on the Nintendo eShop and Steam.
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