Just finished reading the new main story released with Patch 1.1 (The Wind Awakening) of Duet Night Abyss. I have to say the overall production quality has raised quite a bit (both visuals and animations were great), even though I honestly preferred the narrative, theme, and overall visuals of the first arc of the story compared to this one.

It is sort of a curse that happens with each "not-China" chapter in gacha games. They often turn out to be kind of boring for most of the developments, only picking up near the end with some good action. You can see parallels with Liyue in Genshin Impact (the checklist of chores for Zhongli) and the Luofu in Honkai: Star Rail, which had its own version of that pacing issue.

The story moves the Phoxhunter to Huaxu accompanied by Zhiliu, a woman who says she is a rich merchant. We interacted with her briefly in a small farming event that was released a few weeks ago. In this patch, she saves us from the soldiers of the Empire that were trying to capture us. In exchange, she asks us to help her with a commission in her country for seven days.

In Huaxu, there is a system of seven laws that cannot be broken in any way. Everyone talks of it like it is a country "without crime nor war." We get shown almost immediately that anyone breaking the law gets quickly disintegrated by a creature appearing out of nowhere.

Of course, things aren't that easy or simple. We get to see that this system really doesn't work that well, as it applies the law too strictly. This causes crime to be rampant (like with the contract forging we saw) without any way for victims to fight back. At the same time, we start getting visions and voices in our head asking for help, and it seems to be connected to this system.

This first patch was sort of an introduction to a new set of characters and setting up the basis for the upcoming story. Maybe because of that, it felt a bit disconnected and fragmented. Kezhou and Yuming are definitely going to be important later on, though. I am curious what they meant when they said that Yuming became a Magistrate against his will as "an accident."

Fushu is the one that got the most screen time in this patch, helping us out when we were trapped in another world, but honestly, her story developments felt quite light in this first wave. She seems to have regrets about a pandemic that happened 100 years ago, but not much is revealed about it yet.

The cliffhanger was good though. Zhiliu seems interested in usurping the power of the god upholding the laws of Huaxu. What her final target is remains unknown. I don't think she is going to be an antagonist, and we will probably get to understand more of her reasons in a future patch (and she will likely become playable too).

I guess now is the time to go back and farm for the new playable character Fushu. I tried her during the story and her gameplay felt quite good, so I want to see how she performs when well-developed.