Buried deep within Swords of Legends Online's terrible translation and cluttered user interface is a good game; MMOs often hide many of their best features behind an arbitrary leveling process, which is downright deceptive. For days I ran from one quest marker to the next, stuck in an endless loop of tedious fetch quests and mostly incomprehensible cutscenes. But now that I'm level maxed out, SOLO feels like a completely different and far more likeable MMO. [You can run dungeons, engage in PvP brawls, search for hidden treasures, and even use lanterns to travel to parallel dimensions and hunt dangerous undead spirits. Team up to take down world bosses, beg certain NPCs for gifts, and frolic in the most complex housing system ever seen in an online game. It's been a long time since I've played an MMO with this much variety, and SOLO is hamstrung by a few issues that can't compete with popular games like Final Fantasy 14 and World of Warcraft.

What makes SOLO's endgame so rich and expansive is that the MMO has actually been around for a long time; SOLO is a spin-off of the Gujian RPG series, which also spawned a highly successful and award-winning Chinese TV show.

At the core of Gujian and SOLO is a brilliant approach to Xianxia, a genre steeped in Chinese mythology. North Americans might simply call it "epic fantasy," but it is more than just a Chinese twist on classic genre tropes such as elves and dragons. It is a universe-spanning martial arts drama that focuses on the process of "training" to gain strength and wisdom through ordeals, and the heroes and villains are often gods who battle across dimensions. To call it epic is an understatement.

This fantasy is expressed not only through SOLO's breathtaking environments and monstrous enemies, but also in the way my characters move through the world. While running, he can leap into the air with the grace of a martial arts film. With enough speed, he can easily leap over entire buildings, run across rooftops, or even fly around on a mystical sword like a skateboard.

Just wish I knew what I was jumping, running, and skating on; SOLO is a story-driven game that painstakingly depicts its fantasy world and characters, but the translation and localization efforts of its Western publisher, Gameforge, Inc. disastrous, rendering almost all of it pointless; nearly every aspect of SOLO is dragged down in one way or another.

I quickly gave up trying to understand what was going on, as the voices in the cutscenes sounded like machine translations and were in limp English. Leveling was nearing the end and I spent as much time pressing the "F" key as I did completing quests. I even changed my spoken language to Chinese to get away from the bad English dubbing. Worst of all, the world of SOLO is teeming with evil sea witches, demonic blades, and ancient gods.

It's baffling that GameForge decided to release a story-driven MMO with such a shitty localization. Not only are they obviously ruining one of the game's best features, the story, but they are actively weaponizing it. The story has become an obstacle to be overcome by blitzing through the leveling process as quickly as possible, rather than a useful means of deepening one's relationship with this fantastic world. And now, despite being immersed in a more satisfying endgame, there is always a distance between me and SOLO.

The localization sucks, and I'm not just talking about the story cutscenes and quests, but it ruins almost every interaction with the game. Tooltips for abilities make no sense, tutorial instructions are confusing, and you can play for hours without realizing that there are very useful rewards to be earned through SOLO's various progression systems.

All of this is exacerbated by SOLO's cluttered user interface. There are dozens of menus, each with important uses, but they are so disorganized that it is really frustrating trying to find what you need. Just equipping a hotbar with non-combat abilities or looking for the progress of a particular endgame faction can mean poking my head around for minutes until I find the right menu. [I've played a lot of non-English MMOs. I have used optical character recognition software to translate screens at runtime, but Swords of Legends often feels equally inaccessible despite being technically translated into English.

SOLO is a thoroughly inaccessible game, but if you persist, you will eventually stumble upon a sprawling endgame with plenty of variety; after 24 hours of questing, I finally reached the maximum level of activity I wish I hadn't locked myself in the shade of this torment I smashed the piñata.

The dungeon, which at first seemed dauntingly easy, now has two additional difficulty modes that add to the challenge in interesting ways. Not only have the bosses increased their HP, but they have also added new attacks that create complex AoE patterns to dodge. Defeating bosses requires a fair amount of effort and skill, but it still doesn't come close to the spectacle and challenge of the collective action of World of Warcraft or Final Fantasy 14.

What I unexpectedly enjoyed was SOLO's intense 3-on-3 PvP arena. I'm usually not a fan of PvP, but here the combat system nails the fantasy of the agile martial hero. During the quest, most enemies just stand around and occasionally give out special abilities, but they can be easily sidestepped, making it difficult to understand the nuances of the Spearmaster's abilities.

In PvP matches (and to a lesser extent, in endgame dungeons and world bosses), I was forced to use my abilities better. I dodge deadly attacks with graceful backflips, then use another skill to rush back into melee range. Some attacks can be chained together into deadly combos, temporarily upgrading other abilities. The fights are flashy and explosive, and require good reflexes.

It is also nice to know that the endgame in SOLO is not all about killing for loot. Finding clues in treasure maps can lead you to rare loot hidden all over the world. You can spend hours building furniture, meticulously adjusting each pixel to fit your new home perfectly, and frolic in a hilarious Bomberman-style PvP mode. You can hunt in an otherworldly world infested with evil spirits or fish lazily by a quiet river. All of this is reflected in various progression systems that often overlap and rain rewards down on me.

There is none of the time-gating and pay-to-win nonsense so prevalent in other MMOs, and it's a wonder there is so much to do. There are a few restrictions, such as not being able to acquire dungeon loot more than once a day, but it's hard to be grumpy about that when there are so many other things you can do instead. Despite having a cash store, SOLO only sells cosmetics. There is no subscription fee (not even an option).

It's cool to see SOLO going against the negative stereotypes associated with many MMOs. I just wish it were more approachable. If you have the patience to endure the initial leveling struggles and endure the localization clutter, there's a lot to like. SOLO is only recommended to those who have already graduated from the great works of this genre, such as Final Fantasy 14, and are eager for an alternative.