I went to see it in the australian cinemas, and i find it wasn't that bad, it kept to the code, only thing was it was in fricken mandarin wtf was with that, best thing to understand the story is to watch the animation version basically continues where this left off, but the the character sonny chiba plays is in it and demon wind is also there so watch that before u watch the actual movie
shareThe animated movie and the live action ones are totally separate lines. Well to be more fair, the animated movie is loosely based on the first live action movie: Storm Riders.
There are couple of elements they kept from the movie and couple that weren't in continuity. For example, Wind saved Mud Budda at the end of the first live action movie(In the comics Mud Budda is dead) and this was continued in the animated movie.
In Storm Riders Wind and Cloud were able to defeat Lord Conquer with their combined strength and legendary weapons. In the animate Wind needed to join the dark side...... I mean enter the evil force to boost up his strength.
I actually recommend people to read the original comics before or after you watch both Storm Riders and Storm Warriors(SR2). There's an English TPB released a few years back. They continued for like a couple or volumes, roughly 10 if my memory serves right.