Taking in the fresh air in rural China

Developer Everstone Studio

Publisher NetEase

Format PC

Origin  China

Release  2024

Over a dozen or so hours we cover a lot of ground in Everstone’s RPG, but it doesn’t feel like adventuring so much as rambling. Rarely do we pick a point on the map, place a marker and head off as the crow flies. Instead, we may as well be obeying the breeze, as we sway between eye-catching sights and curious situations. When our time with the game is over, we don’t necessarily understand how everything works, only that there’s plenty of it, and at no point were we anything less than engrossed.

In the opening region of Where Winds Meet, Qinghe, play seems to be dictated by an overwhelming sense of serenity. Sure, violence erupts now and again, but we can’t help but yearn to run fingers through its saturated greens, paddle in a sun-sparkled brook, take shade beneath the white blankets of pear-tree blossom that herald a month of drinking festivals in your village. As you travel, lilting woodwinds and strings harmonise with bird song and insect trills, while the wind shushes any extraneous noise. Enraptured, we pause to watch a pair of stags locking antlers – for a little too long, it turns out, as they take umbrage at our voyeurism and chase us away.

What better conditions for wandering, though? It helps that our customised character (not all appearance options are available in this beta version) is a youthful dreamer, stuck in this backwater – as glorious as it is – and reined in by a matriarchal aunt who sends them on errands when they’d rather be practicing martial arts. In the opening hours, then, you’re less a hero than a student of life, every encounter, no matter how trivial, doubling as a lesson. To underline the point, experience levels are alternatively referred to as ‘maturity’, while your level cap increases through discovery. Dip into the game’s ample menus and you’ll find a great archive waiting to be filled with animals, crafts, medicines, martial-arts techniques, you name it. Each entry you add rewards you with jade bangles, as do treasure chests, side quests and more besides, quantifying your knowledge of the world.