After reading the post by this player, Meng Chang fell into deep thought.

His first feeling was that it seemed a bit far-fetched, but… not without reason.

Indeed, as most players said, judging from the current situation, “Eternal Cycle of Rebirth” was undoubtedly a DLC that exceeded its value.

Perhaps the only thing that could be considered a shortcoming was the reuse of many scenes and monsters.

But due to the bold and sweeping reforms to the combat system in “Eternal Cycle of Rebirth,” as well as the reconstruction of all scene routes and monster details, depicting a story that took place many years before “Turn Back to Shore,” it didn’t feel repetitive and could still bring enough freshness to players.

This price, this scale, these bold changes and innovations… as a DLC, it had already perfectly fulfilled its mission, and it was really impossible to demand more.

But what this player said also made sense. If one had to say what “Eternal Cycle of Rebirth” lacked, it would be that perfectly balanced sense of suffering and the shock of breaking the fourth wall that “Turn Back to Shore” had.

The experience of “Eternal Cycle of Rebirth” was quite polarized for different players.

Those experts who could adapt to the new combat system would kill everything in their path, perfectly parrying and slaying all enemies, effectively turning it into a hack-and-slash game; while those clumsy players who couldn’t adapt would suffer frequently and progress slowly, barely managing to survive relying on the magic sword’s automatic blocking mechanism.

The suffering in “Turn Back to Shore” should be moderate, especially for clumsy players who could better experience the feeling of an ordinary person struggling in this world of despair, but gaining hope after the struggle.

In contrast, this feeling was weakened to some extent in “Eternal Cycle of Rebirth.”

Additionally, “Turn Back to Shore” gave people a sense of amazement when it first appeared, while “Eternal Cycle of Rebirth” carried overly high expectations from the very beginning of its development. So the different evaluations of the two naturally became expected.

Of course, this view gave the impression that players had become too picky, raising unrealistic demands.

For most games, DLC is a continuation of the base game. As long as it adds some new scenes, new monsters, and new plots to supplement the base game, that’s enough.

From this perspective, “Eternal Cycle of Rebirth” had clearly perfectly completed its mission.

But players were no longer satisfied with this. Due to the previous hype and publicity, they viewed “Eternal Cycle of Rebirth” as equivalent to “Turn Back to Shore 2,” unconsciously raising their expectations for Mr. Pei and Tenda Games.

Moreover, everyone knew that Mr. Pei was a designer who liked to surpass himself and continuously strive for excellence.

Perhaps in Mr. Pei’s mind, he also wanted to use “Eternal Cycle of Rebirth” to make some kind of breakthrough from “Turn Back to Shore.”

Thinking this way, “Eternal Cycle of Rebirth” could indeed be described as “slightly flawed perfection”—overall very good, but not achieving absolute perfection.

Meng Chang thought about it and realized this point was truly difficult to refute, as it seemed to be an inherent issue with “Eternal Cycle of Rebirth” itself.

However, he didn’t dwell on this but turned to think about other things.

This player’s comments provided him with a completely new perspective.

For Meng Chang now, if he wanted to do his job well and get more commission, he needed to master two abilities: the ability to find flaws in projects and the ability to dig into the deeper connotations of projects.

He had thought he was doing well in both aspects, but seeing this player’s post, he realized he was still far from good enough.

Taking “Eternal Cycle of Rebirth” as an example, Meng Chang hadn’t previously thought about this angle at all.

He couldn’t help but think of his initial promotional plan and vaguely felt that there might be something inappropriate about it.

But what exactly was inappropriate?

He couldn’t quite articulate it.

Obviously, there were parts of this promotional plan for “Eternal Cycle of Rebirth” that were beyond his control, which seemed to suggest to some extent why Mr. Pei didn’t approve of this promotional plan.

Meng Chang thought seriously for a long time but still couldn’t figure it out.

“Forget it, let the professionals handle professional matters. I’ll wait for Qiao Laoshi’s video.”

Meng Chang gave up struggling and patiently waited for Qiao Laoshi’s video, hoping to get some inspiration and insights.

Of course, he also knew that this video was unlikely to come out so quickly.

Although the main part of the video was mostly completed, after “Eternal Cycle of Rebirth” was fully updated, some materials and content still needed to be added.

After the game’s ending was revealed, the video content would need to be supplemented.

However, this shouldn’t affect the overall framework of the video, after all, the ending of “Eternal Cycle of Rebirth” had already been fixed by the original novel from the beginning: the Martial God would awaken at the last moment, delve into the Avici Hell, and become the first Prison Keeper.

During the waiting period, Meng Chang had nothing else to do, so he decided to first see the game’s ending.

He initially considered beating the ending himself, after all, the game had the magic sword’s automatic parrying mechanism as a cheat tool.

But he quickly abandoned this idea.

Why suffer for no reason?

He’d better just watch someone else complete it!

With this in mind, he randomly found a live stream online and began watching how the expert players beat the game.

……

The last part of the content differed greatly from the first two parts in terms of game plot and content.

First, in the storyline related to the Avici Hell, the monsters became much stronger compared to “Turn Back to Shore,” and all the shortcuts that originally existed had disappeared, requiring players to use the magic sword to clear the way themselves.

Story-wise, this was because the Avici Hell that the protagonist arrived at in “Turn Back to Shore” had actually already been cleared several times by the Martial God, so the monsters’ powers had been severely weakened.

Second, the initial two scenes, the small village and the town, which were skipped at the beginning of the game, would be revisited by the Martial God in the third part.

Because the Martial God had slaughtered the ghost officials and judges, causing the entire six realms of reincarnation to almost collapse, the human world was also affected.

After killing the Ten Yama Kings and disrupting the six realms of reincarnation, the Martial God returned to the human world, wanting to rebuild his physical body, only to find that it had already become a human purgatory, with various powerful demons rampaging and slaughtering the common people.

The Martial God tried his best to slaughter the demons, but many people had already died miserably at the hands of the demons, making the situation difficult to salvage.

He realized that he had made a grave mistake and finally broke into the Avici Hell, sacrificing himself to become the first Prison Keeper.

However, the streamer also had another save file, one where he kept dying with the magic sword. In this save file, although the Martial God would also break into the Avici Hell, he couldn’t become the Prison Keeper and could only be controlled by the magic sword, transforming into a hell demon, with the entire human world turning into purgatory.

Judging from the plot of “Turn Back to Shore,” the Prison Keeper ending was obviously the officially designated true ending, while this eternal cycle of rebirth ending corresponded to the game’s title and better reflected the tragic aspect of the entire story.

After beating the ending, the streamer didn’t immediately enter New Game Plus but opened a bottle of drink, chatted with the bullet screen comments, and shared his thoughts and feelings.

“How did I feel about completing the game?”

“Overall, it’s very satisfying. This combat system is much more fluid than ‘Turn Back to Shore.'”

“I felt it was especially immersive! Much more immersive than ‘Turn Back to Shore’!”

“I also saw that post online. How should I put it? It’s mostly nitpicking. Of course, it also depends on what perspective you’re looking from.”

“If you’re a die-hard fan of ‘Turn Back to Shore’ who won’t allow the DLC to make even the slightest change to the style of ‘Turn Back to Shore,’ then that post does make some sense.”

“But from my perspective as a pure player, that post doesn’t make much sense. We’ve already had enough of ‘Turn Back to Shore,’ so what’s the point of making the DLC exactly like ‘Turn Back to Shore’? It’s great to try something new that brings a new experience.”

“If you expect ‘Eternal Cycle of Rebirth’ to both create something new and somehow inherit or even extend the connotations of ‘Turn Back to Shore’… I think that’s asking too much, it’s a bit excessive.”

“After all, it’s just a DLC!”

“And, I still prefer the combat system of ‘Eternal Cycle of Rebirth.'”

This streamer’s view seemed to represent a large portion of players who felt that “Eternal Cycle of Rebirth” had already perfectly fulfilled its mission as it was.

For a DLC, this was already a 100-point answer, but people were demanding a 120-point performance, which seemed too demanding.

Meng Chang pondered this as he exited the live stream.

The stream wasn’t short; the last third of the content and the two endings took nearly five hours to stream, and it was already ten o’clock at night.

According to Mr. Pei’s requirements, adjusting the combat system to be updated after the second part, “Eternal Cycle of Rebirth” was now actually fully updated.

Since the entire DLC was complete, it was about time to make a final judgment.

In the coming period, discussions about “Eternal Cycle of Rebirth” would obviously reach a peak.

Meng Chang refreshed AiLiDao’s latest updates several times and finally saw that Qiao Laoshi had updated his video.

“Finally!”

The stream had made Meng Chang a bit drowsy, but seeing that Qiao Laoshi had updated his video, he immediately became fully alert.

Because he knew that this video might contain the answers to the questions that had been puzzling him!

……

The beginning was still that familiar, unchanging opening, followed by a short segment of casual chatter. Meng Chang simply dragged the progress bar to skip directly to the main content.

“So this time, I’ll analyze two aspects of this DLC, or rather this game, ‘Eternal Cycle of Rebirth’: First, the deeper reason for its three-part update; Second, its spiritual core that differs from ‘Turn Back to Shore’ in content but remains at the same level of thought!”

“Without further ado, let’s begin this puzzle-solving session!”

Hmm… it had changed from interpretation and analysis to puzzle-solving…

However, for Mr. Pei’s games, the term “puzzle-solving” wasn’t exaggerated.

Meng Chang had originally thought that the main content of Qiao Laoshi’s video would focus on interpreting the game content, but he didn’t expect Qiao Laoshi to mention the three-part update.

This seemed a bit inappropriate, didn’t it?