Video Game / Hidden Dragon: Legend

Wander through a strange land in the melancholy rain
Jarred awake by a fading light to a pillow covered in tears
Through the ceremony of anguish, the dancing sword charges
On it's silver blade, witness the fleeting light of anger

Hidden Dragon: Legend (隐龙传：影踪) is a wuxia-themed Beat 'em Up and 2.5D action platformer developed by MegaFun using the Unreal Engine and published by Oasis Games, a company based in Hong Kong.

Set near the tail-end of the Tang Dynasty, the Imperial Empress, Wu Zetian, nearing the end of her life, attempts to seek immortality by establishing the Trigram Organization, one consisting of her most ruthless, trusted followers, to seek the powers of an ancient artifact called the Star Stone, which could develop an elixir that grants immortal life or result in instant death.

On a rampage across the country, the Trigram Organization had countless prisoners and captives put through experiments, turning them into mindless savages in their cells, but the results proves fruitless as Empress Wu eventually passed on. And with her death, the Trigram Organization disbanded, and went into dormancy for ten years...

A decade later in 715 CE, the Trigram resurfaces with intentions of continuing their research, as ruthless as ever, and begins a complete massacre of countless sects in the martial world. Amidst the widespread purging of martial arts clans, a young warrior named Lu Tian-yuan was captured alive as one of their test subjects, before regaining consciousness after somehow surviving the Trigram's experimentations. Where, in the aftermath of being used as a test subject of a forbidden elixir, Lu discovers the hidden powers inside himself and sets off on a path of revenge...

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It's an Era of Darkness in the Tang Dynasty...

• Airborne Mooks: The "Flying Machine", bat-like puppets used by the Trigram, who can fly circles above Lu while shooting arrows. Some of them are equipped with flamethrowers.
• Ancestor Veneration: The game's last boss, Zhou Zong, seemingly comes out of nowhere to challenge Lu, having a platoon of Trigram mooks under his control in the Hidden City, but after defeating him, the final cutscene reveals Zhou to be one of Empress Wu's descendants - he's seeking revenge for his ancestors, and could only find peace by having the Trigram overthrown.
• Animated Armor: The "Nameless General" is a steampunk version, sent by Dark Raven to keep Lu at bay as the villain retreats to his inner quarters. It's surprisingly agile for it's size, being a twenty-feet tall suit of armor powered by Dark Raven's machinery.
• Bare-Fisted Monk: The "Boxer" enemies are the only members of the Trigram who fights with fists, despite every other enemy type using weapons. Then again they can put up quite a serious fight - if their sleeveless vests exposing their muscular arms isn't a hint already. The first Boxer even taunts Lu with a Bring It gesture!
• Barefoot Captives: All the prisoners taken by the Trigram to be experimented on are stripped of their shoes, shirt, and are only allowed their pants. Lu notably spends the first level shoeless until he passes out and was rescued by the doctor.
• Battle in the Rain: Lu's first boss fight takes place during a heavy rain, in the courtyard of the old doctor's shack after the Trigram's minions, led by the Captain, ransacks the place and executes Lu's benefactors. After Lu had wiped out all the villains, including the Captain, the following cutscene sees a flash of Dramatic Thunder as Lu sheathes his sword.
• BFS: White Ghost, one of the largest bosses, swings a curved blade larger than a man. That he can use for releasing Sword Beam attacks.
• Big Bad: The Trigram's leader, Dark Raven, who also happens to be one of Lu's most personal foes. However defeating him doesn't end the game - there's still a stage in the Hidden City where Lu confronts the remnants of the Trigram.
• Blade Spam:
  • Lu's special move, unleashing a flurry of bladed swipes that deals cumulative damage on enemies standing in front of him and can even hurt groups of mooks standing close together.
  • On the villains' side, the Second Brother has a similar attack, except his blade spam can cover half the screen.
• Booby Trap:
  • Taiyuan Tower has collapsible floors which gives way when Lu tries climbing to the top, but luckily he obtains The Claw on the ground floor.
  • The mountain base is crammed with these; right off the bat, upon arrival Lu and Hornet are swarmed by hundreds of mechanical spiders. There's also bridges that falls apart, spiked walls, floors that shoots fire and giant rolling Buddha heads trying to crush him.
• Creepy Crows: Dark Raven, the leader of the Trigram, where besides his name he also has a pet crow perched on his shoulder at all times.
• Cue the Falling Object: The first level when Lu tries leaving a cell filled with dead test subjects has a random corpse slumped behind a railing randomly falling behind him as he walks past.
• Dark Action Girl: The Trigram's lady lieutenant and sole female boss, Hornet, puts up quite a fight in her battle. She's also the perpetrator behind Old Master Bell's death and is actually none other than the old doctor's other daughter abducted by the organization and inducted into their ranks.
• Die Laughing: Dark Raven, after he's defeated. Lu was trying to force him into giving up the Hidden City's location, but Raven was crushed by a piece of falling debris mid-gloating.
• Disc-One Final Boss: Dark Raven, despite being built up as the Trigram Organization's leader and the most powerful villain, is killed unceremoniously after his giant puppet's destruction. The game continues for at least another hour and several more levels after that as Lu continues his search for the "Hidden City" to destroy the Elixir's source for good.
• Doom Magnet: Lu was rescued at least twice, first by the doctor and his daughter, and then the elderly Master Bell. All of them died because assassins after Lu had caught up.
• Double Jump: A skill obtained by Lu in the Taiyuan Tower, which proves necessary when he needs to cross the mountains later on.
• Due to the Dead: After killing the Captain, the next cutscene sees Lu laying flowers on the graves of his two deceased benefactors, the doctor and his daughter, which Lu had buried. Before swearing he will avenge their demise.
  Lu: You saved my life, and you were killed for it...
• Elevator Action Sequence: The cavern stage has a rising platform leading to the top of Dark Raven's lair, with puppets - including the "Iron" class - attacking Lu from both sides as he ascends. Be wary not to fall off the side, though Lu can knock enemies over, which helps him eliminate the otherwise super-tough "Iron" class puppets.
• Evil Twin: Hornet, the Trigram's sole female boss, is none other than the twin sister of Fei, the old doctor's other daughter who was abducted and raised as one of their enforcers at a young age. After Lu defeats her, he managed to knock her mask off and sees her face for the first time, and called Hornet "Fei" to her confusion. She has a Heel–Face Turn after Lu reveals the Trigram had killed her father and sister.
• Flash Step:
  • Lu can pull this off to get himself out of a fix when cornered by enemies, or when chased by attacks too fast for him to outrun. It's in fact the second skill he obtains after sword-fighting.
  • Many bosses have this ability as well, including the first one.
• Giant Mook:
  • The white-clad Trigram Brutes are huge enemies capable of tanking more hits before they expire. When there are groups of Trigram mooks expect the large white ones to be the last one standing.
  • Axe-wielding Executioners are another massive enemy type, though they appear exclusively inside Taiyuan Tower (and nowhere else, save for one lone Executioner in the final stage).
  • "Iron" class puppets sent by Dark Raven are exceptionally huge steampunk robots, the largest and most durable of the puppet-class enemies.
• The Goomba: Blue-clad Trigram mooks are the first enemies encountered, and are lousy fighters. Lu encounters the first two very early in the game, where they try taking him on only to be easily defeated - the moment one dies, the second pulls a Screw This, I'm Outta Here
• Grappling-Hook Pistol: Lu can obtain a Tang Dynasty version of the weapon called "The Claw" in the Taiyuan Tower, attached to his wrist to help him scale walls and cling to balconies. It makes dealing with the Trigram's Flying Puppets much easier.
• Hopeless Boss Fight: The boss battle against White Ghost, regardless if Lu wins or not, ends with Lu knocked out automatically in a cutscene and rescued by Old Bell, the former mentor of White Ghost. Who then heals Lu in the bamboo forest and the next level unfolding.
• Humongous Mecha: When fought as a boss in his penultimate confrontation, Dark Raven controls a steampunk giant robot too big to even fit into the screen. It's a background boss that attacks Lu while the hero is on a stone bridge, and can only be damaged by timing Lu's attacks so he can send debris into the robot's chest core.
• Immortality Seeker: In the backstory, Empress Wu Zetian established the Trigram to find out how to achieve immortality after realizing she's a few years near her death. It doesn't work for her, and after she passed on the Trigram now seeks the source of the immortality elixir for themselves.
• Indy Escape: In the mountains, when Lu escapes the mechanical spider horde, gets separated with Hornet in the process, and enters a cavernous tunnel that slopes down while a giant rolling Buddha head chases after him.
• It's All Upstairs From Here: The Taiyuan Tower level starts with a cutscene where Lu enters the ground floor, fights his way through the first executioner in the base level, collect the Claw and gradually working his way up, one level at a time, each of them filled with enemies and traps.
• Just Following Orders: When Lu confronts Hornet, the henchwoman who killed Old Master Bell, in the pre-boss battle cutscene:
  Hornet: No one's ever dared to enter the Organization's base alone. Just who might you be?
  Lu: I'm the one who should be asking questions! Why did you kill Master Bell?
  Hornet: I just follow orders. And I certainly don't question them.
• Leave No Witnesses: This is how the Trigram operates; having strong, able-bodied prisoners and captives taken to their cells for experiments, and eliminating the weak for "knowing too much". The Trigram Captain leading the hunt for Lu almost said it in verbatim after capturing the old doctor and his daughter:
  Captain: The Organization? You ^note the doctor know. I guess we can't leave you alive after all.
  [runs his sword into the old guy]
• Mecha-Mooks: The cavern levels which serves as Dark Raven's headquarters contains plenty of steampunk-based robots - called "puppets" - that Lu must battle to reach the villain. In supplementary materials available on the promotional website and one quick in-game bio, it turns out the puppets were humans converted by Dark Raven due to his crazy obsession over power.
• Men Are the Expendable Gender: Hornet is the sole female boss in the entire game, and she actually survived the game's events - Lu spares her in the post-boss battle cutscene after realizing she's Fei's twin sister, forms an Enemy Mine with her, and she's last seen leaving with her mentor White Ghost.
• Mook Debut Cutscene: All enemy debuts are introduced with a short clip of them cornering Lu, complete with their unit names appearing onscreen. In fact the Swordsman and Archer mooks are both introduced in the same level, their intro cutscenes playing back-to-back.
• Night of the Living Mooks: After spending most of the game fighting the Trigram, whose ranks are either humans or steampunk robots, Lu made it to the Hidden City... and discovers it to be devoid of life, and filled with animated corpses belonging to prisoners of the Trigram organization, for testing their elixir years ago only to be corrupted and reduced to becoming zombies, and attacking everything in sight. Cue the last few levels where everything's undead.
• No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: Early in the game, after Lu escapes the Trigram's clutches he passes out from his accumulated injuries, before being found by a passing doctor who then brought Lu back to his shack, with the doctor's young daughter nursing him back to health. And then the Trigram's minions on Lu's trail ends up attacking the shack, killing both the doctor and his daughter in the process, leading to Lu swearing revenge.
• Posthumous Character: Empress Wu Zetian died in the backstory a decade ago, but it was her quest for immortality which leads to the Trigram Organization's establishment. And after her death, the Trigram intends to continue their mission, because now they are the ones seeking the means to live forever.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: Lu reaches the Hidden City, suddenly gets cornered by hordes of mooks, and realize something's amiss upon seeing their glowing red eyes. Turns out he's staring down a dozen reanimated corpses, with far more undead on the way.
• Roofhopping: Paying homage to old-school wuxia, Lu spends a lot of stages jumping on rooftops, either to pursue enemies or infiltrate enemy quarters.
• Sequential Boss: The True Final Boss, Zhou Zong, is fought twice in a row, and turns One-Winged Angel into an Oni-like monstrosity that must be fought all over again.
• Shield-Bearing Mook:
  • The Trigram "Defender" mooks, green-clad enemies who carries light bronze shields alongside curved swords, with their shields useful for parrying Lu's slashes. In their introductory cutscene three of them corners Lu, and their leader even tries intimidating him with some Shield Banging.
  • "Iron"-class robots carries spiked shields that are even taller than Lu. They're Nigh-Invulnerable when their shields are up, but they'll need to lower their shields to attack Lu, allowing him a small window of time to attack.
• Shrine to Self: In the city level, Lu scales the rooftop and there's a giant statue of Empress Wu Zetian in the background, taller than most buildings.
• Spider Swarm: Upon arrival in the mountains, Lu and Hornet are instantly beset by entire swarms of mechanical arachnids, used by the Trigram as deterence towards intruders. Cue an entire stage where Lu flees from hundreds of spiders on the cliffs.
• Starter Equipment: Lu begins the game empty-handed, the first stage seeing him trying to navigate his way out a cell (and for the player to practice jumping and running mechanics). Once he got out, he's spotted by two thugs, sees a rusty sword nearby, and grabs it.
• Stepping Stones in the Sky: More than one level requires Lu to hop around obstacles in mid-air, although instead of the player controlling him it's achieved by Quick Time Events instead. For instance, leaping off a temple roof and knocking down three "Flying Machine" puppets, one at a time, or the mountain chase where Lu needs to jump on rocks to cross a chasm.
• Sword Lines: Lu can emit blue or white curves from his jian with each swing, as does most bosses.
• This Cannot Be!:
  • Said almost word-for-word by the first boss after Lu reveals the hidden energy within himself and turns the tide of battle over.
  Captain: Is this... it can't be! What are you!
  • Later on, Dark Raven lets out another when his giant robot explodes.
  "What? How did you... NOOOOOOOO!"
  • Zhou Zong, the game's actual last boss, also lets this out after his first defeat, moments before going One-Winged Angel.
  "No... no... this cannot be!"
• True Final Boss: Dark Raven seems to be the main villain for most of the game, until he's defeated in an intense, epic boss fight and crushed by falling debris. But then Lu realize the elixir isn't entirely destroyed yet, and sets off to the Hidden City alone to find it's source, spending a whole level fighting several enemies until he meets Zhou Zong - a former experiment subject-turned-last Trigram leader, who is the game's actual final boss.
• Walking the Earth: Lu had defeated Dark Raven, avenged his fallen comrades, and later overthrows the Trigram by killing Zhou Zong, their last leader, saving the entire martial world from danger. The Imperial Court wants to seek the hero who saved China, but Lu had went into a life of seclusion from the public.
• White Mask of Doom: The Trigram's thugs are all clad in robes and wears sinister-looking, face-concealing white masks with slits for where their eyes should be.
• Wuxia: Set in Ancient China, where an evil cult is on the loose and the sword-swinging hero gets to kick their asses while learning increasingly impressive kung-fu moves.
• You Wake Up in a Room: The game begins with Lu regaining consciousness in a pool of blood, in the Trigram's underground cells, and realizing he's surrounded by dead bodies. He then tries finding his way out.

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