Having a blast. Half ready to move on, half wanting to keep playing a little longer. The first in-game year of Immortal Life was a lot of fun, totally glorious, just what the doctor ordered to get me back in the gaming mood.
What I’m loving
Chinese cultivation! Heaven knows I’ve read enough cultivation web novels but I never thought I’d get to play a cultivator in a video game… Okay, that’s not completely true. I’ve played a mobile game with a cultivation theme before, but I dropped it after an hour or two and can’t remember the name so yeah, Immortal Life is the first.
Specifically Immortal Life has stuff like:
– A cultivation system that moves you from Qi Gathering to Foundation Establishment and then I don’t know what next because I haven’t gotten that far. I spent a lot of time at Qi Gathering because I hadn’t done the “Learning Spells” quest to break through (I didn’t even know it was a quest), but rising through the ranks should be faster now that I know what I’m doing.
– Flying swords! Only in the dungeons, but I’ll take it.
– Wuxia-inspired outfits and hairstyles. I found one I liked and just stuck to it, but there’s a range of styles to try out.
– Hidden realms to explore! They’re just dungeons by another name, but if I say they’re hidden realms then they’re hidden realms.
– An ancient master sealed in a jade pendant!
– Elixirs! And you get to craft them later too (no human furnaces or yin constitutions, though. No creeps here.)
– A sect system with teachers, junior and senior brothers/sisters, monthly allowances and increasing ranks.
– A spiritual pet who is starting to look a bit weird now that she can walk upright.
And probably some more stuff I don’t remember right now. All this makes the look and feel of the game very different from other farming games I’m tried, and that keeps me playing because it feels fresh.
Story
The story is that you arrive at the Guiyun Sect to work in their fields at an Elder’s request, but just then a meteor comes crashing down and obliterates the sect, leaving one comatose survivor and a bunch of wannabe sect members who use the disaster as a convenient way to declare themselves official sect members while no one is looking. No one will notice if there’s no one there to notice, amirite?
Now all of us wannabes-turned-official are working together to rebuild the Guiyun Sect from the ground up: repairing the broken buildings, finding sources of income, establishing relationships with other towns, etc. Technically we’re also interested in finding any sect survivors and solving the mystery behind the disaster, but honestly we’re not trying too hard in that direction. The fewer people ask questions, the better, amirite?
Gameplay
Farming! Colourful farming! And action RPG combat that is too easy to really count, but it’s still there. You grow mostly normal stuff like cabbages, bok choy, wheat, rice, but also a few unusual/cultivation-style crops like soulgrass and tianli fruit. Cooking and sharing various meals is a not unimportant part of the game, even though strictly speaking cultivators don’t need to eat. It’s a useful source of buffs and even money. In particular, it gives you stamina so you never have to worry about not having enough energy to do all your farm work. It very quickly becomes a non-issue, which is just the way I like it.
The story loop is that you sell some goods, process others, cook a few more, make money, spend it on fulfilling various main and side quests, make more money, and on and on. My advice is to progress the main quest as quickly as possible, at least until you wake up and fully cure Xie Wentian, because otherwise you’ll be stuck at Qi Gathering for ages, and that’s just not fun.
The action RPG combat comes into play in various dungeons that you explore to gather resources like Luminous Sand and Cinnabar needed to repair and renovate the sect and the neighboring town of Ferry Stop. Once you conquer a dungeon, the other ex-wannabees can explore it and gather resources too. Though they’re extremely slow and inefficient, they’re still better than most NPCs in similar games who contribute diddly-squat to your progress and instead just take, take, take.
In Immortal Life, sect members like Li Mengqing explore trade routes, Ji Yaohua runs a shop and manages trade and actually sends you pocket money from time to time, Chen Yuanzhou finds you free fish, You Jinhe repairs the sect buildings and Wei Hong makes very useful inventions like the Irrigation Well that saves you a ton of farming time, Yang Ziqin also collects resources and has appointed himself the de facto leader of the usurpers. Ostensibly he’s also watching over the surviving member’s recovery, but he’s sure taking his sweet time about helping the guy get better. This guy is fishy as hell (I’m kidding, I’m kidding, I know Brother Yang is a nice guy).
I should have separated the above into a paragraph about the characters in this game but eh, it’s not that important. One of the biggest draws of Immortal Life for me was that you don’t need to befriend or romance town or sect members to progress in the game. I am super over character interaction and fake hanging out with NPCs. I just want to farm and gather resources and fish and everything at my own pace, and the game is very, very good at letting me do that. Other people almost never come to my place, and that’s just the way I like it.
One thing I don’t like, however, is the lack of adequate explanations whenever something new is introduced. For example it would have saved me a lot of time if the game had told me that “Learning Spells” is a quest and not an instruction. And the last time I played, they introduced a gimmick with spiritual fruit, gave me an urn and a few lines of text and that was it. I had to look online to find out that plants have different elements and that the different-colored seed bags are actually a clue. I’m been feeling lazy to play Immortal Life ever since, because that kind of vague nonsense is just annoying. But writing all this makes me want to play again, so I’m going back now. See you with an update when I hit Year 3.
