Video Game / Eastern Exorcist

Left: Lu Yun-chuan, Right: Xiahou-xue

This is a world of Gods and Spirits.
Demons and monsters wreak havoc across the land.
Exorcists - a group that suppresses the chaos.
May the story about these exorcists begin.

Eastern Exorcist (斩妖行 ) is a side-scrolling Fantasy wuxia-themed Action RPG with Metroidvania elements developed by Wildfire Game, an Indie company based in Wuxi, China, and published by BiliBili.

In a version of the Ming Dynasty populated by all sorts of demons and monsters, the Eastern Exorcists are an order of Magic Knights and demon slayers, trained by the Cangshan Sect and tasked with cleansing the land of evil, sworn to do battle against demonic forces at all costs until peace can be achieved between humans and demons.

Effectively a two-in-one game, right off the beginning players are given a choice of two characters to start off with, assuming the role of either an exorcist, or a half-demon.

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Eastern Exorcist Campaign:

Lu Yun-chuan, a young swordsman of the Cangshan Sect and exorcist-in-training whom the player controls, was on an assignment with three of his sworn brothers, tasked with tracking down a powerful demon overlord called the Mandrill King, as their "graduation" exam. Investigating a ruined village, a run-in with an unarmed, seemingly-innocent hulijing named Xiaoyu, caught by his brothers, has Yun-chuan deciding to spare the fox devil. Unfortunately, Yun-chuan's empathy leads to him being ambushed by the Mandrill King, his sworn brothers slain, and Yun-chuan barely surviving the ambush. Returning to the Cangshan Sect, Yun-chuan was subsequently cast out for his failure.

Believing the hulijing Xiaoyu to be responsible for his downfall, Lu Yun-chuan embarks on a bitter quest for revenge, attempting to hunt her down while uncovering a far greater conspiracy at hand. And the villain isn't who he assumes to be.

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Half-Demon Campaign:

The Xiahou siblings, Xiahou-qing and his sister Xiahou-xue, are amongst members of a half-human, half-hulijing clan residing in the mountains. In a botched mission to steal a sacred elixer from a powerful python demon, Xiahou-qing was poisoned by the python's venom while attempting to save his sister.

Xiahou-qing was able to survive the poison's effects, at the cost of losing his mortal body. Reduced to a spirit that clings on his sister, where his soul will dissipate within 6 months if his body isn't restored in time, it's up to Xiahou-xue, the player protagonist, to seek a cure and bring her brother back.

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The game (and both campaigns, of course) is made available for the PC, PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S.

Tropes related to both Campaigns

• Airborne Mooks: From floating ghost-women to vultures and winged imps, they appear aplenty in both campaigns and flies circles around the player characters.
• Alliterative Title:
  • Eastern Exorcist, though it applies more to Lu Yun-chuan's campaign (him being an actual exorcist) than Xiahou-Xue's (she's a half-demon and not exactly human).
  • Also, Xiahou-xue.
• Always Chaotic Evil: The lowest-ranked demons (rat-men, crocodile-humans, fish-monsters, etc) lives by with feasting on human flesh, attacking civilains on sight and hardly displays any degree of sentience, only serving as mooks the player can slice apart in both campaigns. The demons who serve masters, however, does demonstrate some minor moments of intelligence (chatting in cutscenes, fleeing from battles when they're clearly outmatched, etc) during cutscenes.
• Charged Attack: Lu and Xue can release an empowered slash, respectively with their jian and halberd, by holding down the basic attack button. It's even called "Charged Attack" in the English translation.
• Circling Birdies: Land enough hits on enemies and a halo of stars will pop up above their heads. Hit them again before they recover to deal more damage.
• Covers Always Lie: There are posters, promotional materials and cover arts depicting Lu Yun-chuan and Xiahou-xue kicking ass together (or, at the very least, posing in a way that implies they are side-by-side). In actual gameplay though? Their quests do not intersect, and they don't meet each other regardless which path the player chooses (let alone fighting as a team).
• David Versus Goliath: Nearly all the bosses are huge, compared to Lu Yun-chuan and Xiahou-xue. The only bosses which are exceptions (being the same size as the player heroes) are Chu, Tang Ming and Zhang the traitor.
• Epic Flail: The elk demon (a Mini-Boss for Lu Yun-chuan, and a proper boss for Xiahou-xue) uses a spiked ball on a chain as a weapon. Be wary when he's swinging it in circles, and get ready to dodge when he throws it to avoid massive damage.
• Fish People: Aquatic demons resembling deformed human-fish hybrids appears as enemies in stages near water. There's even a variant with fish-tails who can spit acidic liquid projectiles.
• Ghostly Glide: An ability demonstrated by most of the ghost-themed enemies. The recurring ghost-women mooks notably use their gliding to corner the player character.
• Giant Spider: Oversized, hostile arachnids as large as the player characters appears as regular enemies in both campaigns, more than halfway through. They look more like creatures made of wood than actual spiders, though.
• Goomba Stomp: A favoured attack by several bosses, especially those larger than Lu or Xue. They'll repeatedly jump up and down attempting to flatten the player under their bodies.
• In a Single Bound: Befitting a wuxia, both Lu and Xue can jump great distances using their chi, and even unlock a Double Jump move early into gameplay.
• King Mook: Shows up amongst the boss lists in both campaigns. Lu Yun-chuan needs to fight boss versions of the Hair Feeder, Treants and Giant Spider enemies, for instance, while Xiahou-xue has to dismantle a skeleton king version of the common skeleton enemies.
• Mirror Boss: Zhang Huai-zhou for Lu Yun-chuan, and Tang Ming for Xiahou-xue. They're the only human-sized bosses, with almost every other boss being a gigantic monstrosity larger than the players.
• Mounted Mook: The wolfmen enemies have a variant that rides... on ordinary wolves. Somehow. After the rider is killed, the wolf-steed will continue attacking with it's own health-bar.
• Plant Mooks: Bark demons are humanoid creatures made of wood who attacks in forest-themed areas. Lu fights them around halfway in his stages, while Xue only encounters them in her last level.
• Rat Men: Rodent-demons are rat-headed humanoids who serves as the lowest-ranked enemies in both campaigns. They're weak goombas for Lu and Xue to slice apart en masse.
• To Serve Man: As revealed in a few cutscenes, the various mook-level demons feeds on humans, and the aftermath can be seen in ruined villages. It's not pretty - especially one area in Xiahou-xue's campaign when she comes across an underground larder filled with human remains.
• Shield-Bearing Mook: Rodent and lizard demons armed with round, bronze shields are in both campaigns, where they can take more damage than unshielded enemies.
• Stringy-Haired Ghost Girl: Appears in both campaigns, depicted as ethereal women in flowing white robes and having long hair that conceals their faces. They float around all over the place and can damage the player on contact, but luckily the weapons used by Lu and Xue are blessed to hurt spirits.
• Sword Beam: An ability demonstrated by some higher-ranked enemies, their blades capable of launching crescent-shaped projectiles with each swing. Then again Lu and Xue can pull this off at a higher level.
• Sword Lines: Both Lu and Xue, as well as numerous bosses, tends to leave curved lines after every slashing attack. Even some enemies who fights unarmed leaves behind slash-lines.
• Vile Vulture: Demonic vultures, far larger than the real deal, serves as a recurring enemy in both campaigns.
• Will-o'-the-Wisp: Whenever floating, glowing blue balls of gaseous light shows up, you can expect a ghost-themed enemy to suddenly materialize onscreen and attack. They're everywhere in one stage set inside a graveyard (under Lu's campaign).
• Wolf Man: Wolf-demons, humanoids with lupine features including wolf-heads and covered in grey shaggy fur, are an enemy in both campaigns. A few of them even howls if left idle.
• Written Sound Effect: Landing onscreen hits will result in words popping out to emphasize damage inflicted. Notably, "Break" ("破"), "Chop" ("斩"), "Slash" ("砍"), and so on.

Tropes from Lu Yun-chuan's story

• Apathetic Citizens: The civilian population of Hexi village demonstrates some ridiculous moments of apathy, which figures into the backstory of some of the bosses (who turns out to be tragic monsters because of their past). For instance, the Shura used to be an orphaned boy the villagers simply ignored and left to starve to death on his own, while there is a water demon monster was a rape victim which the villagers sentence to death in order to preserve their village's reputation.
• Amphibian at Large: The Miasma Toad is an amphibian demon, several times larger than Lu Yun-chuan, who serves as a boss in a swamp level.
• Body of Bodies: A couple of the bosses:
  • Shura is a cluster of ghosts formed into one gigantic spirit-entity.
  • Three-Faced Rakshasha, like the name implies, is made of three different bodies joined together.
• Dead Person Conversation: In the haunted swamp, Lu Yun-chuan encounters the soul of Tang Wen-jie, one of his two sworn brothers who died in the backstory, who blames him over the failed mission. Lu Yun-chuan is unable to fight his brother and Wen-jie wants to assimilate him, and then Xiaoyu unexpectedly shows up and saves Lu, to his surprise.
• Degraded Boss:
  • Zig-zagged with the Hair Feeder, a green, ghoul-like enemy who first appears as a Mini-Boss fought at the end of one stage, then a proper boss in another, before coming back as regular enemies. Their boss counterparts appear only in Lu's part of the game, whereas Xue only fights mook-level Hair Feeders.
  • Green Wrath returns as a minor Giant Mook enemy, even retaining the same attack abilities it has as a boss.
• Dracolich: Dragon God, one of the last few bosses, a zombified Chinese long dragon who's animated by a few hundred restless spirits and appears to be some sort of undead / demonic draconic abomination. It spends the whole boss fight flying circles around Lu, and it's ribs are visible on the decaying holes of it's elongated, serpentine body.
• Fiendish Fish: One of the bosses is a deformed fish-demon larger than boats, who attacks Lu Yun-chuan as he's crossing a bridge. It'll flop in and out of water trying to chomp on Lu until it's slain.
• Foreshadowing: After defeating Snow Ape in the prologue, Lu Yun-chuan realize something's amiss and runs back to the campsite to seek his brothers... only to see the corpses of Tang Wen-jie and Zhang Yi-cai, and the last brother, Zhang Huai-zhou, succumbing to his injuries in a distance. The ending reveals Zhang Huai-zhou to be an informant working for the demons, and reappears, quite alive, to fight Lu as the real Post-Final Boss.
• Gorgeous Gorgon: Lady poison is an Oriental gorgon with shapely facial features and the usual snakes-for-hair (along with some centipedes), but her lower body is that of a centipede. She can't petrify Lu Yun-chuan like a Western gorgon, though she can use a ton of poison-based moves, from toxic smoke to venomous bites and acidic stingers (what were you expecting, given her name?)
• Healing Checkpoint: Shrines serves this purpose, where Lu can save his progress and restore his health.
• Jack Bauer Interrogation Technique: When Lu Yun-chuan meets Xiaoyu again, he interrogates her at swordpoint. Justified because he's still under the impression that she's the one who betrayed him after he convince his brothers to spare her in the backstory - Xiaoyu must help Lu complete another quest first before he's ready to trust her.
  Xiaoyu: I ran away from the snow mountain after you let me go that day. I have no idea what you're talking about!
• Killed Offscreen: The fates of Tang Wen-jie and Zhang Yi-cai, two of Lu Yun-chuan's brothers, in the hands of an unknown assailiant where they reappear as chained-up corpses in the burning ruins of their camp. Zhang Huai-zhou, still alive and a mile away, reveals they're killed by minions of the Mandrill King after the released hulijing, Xiaoyu, rats out their location, leading to Lu's quest of atonement. Until the final scene where it turns out Zhang Huai-zhou, is the real culprit and had backstabbed both brothers.
• Living Statue: The underground caverns has Buddhist Yama statues that comes to life and attacks Lu Yun-chuan. Being made of rocks they're among the more durable mooks. They suffer Literally Shattered Lives if slain.
• Maniac Monkeys: Mandrill King, like the name states, is a powerful demon lord with a mandrill motif. There's also the Snow Ape, Mandrill King's minion serving as Lu's first boss fight.
• Multi-Armed and Dangerous:
  • Green Wraith, a demon-ogre with four arms and attacks Lu using all his appendages. He can even execute a Rapid-Fire Fisticuffs with all four fists simultaneously. He's also a boss in Xiahou-xue's scenario.
  • Exeggerated with the Amorphous Plague Demon, a walking mass of limbs. Imagine a gigantic Waddling Head on four spider-like legs, and two dozen hands growing from the sides.
• Mysterious Mist: The swamp and waterfall valley levels are constantly shrouded in a thick mist, seemingly to emphasize the location's spiritual elements. Annoyingly they'll inflict an Interface Screw at several points, until Lu is barely visible onscreen in the middle of a fight.
• No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: Lu's empathy over a helpless hulijing leads to his brother being killed, and his subsequent expulsion from the Order of Exorcists. For most of the first half Lu (and the players) are led to believe the hulijing, Xiaoyu, is the traitor behind Lu's downfall, but turns out it's not the case.
• Pushy Mooks: One stage sees Lu Yun-chuan crossing a river infested with river-spirits via a boat, where the spirits impedes the hero's progress by grabbing on the boat's edges. The spirits can't climb aboard and can be killed by Yun-chuan's sword like every other enemy, their sole purpose is to hold Yun-chuan's transport in place as fish-demons (who can fight back) pounces aboard - Yun-chuan needs to cut down all the river spirits until he can progress.
• Rhino Rampage: Marquis Xi, a rhino-man demon serving the Mandrill King, and another one of the bosses.
• Swamps Are Evil: One of Lu Yun-chuan's stages is a haunted, ghost-infested swamp. Absent in Xiahou-xue's story.
• Walking the Earth: In the ending, Lu Yun-chuan spends the rest of his days roaming the mountains, slaying evil demons wherever he goes, now that he's permanently expelled from the Cangshan Sect, and X Iaoyu, the only person he cares about, is dead.
• We Hardly Knew Ye: Lu's brother-in-arms, Tang Wen-jie and Zhang Yi-cai both died in an ambush right in the first level, while the third brother Zhang Huai-zhou was wounded and near his death throes. After helping Zhang return to the city, Lu has to uncover the reasons behind their deaths, culminating in The Reveal where Zhang Huai-zhou is the perpetrator of their botched mission, having sworn allegiance to the Mandrill King and turns out to be The Mole and Post-Final Boss.
• When Trees Attack: The Treant boss is a tree-demon who appears to be a boss version of the regular Plant Mooks.
• Wide Eyes and Shrunken Irises: Lu Yun-chuan have this expression in the cutscene when he receives a vision after defeating the Mandrill King, and finding out his sworn brother, Zhang Huai-zhou, is the traitor the whole time. The camera even pulls close to focus on his eyes, seconds before the cutscene ends.

Tropes from Xiahou-xue's story

• And the Adventure Continues: With Xiahou-xue and Chen You-qing admitting their feelings for each other, Xiahou-xue then follows Chen back to the capital city to travel around China with him. Chen would eventually chronicle his travels with the half-hulijing he fell in love with, to be passed down generations.
• Arranged Marriage: In the rainy village, Xiahou-xue comes across Lin Wanxi, a young bride, who's engaged to a ghost. It turns out she's betrothed to the son of another family since childhood, but the boy dies before adulthood and Lin is subject of a ritual to summon the dead to complete her wedding ceremony.
• Bad with the Bone: Several skeleton enemies, and the Skeltal Arhat boss, uses flails made of bones to attack Xue.
• Chariot Pulled by Cats: The Python King's chariot is pulled by giant spiny softshell tortoises.
• Dark Is Not Evil: The scary-looking Python King is a Reasonable Authority Figure who appears in one scene and then leaves. Even though the Xiahou siblings had killed a few of his guards, beats up his commander the Snake Yaksha, and intruded his personal lair trying to steal a magical artifact. Note that Xiahou-qing's predicament was caused by the Yaksha, with the Python King nothing to do with it.
• Dem Bones: The Temple of Zen contains plenty of skeleton enemies, from skeleton warriors using swords, bows and spears, to the far more powerful skeleton monks who can summon projectile attacks. As the temple only appears in Xiahou-xue's campaign, players going through Lu Yun-chuan's stages won't encounter any skeletons in their paths.
• Enemy Chatter: Unlike Lu Yun-chuan's scenario, in this campaign it turns out the various demon enemies (rat-people, lizard-men, etc) are indeed sentient, where they're conversing during cutscenes before Xiahou-xue needs to fight them.
  Rat-demon mook: The boss asks me to find human flesh here, don't mess with me!
• Fantastic Racism: The narration reveals that even amongst demonkind, half-demon-human hybrids are looked down upon by pureblood demons.
• Find the Cure!: The game's entire plot revolves around Xiahou-xue's attempts to find a way to remove the poison from her brother's physical body, so that his soul can unite with it's shell and come back to life. She has six months until her brother's soul dissipates, at which point he will be gone forever.
• Half-Human Hybrid: The Xiahou siblings and their clans are half-hulijing, half humans, and subjected to Fantastic Racism from other demon clans in the hills. Their theft of the python king's elixir in the backstory was in fact to seek a way to make themselves complete demons.
• Human Pincushion: All skeltal archers - including the King Mook, General Yaksha - have their bodies embedded entirely with arrows. And hilariously enough, they'll pull out those arrows to be used as ammunition!
• Lighter and Softer: Compared to Lu's campaign, Xiahou-xue's is less dramatic, much more straightforward, doesn't involve conspiracy or double-crossings and also a whole lot shorter (she has 50% amount of boss fights compared to Lu), as well as lacking any dark backstories (either from the main characters, or NPC) involving massacres, rape, dead children, betrayal from friends or genocide.
• Living Statue: The Ghost Buddha is a giant animated statue boss, posessed by the soul of a slain monk who attacks everything in sight.
• Multishot: The Skeltal Knight, a horsebacked skeleton archer on a skeltal horse, can fire multiple arrows, Spread Shot-style.
• Nintendo Hard: MUCH harder than Lu's campaign. Xiahou's attacks are slower and weaker; her stamina regenerates slower, and depletes faster; she doesn't start with an item that boosts XP gain, and her final boss has multiple phases.
• Non-Mammalian Hair: The village doctor, an elderly scorpion-man, has a long, flowing grey beard.
• Ordered Apology: After Xiahou-xue defeats the Snake Yaksha in the opening prologue, only for the Yaksha to poison Xiahou-qing and the mighty Python King to interrupt the battle, the Xiahou sibling's adoptive uncle, Elder Lord Baichen of the hulijing clan, suddenly arrives to stop the Python King from attacking the siblings. Before demanding they apologize for trying to steal from the Python King and beating up Snake Yaksha, who turns out to be one of the King's minions.
  Lord Baichen: You two, apologize now!
  Xiahou-xue: [on her unconscious brother's behalf, too] We are ignorant. We're sorry to have offended you. Please forgive us, sir.
  Python King: I'll forgive them for your ^note Lord Baichen sake. But you'd better figure out how to deal with the poison in this kid. [Leaves]
• Our Gryphons Are Different: Blood Wing is an Oriental Gryphon demon who looks far more deformed, intimidating and scary-looking than its Western counterparts. It can also summon smaller versions of itself throughout its boss battle.
• Paper Talisman: Be wary of floating talismans shrouded in flames, who can home in on Xue and explode on contact, causing damage to her health (although she can slash them out the air before they hurt her). These obstacles appears only in Xue's campaign, owing to her being a half-demon.
• Pig Man: Dark General is a humanoid boar-demon and one of the bosses, whose design appears to be based on Marquis Xi, the rhino-demon from Lu Yun-chuan's story.
• Scorpion People: The resident doctor of the demon clans is a scorpion demon, an inversion of the Scary Scorpions trope. And despite being a scorpion (ergo, supposedly being knowledgeable in all kinds of poison), he's unable to formulate a cure to save Xiahou-qing's body.
• Snake People: The Python King's head of guard and the first boss is a giant serpent-man whose lower body is a massive tail. That he can use to Tail Slap Xue during battle if she's close enough, although most of the time he prefers using his two-sided glaive.
• You Can't Thwart Stage One: The first stage ends with Xiahou-xue defeating the Python Yaksha, only for the boss to automatically revive and ambush Xiahou-xue in the following cutscene, and Xiahou-qing subsequently using himself as a shield to absorb the Yaksha's poison to save his sister. There's no getting around it, Xiahou-qing must be nearly killed for the plot to advance.

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