Overview
A solo journey through the jianghu does not stay solo for long. Over the course of Hero's Adventure: Another Tale, you meet and forge bonds with 13 companions, each drawn from a different walk of life and each carrying a temperament all their own. They are not faceless party slots. Every one of them has private secrets, personal ambitions, and a signature set of techniques, and any of them may tip the balance of a fight at the moment you need help most.
These allies sit at the heart of the game's party-based combat and its more personal, slower-burning story threads. You do not simply collect them. You get to know them, and the bonds you build can carry over into how they fight beside you.
What Is Known So Far
The studio has confirmed the shape of the companion system without yet putting names or faces to it. Here is the honest split between what has been shared and what remains under wraps.
What Is Known | Not Yet Revealed |
|---|---|
There are 13 companions, each with their own side stories and character events. | Their personal names. |
They come from diverse backgrounds and have distinct temperaments. | Their appearances, ages, and origins. |
Each one hides their own secrets and pursues their own ambitions. | The specifics of those secrets and goals. |
Each wields signature techniques of their own. | The names and effects of those techniques. |
Any of them can shift the outcome of a fight when called upon. | Whether companions can be lost or leave the party. Recruitment is at least partly known: they join one by one as the story unfolds. |
Because most of the 13 companions have not been formally named or detailed yet, this page refers to them generically: "one companion," "another ally," "a later member of the party." Names, portraits, and backstories will be added here once they are revealed. We will not guess at them in the meantime.
The free demo has begun to put names to faces. It introduces named characters, including a recruitable ally named Shen Qianqian and a character named Xiao Cui, and it features a system for hiring allies to fight alongside you. The studio has not clarified which of these are among the main companions, and fuller backgrounds have not been published, so this page still avoids assigning them stories or techniques. Four companions could be met in the demo build; the studio's August 2026 update put the full game's roster at 13. See the Demo Guide for what the demo reveals.
Named in the Demo
The free demo names several characters through its story and its patch notes. It is not yet confirmed which of these, if any, are among the 13 companions, so the table below records only what the demo and its updates have shown. Names, roles, and backgrounds may be expanded once the studio publishes character profiles.
Character | What the demo shows |
|---|---|
Baili Tayun | Fights in combat and carries a Pickpocket skill that can steal items from enemies during battle. The studio tuned that skill during the demo period. |
Shen Qianqian | A recruitable ally encountered in the demo, tied to an event where spending coins to secure a seat and lending a hand can yield a reward. |
Lu Xiaokui | Has a personal storyline whose quest is completed at the Qianji Workshop, which can be reached even during the in-game Lantern Festival in Qixia Town. |
Xiao Cui | A character who appears in the demo. Fuller details have not been published. |
A companion's signature technique can also open up the world beyond combat. Learning one ally's Disguise skill, for example, lets the protagonist enter areas that were previously off-limits and push the story forward, which shows how growing close to a companion feeds directly into exploration.
Companions in Combat
The companions are not just story figures. They take the field alongside you in the game's turn-based battles, where their individual skills feed directly into the party's shared tactical options. Coordinating their abilities is part of how combat opens up beyond simple trading of blows.
This is where companions connect to Team Skills, the cooperative attacks and supportive maneuvers that draw on more than one party member at once. A companion's signature technique may be the piece that completes a combination, and the right ally in the right slot can turn a losing exchange around. Their presence is meant to reward thinking about the party as a whole rather than as a row of separate fighters.
Companions and the Story
Beyond the battlefield, companions are central to the game's more intimate side. You do not merely fight with them; you build relationships with them across the journey. The system that governs those growing bonds is covered on the Relationships and Bonding page, where companion ties sit alongside the wider social fabric of the jianghu.
Because each ally hides their own secrets and chases their own ambitions, getting closer to a companion is partly an act of discovery. The deeper threads of who these people are, and what they want from the martial world, are exactly the details that have not yet been revealed.
Roster, Roles, and Everyday Skills
In its August 2026 development update, the studio put a firm number on the roster: the full game has 13 companions, each with their own side stories and character events. Some play bigger roles than others, but the team says every companion gets their own moment to shine. The same update made the recruitment model plain: this is not a gacha game. Companions are met one by one as the story unfolds, each arriving with a past and a destination of their own, and joining the party is framed as the beginning of the journey together rather than the end of their story.
Beyond fighting, companions bring everyday skills shaped by their backgrounds. Some are skilled in crafting Medicinal Pills and Elixirs, while others excel at Observation. The studio has also announced Campfire conversations, an in-development feature where companions gather around the fire to share small stories and everyday moments; it is part of the delay-period push to deepen companion relationships, which is also why the release moved to around late December 2026.
Looking Ahead
As official information about the 13 companions is released, this page will be expanded with named entries, their backgrounds, their signature techniques, and how each one slots into both combat and story. For now, treat every companion description here as deliberately generic. Nothing on this page invents a name, a face, or a history that has not been publicly confirmed.
For related systems, see Team Skills, Relationships and Bonding, and the broader Setting and Story.