Five months after I posted about a Chinese action game featuring aerial combat, I’ve got another cool one to show you. Despite the silly name, Project: The Perceiver is a melancholy political drama that gives me some Ghost of Tsushima vibes. But Project: The Perceiver moves beyond the standard Soulslike combat. And when I saw the main character running up the wall—that’s when I really started to pay attention.
Most of the enemies are human, which means that the initial focus is on knowing how to parry attacks and smash their heads in with a rolling kick. As you accumulate experience, the protagonist can transform into flower blossoms and wall-jump his way across rotating platforms. I’m eager to see the full range of abilities when the game gets closer to launch.
Wuxia is a Chinese literary genre in which wandering heroes travel across China in order to fight for justice, and Project: The Perceiver fits well into that genre. The protagonist, who is later known as the Mask of Devotion is killed in a battle, his ruler is murdered, and he returns to life as a masked phantom, which makes it feel a bit like The Ghost of Tsushima. Devotion goes on to fight against the Mask of Umbra, a rebel who seems to enjoy indulging in a bit of moral philosophy. “This land belongs to all of its inhabitants,” the villain would say while battling the hero in a field of flowers. “Be it Liangs or Tangs, does it matter what the regime is called?” Like dang. We’re having ethics class in the middle of a life-or-death battle. I love it.
There’s just one problem—the localization is atrocious. The descriptions are flowery in a way that feels like they were translated too literally from Chinese. It’s difficult for me to parse what the translations are trying to tell me. The trailer is perfectly comprehensible, so I’m hoping that this was just a marketing flub.
Project: The Perceiver does not yet have a release date, though it’s confirmed for PlayStation 4 and 5. It’s unclear whether or not it will come to other platforms in the future.