The Weeping Swan: Ten Days of the City's Fall

I am writing this review because I want to offer a different perspective from those who gave this game a negative rating. First, I want to say that I do agree with many points of the negative reviews. It is true that this game is flawed, but that shouldn't deter you from giving it a try, with some caveats of course. This is the review of just the base story, not the Liang and Sui dlc. This is not a game that is lighthearted in any way. As with their prequel "The Hungry Lamb," players are immediately shown a world of bleakness, despair, unfairness, tragedy, vileness, every negative trait you can think of in our collective humanity's history. "The Weeping Swan" thoroughly shows and unravels before its players the grim reality of war, of a transitioning age in ancient history, a time where a human life is cheap and savagery runs its course. How historically accurate the game depicts these events I will not argue, and leave that to the historians. However, I think an appeal of this game, its realism that allows players to feel immersed, is also its biggest downfall. If you like tragic romances, this game delivers. Every moment of the game I felt empathy and sympathy for the character…

[h1]Recommended, but with a lot of caveats[/h1] I still recommend [i]Weeping Swan[/i] because I want more people to discover this series and give the developers more incentive to make a third game. Hopefully we'll get to see [spoiler]Man Sui and Liang[/spoiler] again in the future, with [spoiler]Man Sui[/spoiler] having more presence in the main story instead of just cameo . (Just keep milking them 😉) [hr][/hr] [h2]Issues[/h2] [list] [*]The English localization needs more work. There are several untranslated lines, and sometimes the text is completely blank. [*]When running the game through Windows compatibility layer like Wine, UI elements has green boxes around them and you can't scroll using trackpad/mouse on the text log and the flowchart, need to use keyboard to scroll which is annoying. I encountered this on macOS (CodeWeavers) and Android (GameHub). I haven't tested Linux yet. The game works fine on native Windows. [/list] [hr][/hr] [h2]Story Thoughts (Spoilers)[/h2] [spoiler]My biggest issue with the game is Lin Pianpian's true ending. I'm not asking for a happy ending. Tragic endings can be great when they're done well. The problem is that her ending felt unsatisfy…

I like the story. Despite the backlash I hope the dev doesnt shy away from somber and bleak stories. The only thing I dislike is that the flashbacks were too excessive and frequent.

Great game and worthy sequel to "The Hungry Lamb". Definitely play The Hungry Lamb first, because there are many recurring characters. Overall game structure feels better than The Hungry Lamb, since this time round there are actually a number of branching storylines to multiple endings. That said, don't go into this game expecting a truly happy ending - this game is at heart, a love tragedy against the backdrop of a city massacre by invaders, so naturally the majority of the endings won't feel emotionally satisfying. Only one of the true endings, plus the epilogue (bringing closure to the protagonists' story from The Hungry Lamb) feel like a good ending.

What a disgrace being the sequel of hungry lamb. Halfway through the story, I still didn't know what it was about or what the point was. Overly wordy for how little happens, it's like there was a word count quota. Seeing Sui and Liang again was good, but the whole VN ruined everything. This is just awful. Also why do I still have 3 card drops remaining after 10 hours of game time???

Leaving this here for the fact the reviews tackle this game too harsh. I'll be quick on the good and bad in my opinion. The good: - The voice acting - Music, backgrounds and especially the CG art - The new characters, despite what others say - The harsh realities this VN brings I read this in English (version 2.6 - 2.7 at the time) and felt the translation was in a much better state than what I had seen from launch from other reviewers. The bad: - Very filler at times leading me to speed read and even outright skip some of the "normal endings" - On the other hand of the translation it is still missing some translation especially later in the story. Even having some moments have the text repeat itself twice. - An unhealthy amount of flashback/past scenes, really kills the pace of the present day scenario. If you have read through the Hungry Lamb, give Weeping Swan a go even on a discount purchase. And if you haven't read Hungry Lamb yet I highly recommend doing that!