The Legend of Sword and Fairy

The Legend of Sword and Fairy (Chinese: 仙劍奇俠傳; pinyin: Xiānjiàn Qíxiá Zhuàn), also known as Sword and Fairy (仙劍) or Chinese Paladin, is a Chinese language fantasy video game series and media franchise centered on a series of nine Chinese mythology/xianxia-themed adventure role-playing computer games created by Yao Zhuangxian. The eponymous first game in the series is released for MS-DOS CLI in 1995 by the "Crazy Boyz" team (狂徒創作群) of the Taiwanese game developing and publishing company Softstar Entertainment (大宇資訊). It is one of the so-called "Twin Swords of Softstar" (大宇雙劍) along with the sister Xuan-Yuan Sword series, and has been widely regarded as one of the (if not the) most iconic Chinese RPG series ever made.

The original Sword and Fairy game became both a commercial and critical success across Greater China, dominating the "Favourite Singleplayer PC Game" list for ten years, and multiple sequels, prequels and sidequels (nearly all developed by Softstar's Mainland China subsidiaries) have been spawned due to its unprecedented popularity. The game franchise itself has since branched into other video game genres such as online games, mobile games, business simulation, MMORPG and digital card games. Additionally, there are numerous spin-off adaptations such as live-action television series, web series, stage productions, audio dramas, novelizations and comic books adapted from the main games, as well as associated fan fictions, artbooks, soundtracks, tabletop games, digital skins and collectible merchandises such as trading cards, figurines, action figures and plush dolls.

Softstar Entertainment's Crazy Boys Production Group (狂徒製作群) was formed in Taipei under game designer Yao Zhuangxian in 1993. The team was tasked with developing another fantasy RPG game after the success of the first two Xuan-Yuan Sword games, and released The Legend of Sword and Fairy for MS-DOS in July 1995, then known as Chinese Paladin or simply as "PAL" due to its file directory name. In the first month following the game's release in Taiwan, The Legend of Sword and Fairy sold over 100,000 copies, and sales reached 350,000 copies a month after the game's release in Mainland China. The game's overall sales totaled about two million copies, but as many as 20 million copies may be in circulation due to piracy (mainly in the form of illegally copied floppy disks and compilation CDs). It won the "Best Role Playing Game" award from the magazine CEM STAR and the Golden Bag Game Award (遊戯類金袋奖) from KING TITLE, was also on the top of the Best PC Game List of the New Gaming Era (新遊戯時代) magazine for 14 consecutive months until October 1996, and topped the "My Favourite Singleplayer PC Game" voter list in the PopSoft (大众软件) magazine for ten years. The game was re-released for Windows 95 in August 1997, and for Simplified Chinese as the "98 Affection Edition" (98柔情版) in October 1997. It was translated into Japanese and released for Sega Saturn in March 1999, but failed to achieve the same success as it did in Greater China. In July 2001, a re-rendered edition using Xuan Yuan Sword 3's 2D game engine named New Legend of Sword and Fairy was released for Windows XP.

At the same time, Softstar was also working on a sequel by Crazy Boys, but many members of the Crazy Boys including project leader Tsieh Chung-hui (謝崇輝) left the company halfway into development. Yao Zhuangxian, who was running Softstar's Shanghai subsidiary at the time, was urgently called back to Taiwan to salvage the project within a very tight deadline. The sequel game, The Legend of Sword and Fairy 2, was completed by the combined effort of the remaining Crazy Boys and Softstar's DOMO Team (who were mainly responsible for the Xuan Yuan Sword series) and released in January 2003, but the Crazy Boys Team ceased to exist afterwards.

Softstar's subsidiary at Shanghai, which had then only worked on the Han Dynasty and Rome (汉朝与罗马) real-time strategy game, was also pitching a second game for The Legend of Sword and Fairy series, but Yao Zhuangxian's idea was to have a story unrelated to the first game. When The Legend of Sword and Fairy 2 was given to the Crazy Boys to develop, Softstar Shanghai's project was also greenlighted, and The Legend of Sword and Fairy 3, the first of the series to use 3D character rendering was released in July 2004. After the game achieved good market reception, Softstar Shanghai then started planning the fourth game of the series. However, to raise funding, Softstar soon released a sidequel game named Wenqing Pian in August 2004 using the same indigenous GameBox engine.

The Legend of Sword and Fairy 4, the fourth main title of the series and the first to use full 3D rendering (thanks to the use of RenderWare engine), was released in August 2007. The game was a critical success and widely regarded as the best of the series after the first game, but Softstar soon disbanded the Shanghai subsidiary, whose intellectual properties and business services were all handed over to Softstar Beijing. Some members of Softstar Shanghai went on to establish another company, Aurogon Shanghai (上海烛龙), who created the GuJian series. Softstar Shanghai would be re-established in 2015, but it has since only been involved in developing mobile games until it was restructured in 2024.

After the disbanding of Softstar Shanghai, Softstar's Beijing subsidiary, which at that time were mainly responsible for the sleeper hit spin-off business simulation game Paladin's Inn and the Richman digital board game series, took up the mantle and started developing The Legend of Sword and Fairy 5 in 2009, releasing it in July 2011. The game is the first in the series to have voice acting for the dialogues (Sword and Fairy 4 also has voice acting but not with its initial release; the voices were added years later), but it was criticized for the lack of innovative plot, stiff character rendering and poor sound effects. The reception was somewhat improved with the release of two DLC expansion packs three months later, named Evening Rain (暮雨今夕) and Dreamlike Past (前塵若夢). At the same time, Chinese Paladin Online, an MMORPG jointly developed with Softstar Taipei, was released across Greater China, but the game was poorly received due to dispute with the Mainland service provider 9You (久游网) and the large amount of early gameplay bugs the players encountered. In January 2013, The Legend of Sword and Fairy 5 Prequel was released, made with the same RenderWare 3.7 engine as its predecessor, and was a much better critical success.

The Legend of Sword and Fairy 6 was released in July 2015. Although many praised the intricate plots and excellent voice acting, the game was panned by game reviewers for having obsolete graphics (despite the Unity 3D engine) and combat design, as well as severe optimization issue, with one benchmark even struggling to maintain consistent frame rates with a then-top-of-the-line Core i7 5960X and quad-linked GTX Titan X setup, causing the fans to mockingly nickname the game "Titanfall". The optimization problem was eventually fixed with a software patch. The game is also the first of the series to receive language localization, and the English language version was released on Steam as Chinese Paladin: Sword and Fairy 6 in late 2017 and on PlayStation 4 in April 2019, although its reviews had been rather mixed, and the translation quality was criticized as being very bad.