Shuyan is a visual novel with third person/isometric combat, in a Chinese martial arts mythical fantasy setting. The art is comic book style and clearly completely hand drawn. I was mesmerised by the illustrations in the game and clearly in this generation of AI generated arts, it was very nice to see hand drawn pictures. I would further like to mention that at no time a single art illustration is repeated and there are tons of illustrations in the game.

English voice over is available for Shuyan and for every character in the game. The voice overs felt impeccable and fitting to the fantasy setting of this game. I would further like to point out that voice over is for each and every dialogue and for every greeting/emotion, in the game. Background sound and music are fitting for Chinese mythical fantasy setting.

I was ecstatic to see that the developer has not compromised on arts and voice over and music department, and this only makes this game better than most of the visual novels available on Steam.

I played the game on keyboard and mouse setting. Apart from Shuyan's movements, all her combat is completely carried out through mouse control. I had to get used to this mouse only combat but i was able to follow the flow of the combat. Still i had to skip over two combat events (one during training and one during fight in darkness) where even after many attempts, i couldn't succeed.

Technically, at one or two combat event i had to reload the game multiple times to get enemies to fight Shuyan or to get Shuyan to fight enemies otherwise i didn't find any other issue technical issue in the game.

However, one strange choice in the game occurs when Shuyan has either to save her mum or to save her friend, and i felt that this situation could have been avoided. This is the strangest choice that i have ever seen in a video game, and anybody with a little bit of mind and heart, will always choose to save mum.

Finally, i recommend this game due to its hand drawn arts, voice over, Chinese mythical fantasy setting and for overall story and the game play. As the time passes by, it is increasingly getting difficult to find games like Shuyan saga and i hope to see further games from the developer, just like Shuyan saga.