Tale of Immortal
Guǐgǔ Gōngzuòshì · RPG, Simulation, Strategy, Indie
Overview
Tale of Immortal is an open-world sandbox based on Chinese mythology and cultivation. You will grow to become immortal, conquer the beasts from the Classic of Mountains and Season, make your choices carefully and grasp your own destiny.
THE GAMEQ VERDICT3,776 reviews analyzed
What players are actually saying
1. Summary
Tale of Immortal is a sandbox RPG about climbing the realms of xianxia cultivation, and 83% of the analyzed reviews recommend it. 33% of longer reviews measure it against the cultivation novels, manhua and donghua they already read, and they describe a world that pushes back: humiliate the wrong disciple and their parents, master and sworn siblings come hunting. Players also praise the spread of martial and elemental builds, the painted art and soundtrack, and the way each new realm opens another system. 14% of longer reviews attach a condition to their recommendation, usually that you already like the genre.
Grind draws more complaints than anything else. 25% of longer reviews call the loop grindy or repetitive, rising to 34% of the negative ones: every region repeats the same hunt for breakthrough materials and replacement skill manuals. 11% describe a game that will not start on a non-Chinese Windows setup until the player enables UTF-8, renames the install folder or deletes version.dll. The English translation comes up in 21%, and reviewers split on it. Bugs and lost saves, lopsided balance and a slow end-of-month turn come up less often. This verdict reads English reviews only, and Steam's all-languages rating is Mixed.
2. What keeps coming up
What players praise
It plays like a cultivation novelHigh
"Everything in this game is exactly how I imagined the Xianxia universe to be," one player writes, and 33% of longer reviews tie the game to xianxia and wuxia fiction in the same way. They list the tropes it reproduces: realms from Qi Refining up to Transcendent, breakthroughs that need rare treasures, sects with ranks and tournaments, auctions where a stronger cultivator robs you on the way out, alchemy, forging, dual cultivation and arrogant young masters. Readers of specific series name them, and several say the game finally lets them play out stories they had only read. Players new to the genre are split: some say it pulled them into the fiction, others found the terms and systems overwhelming without that background. 8% of longer reviews say the game is hard to put down.
A world that remembers who you hurtMedium
NPCs have families, masters, rivals and lovers, they grow stronger on their own, and killing one sets off a chain of relatives seeking revenge. 13% of longer reviews describe these simulated cultivators, many of them by telling a story from their own game. "Killed ONE guy and now his relatives relatives relatives relatives friends won't stop jumping me," one review jokes. Others recount being betrayed by a dungeon partner, adopted by a powerful elder, saved mid-fight by a friend, or stalked by an admirer, none of it scripted. The same system frustrates some players: cultivators from higher realms attack for reasons they cannot trace, and a few early-game players say the revenge spiral made a save unplayable.
Builds and the climb through the realmsMedium
14% of longer reviews talk about builds and skills. Reviewers count six martial arts and six spiritual roots, and describe four active skill slots, passive mind skills, random affixes on manuals and destinies chosen at each breakthrough. That leaves room for theory-crafting, and players enjoy mixing a blade build with lifesteal or summoning tamed beasts from a gourd. Each region adds a mechanic (artifacts, artifact spirits, beast taming, sect wars), which several reviewers say keeps the climb fresh. A few reviewers counter that some schools are much weaker than others (spear, finger and water get named) or that the wind movement skill is too strong, and skills learned in one realm are outclassed in the next.
Art and musicMedium
The scroll-painting world map, the character portraits, the small illustrations attached to events and the soundtrack are what the 10% of longer reviews that mention the visuals or music single out. "Its one of those games that because of the art style, doesn't photograph well," one player warns, meaning it looks better in motion than in screenshots. Some call the combat sprites basic or the screen too cluttered with effects in late fights.
Hundreds of hours for a low priceMedium
12% of longer reviews talk about price or value, often as hours per dollar. "The $ to hour value is pretty insane," one review says. Randomized towns, sects, NPCs and manuals, several endings and unlockable difficulties give players reasons to start over, though several suggest waiting for a sale and a few say the second run feels much like the first.
Where players are split
The English translationHigh
Reviewers divide on the translation, which 21% of longer reviews discuss. A few early ones mention playing with a fan translation while an official one was in the works, and some later players call the official text readable: "The English translation is pretty easy to understand," one says. Others describe untranslated quests, sect menus, endgame dialogue and DLC events, overflowing text, a language setting still labelled "English (Alpha)", and new content arriving in Chinese first. "frankly its been years and the game still isn't completely translated yet," a long-time player writes. The topic does not fade: it comes up in 22% of longer reviews written in 2021 and 30% of those written in 2026.
ModsHigh
17% of longer reviews mention mods. Supporters point to the in-game mod menu, Steam Workshop support and an editor simple enough for non-programmers, and some say quality-of-life or cheat mods are what make the grind bearable. The complaints are practical: "Unfortunately, most of the mods are in Chinese," and mods tagged English often are not. A few reviewers say deleting version.dll to get the game running breaks mods, others that updates break them, and a handful blame mods for corrupted saves.
CombatMedium
Fights are top-down and bullet-hell in style, and some players compare them to Vampire Survivors or a twin-stick shooter. 14% of longer reviews discuss combat. Fans enjoy the growing storm of swords, fireballs and summons as a build comes together, and the duels against other cultivators. Critics say most fights come down to holding the left mouse button, that movement is too slow and the dodge sits on a long cooldown, and that the outcome is decided by stats before the fight starts. "The game's combat is poorly balanced, and frankly, uninteresting," one player concludes.
Sects, relationships and side systemsMedium
"The sect system is one of my favorite parts," one player says, describing the rise from initiate to sect leader, tournaments and wars. Sects come up in 12% of longer reviews. Others find sect management tedious once they own several branches, and the wider social layer draws mixed notes: dialogue repeats, marriage changes little, several reviewers wish they could have children or found a family line, and outside of a few story characters NPCs "might as well be logs on the road," in one critic's words. A handful of reviewers note that romance is opposite-sex only: "Every single character including your own is strictly heterosexual."
Learning the systemsMedium
11% of longer reviews talk about how hard the game is to learn. Some like discovering systems on their own and say "the game respects your intelligence and relies on your curiosity." Others say key mechanics, such as where breakthrough materials spawn or how artifact spirits work, are never explained, and point newcomers to the Discord, a wiki and YouTube guides. Several advise treating the first character as a practice run.
Story and side questsMedium
Reviewers who bring up the side stories praise them as bittersweet, strange and rooted in Chinese myth, and several players say the ending stayed with them. The main quest draws more criticism: reviewers call it thin, a set of prompts to reach the next region, with a lore dump in the final area and quests that are easy to end early by accident.
The harder difficultiesLow
3% of longer reviews discuss Chaos and the other top difficulties. Enthusiasts argue "There is only one way to play this game: Chaos difficulty," because it forces you to use every system. Others say the hardest modes demand save-scumming or Alt+F4 to dodge permadeath, and that early-unlocked difficulties are too easy.
DLCLow
2% of longer reviews mention DLC. The Five Blooms companion stories and their music get praise, and recent reviewers say the DLC is mostly translated. Complaints cover untranslated DLC events and prices some think too high, and single reviewers mention a free-claim window that closed soon after full release and being unable to claim it on Proton.
What frustrates players
The grind and the repeating loopHigh
25% of longer reviews call the game grindy or repetitive, and these themes appear in 34% of negative longer reviews. The loop they describe is the same in every region: cultivate, buy or find new manuals, upgrade them, wait for bosses to spawn and drop breakthrough materials, break through, then move to a harder region where your skills are suddenly underpowered. "Immortality is a long, brutal grind," one review reads, and another calls the breakthrough hunt "like a massive xianxia grocery shopping spree." Random rolls sit on top of the grind (4% of longer reviews mention RNG or save-scumming for destinies, manual affixes and drops). Defenders say the grind suits a cultivation story and that mods or trainers cut it down, and some recommending reviews still name it as the price of entry.
The game will not start without a fixMedium
For some players, pressing Play does nothing on a non-Chinese Windows setup. 11% of longer reviews describe this launch problem, and it appears in 21% of negative longer reviews. Players share the workarounds at length: turn on the Windows "Beta: Use Unicode UTF-8" locale setting, rename the Chinese install folder and edit the Steam manifest, delete version.dll or reinstall MelonLoader. The problem appears in 2% of longer reviews written in 2021 and between 16% and 20% of those from 2022 to 2024. Some reviews open with the fix as a public service, and others come from returning players whose long saves stopped launching after an update. "Its 2026 and the dev still can't fix the issue of starting the game," one player writes.
Bugs, crashes and lost savesMedium
Freezes that force Alt+F4, menus that vanish, a skill preview that never loads and a breakthrough button that never appears are among the problems 10% of longer reviews report. 1% of longer reviews (19) describe losing a save outright, and a few single out the spatial ring quest: "Whatever you do, do not do the spatial ring quest, it will break your save file." Players also dislike the single autosave slot, which can leave no clean backup, and updates that broke old saves. Under 1% of longer reviews (13) say antivirus software flagged files after an update.
Power gaps and one-shot bossesMedium
5% of longer reviews complain about balance. The gap between realms is so large that fights against anyone a level above are hopeless, NPC "Heaven's Chosen" carry stats far beyond the player's, and enemies swing from trivial to lethal: "Either you oneshot or they oneshot you, even on the same realm." Reviewers single out late bosses for damage caps, regenerating parts and instant kills. "The ending of the game is locked behind 1-hit kill gimmicks," one player says.
The monthly turn and loading screensMedium
At the end of every in-game month the world recalculates while a wait screen plays, then NPCs queue up to chat, spar and debate, and every battle sits behind a load screen. 6% of longer reviews complain about this pace between fights. "The entire month system is pure misery," one review says. Players on older PCs add lag in large fights and stutter after launch.
Inventory and interface choresLow
4% of longer reviews mention the interface. Moving items to storage one stack at a time, a cramped inventory, small fonts, overlapping text and missing bulk actions add friction to a game built on collecting. Controller support gets mixed notes from under 1% of longer reviews (12), with buttons that do not work and menus that lock up.
3. The player conversation
Short reviews lean on genre in-jokes ("courting death", jade beauties, young masters), and long ones often pair a story about a feud or a doomed marriage with a careful list of pros and cons. Negative reviews are fewer but specific: they come from players who reached the later realms and found the loop unchanged, English-only players who ran into untranslated content, and buyers or returning players who could not get the game to start.
Opinion shifted with the game's history. Reviews written in 2021, when the game was in early access and gained its English option, were 89% positive. The 2022 reviews dropped to 72%, the same year launch complaints jump. Sentiment then recovered year by year, to 83% in 2023, 85% in 2024, 88% in 2025 and 91% in 2026, even though the launch fix and translation gaps still come up in recent reviews.
4. What the developers could do
- Make the game launch on any Windows locale. 11% of longer reviews describe workarounds for a game that will not start, and a few say the quickest one, deleting version.dll, breaks mods.
- Cut the grind between realms. 25% of longer reviews call the loop grindy or repetitive, and players ask for more reliable sources of breakthrough materials, skill points and spirit fruits, and skills that carry forward instead of being replaced every realm.
- Finish the English text and ship it with updates. Players still describe untranslated quests, sect menus, endgame dialogue and DLC events, and translation comes up more often in 2026 reviews than in 2021 ones.
- Fix save-breaking bugs and add save slots. Players lose long saves to the spatial ring quest and to updates, and the single autosave leaves them nothing to roll back to.
- Speed up the monthly turn and trim NPC interruptions. Players want a shorter world update, an option to skip routine chatter and sparring requests, and fewer load screens between map and battle.
- Rebalance realm gaps, weak schools and one-shot bosses. Reviewers ask for fairer fights against same-realm NPCs, a few want weaker schools such as spear brought up to par, and others want late bosses that do not rely on instant kills.
- Help English players find and use mods. A language filter or honest English tags, plus English documentation for the editor, would open up the mods that some reviewers say fix the game's rough edges.
- Add bulk inventory and storage actions. Moving items one stack at a time is a repeated chore in a game that hands out piles of materials every region.
