More like So Long: Uninstalled Game
2023-03-13
If Wo long is gonna follow the modern Team Ninja tradition, I should revalue this game later when all the DLC contents are released, but as it is now, I can confidently say it is “moderately good as a whole”, but not more than that.
It was apparent that Team Ninja had some interest in the Sekiro combat system, as the final fantasy origin was built upon the counter-based combat. But Wo Long takes it further and made the entire flow encourages you to do the timed counter. Blocking and deflection are differently mapped buttons, and the block option has generally fewer advantages than the counter. It is obvious that the block button solely exists as “use this when you can’t get the right timing”. The deflection button receives the direction input so that you can easily reposition yourself while countering the enemies. Every hitbox, including flame, air explosion, quake, and liquid can be parried if it is timed well. The successful counter gives you a morale boost, which can be used as a resource for your diverse special attacks. Enemies’ “red” attack can only be parried and there are no other options to negate that attack aside from running away from the danger zone (which is mostly impossible because red attacks are tracking-heavy attacks solely designed to hit you).
One button parry mechanic with a nice clang sound is the new black of the modern action game. With well-timed input, you can negate the attack at a close distance and maintain your position. But the mistimed input can damage or kill you. It’s a simple but satisfying risk and reward system. And I can confidently say Wo Long is the top of the parry mountain as it has the most liberating form of one button parry mechanic. As I said, you can parry ANYTHING, so there’s no “impossible to not get damage bullshit pattern” as long as you get the timing down. Counter-movement also gives you a nice amount of i-frame, and this shines thoroughly in group fights. Zhang Rang is one of my favorite boss fights and it is built upon that system. It’s a crowd-control boss fight, and what you have to do is removing the clone one by one while negating the projectile spam coming from the far back. This could have been a disastrous fight if the combat system was as dull as other souls-like games, but Wo long isn’t like that. Parrying the incoming multiple attacks, then using that to boost yourself to other directions to get close to the other clones and removing one by one felt satisfying.
Also, I would be lying if there were no other offensive attack flows other than counter & poking. Even though it is not on the Nioh 2 level, each weapon has a moderate amount of moveset, and as long as you are in the high morale status, pushing the enemies with the constant chain of normal attacks, martial arts, and spells is more beneficial than staying defensive. Jumping over an enemy is a good offensive positioning option that can be chained to a vertical drop attack. And the weapon swap attack has a parry window middle of the animation, so you can attack the enemies while deflecting if you are cheeky enough.
However, building the game MOSTLY around the counter movement also means there were sacrifices to be made. One is that the universal parry mechanic became the dominant strategy as a defensive option. There are many interesting things that can stem from the counter-movement, but the other options -block, and jump- felt rather static. If there were more varied jump attack options (like Ninja Gaiden did), post-block movements (again, like Ninja Gaiden did), or just the block-input attack branches (like Nioh did), they could have provided more reasons to experiment with, but right now they are just less appealing than they should be.
Another thing that was sacrificed is the nuanced spacing game, which was the best part of the Nioh series, the spiritual ancestor of Wo long.
My favorite boss fight from Nioh was Date Shigezane. Just like average bosses in Wo Long, he has an extreme amount of mid-range attack patterns that test your pattern memorization skill and timing skill, but the way he moves is quite different. Just like other bipedal enemies in Nioh, Date tracks you horizontally, but the distance of each footstep is fixed. This means, even without relying on a timed dodge, by knowing the attack pattern’s total movement distance, you can easily guess the safe zone of the attack and then position yourself. In this situation, your normal L stick movement is just as important as the dodge direction. Making a good space, and then lunging & punishing the opponent felt really satisfying in that boss fight, and if the iconic centipede-slash attack closed the gap towards you like a magnet, then the challenge would be harder, but less interesting because that would force you to use the timed-dodge only.
Wo Long opponents are -maybe not as infuriating as my hypothetical example- built just like that. From the small humanoids to the big creatures, all enemies have at least one or two gap closers (if it’s a boss, 75% of their moves can be a gap closer) and they are specifically designed to NOT have fixed movement distances. In a way, this is an optimal design that forces you to use the deflection, but there’s “generally” no interesting spacing game between 1 vs 1 boss fights because, at the end of their melee combo, they would be in front of you no matter what you do. I mentioned “generally” because there were some cases where you could bait out some attack patterns while maintaining the long-distance position, but you have to admit that there aren’t many cases where you could find the normal movement useful aside from finding a chance to heal yourself or distancing yourself to use the ranged spell. The fact that post-counter maneuver being diverse enough could carry the satisfying combat flow, but the lack of 1v1 spacing game left me a bitter aftertaste because it also shows that even with the diverse boss patterns, the solution can be reduced to one method at the end, which is the timed deflection. I would point at Zhang Liang, Lu Bu, Dong Zhuo, Zhang Liao, and the final-final boss and say they are ALL great bosses built with the finest Team Ninja production, but I also think the other enemies could have been the entities that work "differently" from those great bosses instead of being the “less” of those great bosses, if you know what I mean.
But this monotony can be reduced if Team Ninja focused on the dynamic multi-enemy fights as it showed the glimmer of brilliance with the assassin enemies, Zhang Rang, Not-ornstein & Not-smough, and the infamous side mission with the three warriors, but there are some issues.
One is that in the 25-hour of the campaign, there is only a handful of brilliantly crafted multi-enemy fights. And I think it is inexcusable considering that there’s an NPC follower that can help the players who have a crowd-control-skill issue. Sure, if you don’t use the stealth-kill at all and rush into the battlefield without thinking, it would lead to a multi-enemy fight, but I really don’t think that should be counted as a “finely crafted multi-enemy fight”.
Secondly, it doesn’t have enough supporter enemies. If you have played some action games based on multi-enemy fights (like Doom Eternal, Ultrakill, DMC, Ninja Gaiden, Bayonetta, Evil West, you name it) you’d know the importance of ranged harasser in a given combat situation. Without thinking that much, there is only a handful of dedicated harassers in the enemy roster, and they alone are not diversified enough to fill the long playtime. Instead of making bosses like…. Taotie, they could have allocated their time to make more interesting chess pieces. You could say that TN could use some miniboss tier enemies as the chess pieces, but I can confidently say most of them are not that apt for the grouped fight. Tigers and Mermaids are extremely aggressive so they will take all the priority, Crocodiles are awkward to fight in any situation, and we don’t talk about that stupid braindead giant statue.
Lastly, there are some minor issues with the control, and TN needs to deal with them as soon as possible to make even more fluid multi-enemy fights. Unlike the blocking system of NG or Nioh, the blocking animation doesn’t automatically track the threat when it gets hit. I mean, it is “realistic” that you get damaged when you are showing the back and the enemies hit your back, but god damn, this is already a classic Team Ninja game with extremely snappy animations. I have no idea why they designed the blocking like this, and it gives me more reasons to NOT use the block button at all. Also the execution technique should auto-target the closest enemy even if I’m locking on the other enemy. Picture this, while you are targeting Enemy A, Enemy B comes at you from the side with their red attack, so you parry it. Enemy B collapses right in front of you, but because of the manual target system, you CAN’T execute the enemy with the heavy attack input and you just start the normal heavy attack towards Enemy A instead. I never had to think about this issue when I was playing Ninja Gaiden series and yet the lack of a target priority system made some big annoyance in the situations like this. I hope they realize that their current combat system’s strength lies in the multi-enemy fights because while it is almost there, the current combat system lacks some polish to support the fluidity.
I’m mostly focusing on the combat system, because even in the big picture, there’s not much to say about Wo Long other than the combat system. I’m familiar with Romance of the Three Kingdoms, but aside from the reveal of the final-final boss’s true identity, the “twisted” story didn’t strike me that much, and I’m a person who enjoyed Nioh 2’s story. Bloodborne-ization of the characters looked cool in the first few hours, but as a whole, the visual design of the enemies wasn’t as vibrant as nioh2 which was a huge let-down.
Flag hunting is a cool concept that utilizes the verticality of maze-like levels, but there are some moments that made me think, “Is marking this flag that necessary?” because even as a player who did the solo run from the start to the end, with the moderate amount of street cleansing, I could exceed the morale level 20 threshold so easily, and make a boss fight a joke. But then the New game + slams the door open and introduces the morale level 25 bosses which kill you in one or two hits. What a GREAT balancing work.
Also, while I think the reduced amount of busy work of player customization is a welcomed feature, I think the martial arts being fixed per a weapon is a hot garbage choice from Team Ninja’s design department. I have no idea who thought it was a good idea. Fucking Elden Ring had a better weapon art customization if you ask me!
Even with the nitpicks, Wo Long is a good game that still contains the Team Ninja’s soul. I still think it is remarkable, and it is a good gateway drug that can seduce souls-like players to the “pure” action games. But in the end, it also made me think “Man, I wish I can transfer the Nioh2 save data in the PS4 to PC”. I’ll revisit this review after the DLC’s release and see if I’ll like it more or not.
2023-12-26
So the DLCs are all released. Didn't fundamentally change the game's central mechanism (like duh, why would they) but the new weapons and new contents built upon that foundation were fantastic. All the final big demon bosses were amazing, greatsword movesets are just dopamine rush, and I really liked the additional control/camera options and combat tools added with the frequent updates. I can bump it up to four stars for sure. But, please... I wish TN just never released games on Early Access state without the Early Access card.
If Wo long is gonna follow the modern Team Ninja tradition, I should revalue this game later when all the DLC contents are released, but as it is now, I can confidently say it is “moderately good as a whole”, but not more than that.
It was apparent that Team Ninja had some interest in the Sekiro combat system, as the final fantasy origin was built upon the counter-based combat. But Wo Long takes it further and made the entire flow encourages you to do the timed counter. Blocking and deflection are differently mapped buttons, and the block option has generally fewer advantages than the counter. It is obvious that the block button solely exists as “use this when you can’t get the right timing”. The deflection button receives the direction input so that you can easily reposition yourself while countering the enemies. Every hitbox, including flame, air explosion, quake, and liquid can be parried if it is timed well. The successful counter gives you a morale boost, which can be used as a resource for your diverse special attacks. Enemies’ “red” attack can only be parried and there are no other options to negate that attack aside from running away from the danger zone (which is mostly impossible because red attacks are tracking-heavy attacks solely designed to hit you).
One button parry mechanic with a nice clang sound is the new black of the modern action game. With well-timed input, you can negate the attack at a close distance and maintain your position. But the mistimed input can damage or kill you. It’s a simple but satisfying risk and reward system. And I can confidently say Wo Long is the top of the parry mountain as it has the most liberating form of one button parry mechanic. As I said, you can parry ANYTHING, so there’s no “impossible to not get damage bullshit pattern” as long as you get the timing down. Counter-movement also gives you a nice amount of i-frame, and this shines thoroughly in group fights. Zhang Rang is one of my favorite boss fights and it is built upon that system. It’s a crowd-control boss fight, and what you have to do is removing the clone one by one while negating the projectile spam coming from the far back. This could have been a disastrous fight if the combat system was as dull as other souls-like games, but Wo long isn’t like that. Parrying the incoming multiple attacks, then using that to boost yourself to other directions to get close to the other clones and removing one by one felt satisfying.
Also, I would be lying if there were no other offensive attack flows other than counter & poking. Even though it is not on the Nioh 2 level, each weapon has a moderate amount of moveset, and as long as you are in the high morale status, pushing the enemies with the constant chain of normal attacks, martial arts, and spells is more beneficial than staying defensive. Jumping over an enemy is a good offensive positioning option that can be chained to a vertical drop attack. And the weapon swap attack has a parry window middle of the animation, so you can attack the enemies while deflecting if you are cheeky enough.
However, building the game MOSTLY around the counter movement also means there were sacrifices to be made. One is that the universal parry mechanic became the dominant strategy as a defensive option. There are many interesting things that can stem from the counter-movement, but the other options -block, and jump- felt rather static. If there were more varied jump attack options (like Ninja Gaiden did), post-block movements (again, like Ninja Gaiden did), or just the block-input attack branches (like Nioh did), they could have provided more reasons to experiment with, but right now they are just less appealing than they should be.
Another thing that was sacrificed is the nuanced spacing game, which was the best part of the Nioh series, the spiritual ancestor of Wo long.
My favorite boss fight from Nioh was Date Shigezane. Just like average bosses in Wo Long, he has an extreme amount of mid-range attack patterns that test your pattern memorization skill and timing skill, but the way he moves is quite different. Just like other bipedal enemies in Nioh, Date tracks you horizontally, but the distance of each footstep is fixed. This means, even without relying on a timed dodge, by knowing the attack pattern’s total movement distance, you can easily guess the safe zone of the attack and then position yourself. In this situation, your normal L stick movement is just as important as the dodge direction. Making a good space, and then lunging & punishing the opponent felt really satisfying in that boss fight, and if the iconic centipede-slash attack closed the gap towards you like a magnet, then the challenge would be harder, but less interesting because that would force you to use the timed-dodge only.
Wo Long opponents are -maybe not as infuriating as my hypothetical example- built just like that. From the small humanoids to the big creatures, all enemies have at least one or two gap closers (if it’s a boss, 75% of their moves can be a gap closer) and they are specifically designed to NOT have fixed movement distances. In a way, this is an optimal design that forces you to use the deflection, but there’s “generally” no interesting spacing game between 1 vs 1 boss fights because, at the end of their melee combo, they would be in front of you no matter what you do. I mentioned “generally” because there were some cases where you could bait out some attack patterns while maintaining the long-distance position, but you have to admit that there aren’t many cases where you could find the normal movement useful aside from finding a chance to heal yourself or distancing yourself to use the ranged spell. The fact that post-counter maneuver being diverse enough could carry the satisfying combat flow, but the lack of 1v1 spacing game left me a bitter aftertaste because it also shows that even with the diverse boss patterns, the solution can be reduced to one method at the end, which is the timed deflection. I would point at Zhang Liang, Lu Bu, Dong Zhuo, Zhang Liao, and the final-final boss and say they are ALL great bosses built with the finest Team Ninja production, but I also think the other enemies could have been the entities that work "differently" from those great bosses instead of being the “less” of those great bosses, if you know what I mean.
But this monotony can be reduced if Team Ninja focused on the dynamic multi-enemy fights as it showed the glimmer of brilliance with the assassin enemies, Zhang Rang, Not-ornstein & Not-smough, and the infamous side mission with the three warriors, but there are some issues.
One is that in the 25-hour of the campaign, there is only a handful of brilliantly crafted multi-enemy fights. And I think it is inexcusable considering that there’s an NPC follower that can help the players who have a crowd-control-skill issue. Sure, if you don’t use the stealth-kill at all and rush into the battlefield without thinking, it would lead to a multi-enemy fight, but I really don’t think that should be counted as a “finely crafted multi-enemy fight”.
Secondly, it doesn’t have enough supporter enemies. If you have played some action games based on multi-enemy fights (like Doom Eternal, Ultrakill, DMC, Ninja Gaiden, Bayonetta, Evil West, you name it) you’d know the importance of ranged harasser in a given combat situation. Without thinking that much, there is only a handful of dedicated harassers in the enemy roster, and they alone are not diversified enough to fill the long playtime. Instead of making bosses like…. Taotie, they could have allocated their time to make more interesting chess pieces. You could say that TN could use some miniboss tier enemies as the chess pieces, but I can confidently say most of them are not that apt for the grouped fight. Tigers and Mermaids are extremely aggressive so they will take all the priority, Crocodiles are awkward to fight in any situation, and we don’t talk about that stupid braindead giant statue.
Lastly, there are some minor issues with the control, and TN needs to deal with them as soon as possible to make even more fluid multi-enemy fights. Unlike the blocking system of NG or Nioh, the blocking animation doesn’t automatically track the threat when it gets hit. I mean, it is “realistic” that you get damaged when you are showing the back and the enemies hit your back, but god damn, this is already a classic Team Ninja game with extremely snappy animations. I have no idea why they designed the blocking like this, and it gives me more reasons to NOT use the block button at all. Also the execution technique should auto-target the closest enemy even if I’m locking on the other enemy. Picture this, while you are targeting Enemy A, Enemy B comes at you from the side with their red attack, so you parry it. Enemy B collapses right in front of you, but because of the manual target system, you CAN’T execute the enemy with the heavy attack input and you just start the normal heavy attack towards Enemy A instead. I never had to think about this issue when I was playing Ninja Gaiden series and yet the lack of a target priority system made some big annoyance in the situations like this. I hope they realize that their current combat system’s strength lies in the multi-enemy fights because while it is almost there, the current combat system lacks some polish to support the fluidity.
I’m mostly focusing on the combat system, because even in the big picture, there’s not much to say about Wo Long other than the combat system. I’m familiar with Romance of the Three Kingdoms, but aside from the reveal of the final-final boss’s true identity, the “twisted” story didn’t strike me that much, and I’m a person who enjoyed Nioh 2’s story. Bloodborne-ization of the characters looked cool in the first few hours, but as a whole, the visual design of the enemies wasn’t as vibrant as nioh2 which was a huge let-down.
Flag hunting is a cool concept that utilizes the verticality of maze-like levels, but there are some moments that made me think, “Is marking this flag that necessary?” because even as a player who did the solo run from the start to the end, with the moderate amount of street cleansing, I could exceed the morale level 20 threshold so easily, and make a boss fight a joke. But then the New game + slams the door open and introduces the morale level 25 bosses which kill you in one or two hits. What a GREAT balancing work.
Also, while I think the reduced amount of busy work of player customization is a welcomed feature, I think the martial arts being fixed per a weapon is a hot garbage choice from Team Ninja’s design department. I have no idea who thought it was a good idea. Fucking Elden Ring had a better weapon art customization if you ask me!
Even with the nitpicks, Wo Long is a good game that still contains the Team Ninja’s soul. I still think it is remarkable, and it is a good gateway drug that can seduce souls-like players to the “pure” action games. But in the end, it also made me think “Man, I wish I can transfer the Nioh2 save data in the PS4 to PC”. I’ll revisit this review after the DLC’s release and see if I’ll like it more or not.
2023-12-26
So the DLCs are all released. Didn't fundamentally change the game's central mechanism (like duh, why would they) but the new weapons and new contents built upon that foundation were fantastic. All the final big demon bosses were amazing, greatsword movesets are just dopamine rush, and I really liked the additional control/camera options and combat tools added with the frequent updates. I can bump it up to four stars for sure. But, please... I wish TN just never released games on Early Access state without the Early Access card.
I may return to this at a later time, but I feel pretty disappointed with it right now.
The idea of the setting is cool, but as every other Team Ninja game I've played before, the levels are completely bland and uninspiring, which is also somewhat of a double-edged sword in this one as they want you to clear them in order to raise your power level to fight bosses.
The bosses themselves are okay, but there's no intimacy to any of them or weight that makes them feel exciting, which is a huge step back from Stranger of Paradise that, for all its other flaws, had some amazingly fun boss fights.
I don't believe Wo Long is necessarily a poor game or anything, but I just can't find myself wanting to play it when there's so much more out there that does excite me. I will just leave my review with a sophomoric: does not pass vibe check.
The idea of the setting is cool, but as every other Team Ninja game I've played before, the levels are completely bland and uninspiring, which is also somewhat of a double-edged sword in this one as they want you to clear them in order to raise your power level to fight bosses.
The bosses themselves are okay, but there's no intimacy to any of them or weight that makes them feel exciting, which is a huge step back from Stranger of Paradise that, for all its other flaws, had some amazingly fun boss fights.
I don't believe Wo Long is necessarily a poor game or anything, but I just can't find myself wanting to play it when there's so much more out there that does excite me. I will just leave my review with a sophomoric: does not pass vibe check.
Got filtered at the first boss, which is a very "Learn mechanics of the game or suck shit" boss. That's fine, I'm at peace with it. I did like the reflecting, possibly the closest to doable I've felt in a parry based game, maybe would like it in a more relaxed type game.
First time working with a Team Ninja character creator though, tried to make Pakunoda
First time working with a Team Ninja character creator though, tried to make Pakunoda
Edit 12/27/23: Still stand by the analysis here but used a weird tone, sorry if you are a Sekiro fan :(
---
Also read Maddison Baek's thorough mechanical analysis. Huge thanks to those who helped with editing and feedback.
---
Just as Nioh was based on Dark Souls, Team Ninja's latest game draws from Sekiro’s shallow, reactive combat.
Souls combat, while often devolving into iframe roll timing checks, has some good fundamentals underneath that reward spacing, smart attack timing, and stamina management. Nioh's great triumph is adding systems (stances, ki pulse, enemy ki, breakable yokai parts, soul cores, burst counter, yokai shift) that accentuate these while opening up opportunities for dynamic decision-making and player expression.
In comparison, Sekiro's fundamentals are: deflect, deflect, deflect. It is a game where the answer to every threat is a single, optimal response (the parry/mikiri/jump), ultimately pushing it closer to a semi-random rhythm game than an action game. While that has a certain appeal in creating a simulacrum of a sword clash as a part of an experientially driven whole (it cannot be overstated how critically important FromSoft's art direction is to their games), these days for me the illusion breaks fast. It feels like everything revolves around those parry visuals and sounds; without the satisfaction of dynamic decision-making, there’s little else to latch onto in the moment besides the clang of a successfully timed button press.
In a way it's the shadow twin of one of FromSoft's other series, classic Armored Core. Those games lean almost entirely on selling you the sensation of piloting a giant mech, and like Sekiro, a critical component of this is the game feel created by real-time audiovisual feedback. However, in AC's case this is paired with nuanced fundamentals of movement, energy management, aiming, and staying out of enemy lock-ons. Not only does this avoid sacrificing player engagement, but the decisions themselves further reinforce that sensation. Hoarding ammo to help pay your mech’s repair bills and struggling to get to grips with a new mech’s handling idiosyncrasies are situations that both arise during gameplay and would intuitively occur as a mercenary in this hypothetical world. In this way, even through an experiential lens, decision-making is an asset to be harnessed, not a weight to carry around.
So how does Wo Long, a near-exclusively mechanically-driven game, salvage Sekiro’s combat? In a word: clumsily. Like Sekiro, parries are still overwhelmingly the driving force behind defense, considering blocking and rolling both have heavy spirit drain penalties preventing you from using them for long, and parrying gains you spirit while draining the enemy’s. Huge tracking on many moves, combined with rapid-fire strings that quickly break blocks and catch rolls, means that learning the (reasonably generous) parry timings is ultimately the simplest and most efficient option at the end of the day.
The major saving grace here is the offensive side: Wizardry Spells, Martial Arts, and aerial attacks allow you to proactively pressure enemies, and there is some level of interesting resource management reminiscent of Nioh 2's Burst Counter with how executions, weapon swap parries, and parrying red attacks clears your red Spirit. But the damage values are simply too low, and risk of being interrupted too high, to warrant using anything but fast/hyper armored moves (random MAs per weapon exacerbates this by hindering experimentation). Without the importance of spacing and risk/reward dynamics of ki underpinning everything, it's hard for me to shake the feeling that it's all done better in Nioh.
It's in group fights that I see flashes of not Sekiro, but Ninja Gaiden, and what this game could have been. The assassin enemies' aggression, mobility, and tendency to attack in groups is a reminder that yes, this is the same studio that created the greatest action game enemy of all time, the black spider ninja. Wind Path/Enemy Step isn't quite up to its old enemy-homing, crowd-controlling glory, but it's still a fun movement option with a useful stun effect. In the face of numerous overlapping enemy threat angles, the parry’s movement component takes on new significance by allowing you to simultaneously defend from one attack and position around others. Having to multitask like this also gives the parry more opportunity cost and risk, as well as a "mental stack" type difficulty that doesn't devolve into trained muscle memory. The Zhang Rang fight leans into this and was far and away the most fun of the lineup for me.
Ultimately though, Ninja Gaiden this is not, and the FromSoft influences still weigh it down. Maddison does a great job analyzing the weaknesses here (few structured group fights, lack of support role enemies, NPC helpers deemphasizing crowd control, no soft-lock for blocking or executions), but even if they somehow fix all of that, the Souls camera will still be a huge issue. Locking-on to a new enemy or even quickly changing attack angles frequently causes the camera to sweep wildly, playing unlocked is unreliable for aim (especially with no soft-lock for performing executions), and the close-up, behind-the-back lock-on angle means much of your field of view will be wasted while you struggle to keep tabs on multiple dangerous enemies behind you. Ninja Gaiden’s fixed camera and soft-lock system never had any of these problems, which allowed you to focus on fighting the actual enemies.
One-on-one boss fights are the game at its most Sekiro-like, and worst. There are occasional fun positioning and offensive tricks to use, but knowing that the main path to improving at these bosses is essentially memorizing arbitrary timings is deeply frustrating to me. It reminds me of memorizing flashcards for an exam in school, and is just about as joyless, even with all of their (admittedly entertaining) bombast.
Nioh 2 is one of my favorite games of all time, so it's disappointing to watch Team Ninja awkwardly stumble around trying to elevate the broken combat base of Sekiro that they started with. Ultimately, it’s on them: Sekiro was a poor choice to build off of from the start, and I get the sense that the devs were hoping for more time in the oven on this one. But it’s hard not to imagine a world where Sekiro wasn’t hailed as one-on-one combat perfected, and instead recognized as a respectable, beautiful game about visceral-feeling sword clashes made shallow, but accessible. I find it hard to see Wo Long being made in such a world.
---
Also read Maddison Baek's thorough mechanical analysis. Huge thanks to those who helped with editing and feedback.
---
Just as Nioh was based on Dark Souls, Team Ninja's latest game draws from Sekiro’s shallow, reactive combat.
Souls combat, while often devolving into iframe roll timing checks, has some good fundamentals underneath that reward spacing, smart attack timing, and stamina management. Nioh's great triumph is adding systems (stances, ki pulse, enemy ki, breakable yokai parts, soul cores, burst counter, yokai shift) that accentuate these while opening up opportunities for dynamic decision-making and player expression.
In comparison, Sekiro's fundamentals are: deflect, deflect, deflect. It is a game where the answer to every threat is a single, optimal response (the parry/mikiri/jump), ultimately pushing it closer to a semi-random rhythm game than an action game. While that has a certain appeal in creating a simulacrum of a sword clash as a part of an experientially driven whole (it cannot be overstated how critically important FromSoft's art direction is to their games), these days for me the illusion breaks fast. It feels like everything revolves around those parry visuals and sounds; without the satisfaction of dynamic decision-making, there’s little else to latch onto in the moment besides the clang of a successfully timed button press.
In a way it's the shadow twin of one of FromSoft's other series, classic Armored Core. Those games lean almost entirely on selling you the sensation of piloting a giant mech, and like Sekiro, a critical component of this is the game feel created by real-time audiovisual feedback. However, in AC's case this is paired with nuanced fundamentals of movement, energy management, aiming, and staying out of enemy lock-ons. Not only does this avoid sacrificing player engagement, but the decisions themselves further reinforce that sensation. Hoarding ammo to help pay your mech’s repair bills and struggling to get to grips with a new mech’s handling idiosyncrasies are situations that both arise during gameplay and would intuitively occur as a mercenary in this hypothetical world. In this way, even through an experiential lens, decision-making is an asset to be harnessed, not a weight to carry around.
So how does Wo Long, a near-exclusively mechanically-driven game, salvage Sekiro’s combat? In a word: clumsily. Like Sekiro, parries are still overwhelmingly the driving force behind defense, considering blocking and rolling both have heavy spirit drain penalties preventing you from using them for long, and parrying gains you spirit while draining the enemy’s. Huge tracking on many moves, combined with rapid-fire strings that quickly break blocks and catch rolls, means that learning the (reasonably generous) parry timings is ultimately the simplest and most efficient option at the end of the day.
The major saving grace here is the offensive side: Wizardry Spells, Martial Arts, and aerial attacks allow you to proactively pressure enemies, and there is some level of interesting resource management reminiscent of Nioh 2's Burst Counter with how executions, weapon swap parries, and parrying red attacks clears your red Spirit. But the damage values are simply too low, and risk of being interrupted too high, to warrant using anything but fast/hyper armored moves (random MAs per weapon exacerbates this by hindering experimentation). Without the importance of spacing and risk/reward dynamics of ki underpinning everything, it's hard for me to shake the feeling that it's all done better in Nioh.
It's in group fights that I see flashes of not Sekiro, but Ninja Gaiden, and what this game could have been. The assassin enemies' aggression, mobility, and tendency to attack in groups is a reminder that yes, this is the same studio that created the greatest action game enemy of all time, the black spider ninja. Wind Path/Enemy Step isn't quite up to its old enemy-homing, crowd-controlling glory, but it's still a fun movement option with a useful stun effect. In the face of numerous overlapping enemy threat angles, the parry’s movement component takes on new significance by allowing you to simultaneously defend from one attack and position around others. Having to multitask like this also gives the parry more opportunity cost and risk, as well as a "mental stack" type difficulty that doesn't devolve into trained muscle memory. The Zhang Rang fight leans into this and was far and away the most fun of the lineup for me.
Ultimately though, Ninja Gaiden this is not, and the FromSoft influences still weigh it down. Maddison does a great job analyzing the weaknesses here (few structured group fights, lack of support role enemies, NPC helpers deemphasizing crowd control, no soft-lock for blocking or executions), but even if they somehow fix all of that, the Souls camera will still be a huge issue. Locking-on to a new enemy or even quickly changing attack angles frequently causes the camera to sweep wildly, playing unlocked is unreliable for aim (especially with no soft-lock for performing executions), and the close-up, behind-the-back lock-on angle means much of your field of view will be wasted while you struggle to keep tabs on multiple dangerous enemies behind you. Ninja Gaiden’s fixed camera and soft-lock system never had any of these problems, which allowed you to focus on fighting the actual enemies.
One-on-one boss fights are the game at its most Sekiro-like, and worst. There are occasional fun positioning and offensive tricks to use, but knowing that the main path to improving at these bosses is essentially memorizing arbitrary timings is deeply frustrating to me. It reminds me of memorizing flashcards for an exam in school, and is just about as joyless, even with all of their (admittedly entertaining) bombast.
Nioh 2 is one of my favorite games of all time, so it's disappointing to watch Team Ninja awkwardly stumble around trying to elevate the broken combat base of Sekiro that they started with. Ultimately, it’s on them: Sekiro was a poor choice to build off of from the start, and I get the sense that the devs were hoping for more time in the oven on this one. But it’s hard not to imagine a world where Sekiro wasn’t hailed as one-on-one combat perfected, and instead recognized as a respectable, beautiful game about visceral-feeling sword clashes made shallow, but accessible. I find it hard to see Wo Long being made in such a world.
Wo Long is the Musoufication of the souls-like genre and as far as I'm concerned the game is all the better for it since it is right up there with Nioh as one of the best non-FromSoft souls-likes I've ever played.
The narrative takes place in a fictionalized dark fantasy version of China in the Later Han Dynasty (around 200AD). We follow the silent Nameless Warrior protagonist (who we the player ourselves create) as they get wrapped up in various political conflicts and wars while searching for an evil Taoist who is influencing events from the shadows with a forbidden medicine called "Elixir" that has the ability to unleash Demonic Qi in anyone who consumes it. The Nameless Warrior goes on a journey that spans nearly 20 years as they try to form strong bonds with legendary Chinese historical war generals across the nation with the hopes of taking down the evil Taoist before their goals can be fulfilled. The game really captures the Three Kingdoms mythology well and feels like a classic over-the-top martial arts fantasy movie in the best way possible. (The campy English dub enhances this feeling even more)
Wo Long is a very aggressive and fast-paced souls-like action game that feels like a more simplified, accessible and streamlined version of Nioh's RPG mechanics mixed with the combat of Sekiro and the fast-paced movement and morale centric gameplay of Dynasty Warriors.
The combat is very parry/deflection heavy much like Sekiro, but Wo Long also manages to incorporate its own unique spin on gameplay mechanics like removing the traditional stamina management bar that dictates how much you can attack before becoming exhausted (Meaning you can spam the basic attack all you want, but you will also get punished for doing this) for what is called the 'Spirit Gauge' which dictates how much you can block or dodge as well as using special Martial Arts abilities and Wizardry magic attacks. The Spirit Gauge has a positive and negative axis and starts out at the middle of it at 0. When you take damage, block, dodge or use special abilities you lose Spirit and the gauge fills up on the negative side, if your gauge maxes out the negative side a single hit from an enemy will stagger you leaving you vulnerable for a few seconds, however landing basic attack strikes or deflecting your enemy's attacks build up your Spirit Gauge on the positive side allowing you to use more special attacks and dodge more without penalty, so the game rewards you for playing aggressively along the lines of something like Bloodborne. All enemies have their own Spirit Gauge as well so when you attack them your Spirit increases while there's decreases and pushes them closer to being staggered so you can land a fatal execution attack for massive damage, but the same works for when an enemy lands strikes on you, you'll lose Spirit and they gain it making you closer to being staggered. So essentially combat becomes a tug-o-war match between you and the opponent to see who can stagger who first as you always keep a watchful eye on both you and your opponent's Spirit Gauge. I think this is a super interesting and creative way to advance the Souls style formula and the gameplay also syncs up perfectly with Wo Long's general theme and style of Chinese martial arts which are based around redirecting your opponent's force.
There's also a Morale Rank system which reminds me of something you'd see in a Dynasty Warriors musou game which plays into the tug-o-war metaphor I used earlier where both you and all enemies have a number that determines their morale, you can raise this by killing more enemies and when you do you basically get a power boost, the same can be said for enemies though where if they kill you their morale increases and yours lowers, the higher morale an enemy has the harder it'll be too take them down. The bonfire checkpoint Battle Flag system plays into this as well because every Battle Flag you raise increases your base morale so when you die it'll only go down to that number instead of losing all of your morale. The Battle Flag system also gives more incentive to explore all the levels as much as possible to find all the flags and raise your morale to max before fighting the boss. However the morale system can be a double-edge sword at times due to the fact if you get your morale too much higher than your enemy it can make the fights far too easy and if your enemy's morale is too much higher they'll have a clear advantage over you, so you really just need to get a sweet spot where you both have even morale to make the game the most enjoyable.
Wo Long also incorporates another cool feature with a multi-directional parrying system where you can tilt the joystick in the proper direction of the enemy's attack alongside pressing the parry button, it's another really unique mechanic that sets itself apart from most other games of this style (Though it is optional and you can just press the basic parry button if you want), the combat is super fun and stylish with all the martial art styled weapon arts and special abilities you can do which are tied to different weapons like the weapon arts from Dark Souls III and I haven't felt such satisfying swordplay in a game since the first time I played Sekiro.
Naturally the Nioh like RPG stat attributes play into the Chinese theme as well being based on the 5 elements of Chinese mythology, wood, fire, earth, metal and water all of these stats directly influence your health, attack and Spirit Gauge by things like using Martial Arts takes less Spirit or successfully deflecting attacks increases Spirit more etc. All equipment also changes your elemental affinity as well.
I also must commend Team Ninja for listening to the feedback about the Diablo styled loot system in Nioh being overbearing and severely toning that down here. This is easily Team Ninja's best and most varied level design as well making exploring every level much more fun and engaging than it ever was in Nioh. Wo Long basically has everything I loved about Nioh and none of the down-sides.
Wo Long was one of those rare games that from the moment I started playing it, I knew I'd love it and after finishing the game in 30 hours and even going out of my way to get the platinum trophy as well, I can confirm that I loved every minute of the game. After all when you combine the satisfying combat of Sekiro with the RPG mechanics of Nioh and the stylish flair of a Dynasty Warriors game and throw in some unique mechanics and systems to give it a sense of its own unique identity, how could that not be a recipe for success?
The narrative takes place in a fictionalized dark fantasy version of China in the Later Han Dynasty (around 200AD). We follow the silent Nameless Warrior protagonist (who we the player ourselves create) as they get wrapped up in various political conflicts and wars while searching for an evil Taoist who is influencing events from the shadows with a forbidden medicine called "Elixir" that has the ability to unleash Demonic Qi in anyone who consumes it. The Nameless Warrior goes on a journey that spans nearly 20 years as they try to form strong bonds with legendary Chinese historical war generals across the nation with the hopes of taking down the evil Taoist before their goals can be fulfilled. The game really captures the Three Kingdoms mythology well and feels like a classic over-the-top martial arts fantasy movie in the best way possible. (The campy English dub enhances this feeling even more)
Wo Long is a very aggressive and fast-paced souls-like action game that feels like a more simplified, accessible and streamlined version of Nioh's RPG mechanics mixed with the combat of Sekiro and the fast-paced movement and morale centric gameplay of Dynasty Warriors.
The combat is very parry/deflection heavy much like Sekiro, but Wo Long also manages to incorporate its own unique spin on gameplay mechanics like removing the traditional stamina management bar that dictates how much you can attack before becoming exhausted (Meaning you can spam the basic attack all you want, but you will also get punished for doing this) for what is called the 'Spirit Gauge' which dictates how much you can block or dodge as well as using special Martial Arts abilities and Wizardry magic attacks. The Spirit Gauge has a positive and negative axis and starts out at the middle of it at 0. When you take damage, block, dodge or use special abilities you lose Spirit and the gauge fills up on the negative side, if your gauge maxes out the negative side a single hit from an enemy will stagger you leaving you vulnerable for a few seconds, however landing basic attack strikes or deflecting your enemy's attacks build up your Spirit Gauge on the positive side allowing you to use more special attacks and dodge more without penalty, so the game rewards you for playing aggressively along the lines of something like Bloodborne. All enemies have their own Spirit Gauge as well so when you attack them your Spirit increases while there's decreases and pushes them closer to being staggered so you can land a fatal execution attack for massive damage, but the same works for when an enemy lands strikes on you, you'll lose Spirit and they gain it making you closer to being staggered. So essentially combat becomes a tug-o-war match between you and the opponent to see who can stagger who first as you always keep a watchful eye on both you and your opponent's Spirit Gauge. I think this is a super interesting and creative way to advance the Souls style formula and the gameplay also syncs up perfectly with Wo Long's general theme and style of Chinese martial arts which are based around redirecting your opponent's force.
There's also a Morale Rank system which reminds me of something you'd see in a Dynasty Warriors musou game which plays into the tug-o-war metaphor I used earlier where both you and all enemies have a number that determines their morale, you can raise this by killing more enemies and when you do you basically get a power boost, the same can be said for enemies though where if they kill you their morale increases and yours lowers, the higher morale an enemy has the harder it'll be too take them down. The bonfire checkpoint Battle Flag system plays into this as well because every Battle Flag you raise increases your base morale so when you die it'll only go down to that number instead of losing all of your morale. The Battle Flag system also gives more incentive to explore all the levels as much as possible to find all the flags and raise your morale to max before fighting the boss. However the morale system can be a double-edge sword at times due to the fact if you get your morale too much higher than your enemy it can make the fights far too easy and if your enemy's morale is too much higher they'll have a clear advantage over you, so you really just need to get a sweet spot where you both have even morale to make the game the most enjoyable.
Wo Long also incorporates another cool feature with a multi-directional parrying system where you can tilt the joystick in the proper direction of the enemy's attack alongside pressing the parry button, it's another really unique mechanic that sets itself apart from most other games of this style (Though it is optional and you can just press the basic parry button if you want), the combat is super fun and stylish with all the martial art styled weapon arts and special abilities you can do which are tied to different weapons like the weapon arts from Dark Souls III and I haven't felt such satisfying swordplay in a game since the first time I played Sekiro.
Naturally the Nioh like RPG stat attributes play into the Chinese theme as well being based on the 5 elements of Chinese mythology, wood, fire, earth, metal and water all of these stats directly influence your health, attack and Spirit Gauge by things like using Martial Arts takes less Spirit or successfully deflecting attacks increases Spirit more etc. All equipment also changes your elemental affinity as well.
I also must commend Team Ninja for listening to the feedback about the Diablo styled loot system in Nioh being overbearing and severely toning that down here. This is easily Team Ninja's best and most varied level design as well making exploring every level much more fun and engaging than it ever was in Nioh. Wo Long basically has everything I loved about Nioh and none of the down-sides.
Wo Long was one of those rare games that from the moment I started playing it, I knew I'd love it and after finishing the game in 30 hours and even going out of my way to get the platinum trophy as well, I can confirm that I loved every minute of the game. After all when you combine the satisfying combat of Sekiro with the RPG mechanics of Nioh and the stylish flair of a Dynasty Warriors game and throw in some unique mechanics and systems to give it a sense of its own unique identity, how could that not be a recipe for success?
It's like if you combined Nioh and Sekiro but cut out 95% of the mechanics and had some of the worst pc port optimization I've ever seen, and that's coming from someone with 200 hours in Stranger of Paradise
Simplistic but masterfully made and most importantly: damn fun
Finally, a souls-like that asks the question: what if summoning help made the game HARDER? The A.I in this thing fucking STINKS. Like, unacceptable levels of terrible. Stranger of Paradise came out before this!!! What the actual fuck!!
Genuinely apocalyptically bad A.I aside, game is fun! I love the parry mechanics and the deflections in this game makes Sekiro look 100 years out of date, some of these boss fights whoop total ass: Lu Bu being one of my all-time favorites, and the added verticality means that these are more varied and unique levels than you ever saw in Nioh. But I would be lying if I said this game had the secret sauce that Nioh does that makes it borderline perfect action gaming, and it is hard to point out what that sauce is.
It's definitely not this fucking port, which is some serious fucking Stink. Also puzzling because Stranger of Paradise and Nioh 2 had some excellent PC releases, but Wo Long is just for no reason worse in this regard. Team Ninja has taken a page from From Soft's book now: make a sequel worse for no reason at all.
On release this was genuinely unacceptable, as the game would crash after boss fights, and Wo Long does not save quite as feverishly as a Souls game might, so you might have to replay a boss fight, which, to be frank, is Whack. Some patches have mitigated some of the worst of it, but still it was bad for way too fucking long.
The A.I, as mentioned up top, is also just total dogshit poopoo peepee, I have no idea why it sucks so bad. The game starts you with computer allies in the beginning of almost every mission and you NEED to turn them the fuck off as soon as you can or else they are going to hold you back more than A.I has ever held you back. This is coup-de-grace of annoying companions as they talk constantly, tell you when you are low on health, and fail to dodge or attack whatsoever so you are ALWAYS having to revive them. If you don't want to play this solo and don't want to assemble a crew of flunkies you HAVE to get a friend to play with you, or else this is genuinely unplayable.
Btw Stranger of Paradise came out a year earlier.
Also, bone to pick with Japanese game developers: when I beat a boss let me see him die, please. I'm so sick of "actually you DIDN'T beat me" fights and it feels like they are a Japanese thing. So many times you struggle through a real pain in the ass, beat him, only for him to run from the room and the player character show up 2 minutes later somehow! One guy even had the nerve to get stabbed by another character after the boss fight. Yeah man, I tried stabbing that guy about 100 times and it didn't give!! Why is it different now?? This is such a deflating trope that Dark Souls got so right. When you beat a boss you watch that motherfucker dissolve into dust. That mfer is DEAD. You use the power of the ancient dragon to fire a comet at a boss in Wo Long he sprints out of the room only to fall on a banana peel and die in a cutscene. Fuck you.
What there is to like here is so good that I would dare say I LOVE Wo Long. At certain points this is an all-time favorite, the fights are good, the animations are beautiful, and the systems are engaging, but when it is asking you to 1v3 a bunch of fucking dudes when its combat system is very firmly a 1v1 combat system, it makes me worried that Team Ninja are going for the From Soft school of game design to "make it harder by just suffocating the player." It briefly reaches the highs of Nioh 2 just enough to make these dalliances with shittiness all the more infuriating.
I hope to god this is a test bed for Rise of the Ronin, because there are so many good ideas here in so many bad templates for me to believe they would cook up such a fun parry system only to abandon it after one game. Nioh fans are going to like this one, but from what I've played of Stranger of Paradise I would honestly call that the must-buy of these two games, this one is still worth a shot if you are curious.
Genuinely apocalyptically bad A.I aside, game is fun! I love the parry mechanics and the deflections in this game makes Sekiro look 100 years out of date, some of these boss fights whoop total ass: Lu Bu being one of my all-time favorites, and the added verticality means that these are more varied and unique levels than you ever saw in Nioh. But I would be lying if I said this game had the secret sauce that Nioh does that makes it borderline perfect action gaming, and it is hard to point out what that sauce is.
It's definitely not this fucking port, which is some serious fucking Stink. Also puzzling because Stranger of Paradise and Nioh 2 had some excellent PC releases, but Wo Long is just for no reason worse in this regard. Team Ninja has taken a page from From Soft's book now: make a sequel worse for no reason at all.
On release this was genuinely unacceptable, as the game would crash after boss fights, and Wo Long does not save quite as feverishly as a Souls game might, so you might have to replay a boss fight, which, to be frank, is Whack. Some patches have mitigated some of the worst of it, but still it was bad for way too fucking long.
The A.I, as mentioned up top, is also just total dogshit poopoo peepee, I have no idea why it sucks so bad. The game starts you with computer allies in the beginning of almost every mission and you NEED to turn them the fuck off as soon as you can or else they are going to hold you back more than A.I has ever held you back. This is coup-de-grace of annoying companions as they talk constantly, tell you when you are low on health, and fail to dodge or attack whatsoever so you are ALWAYS having to revive them. If you don't want to play this solo and don't want to assemble a crew of flunkies you HAVE to get a friend to play with you, or else this is genuinely unplayable.
Btw Stranger of Paradise came out a year earlier.
Also, bone to pick with Japanese game developers: when I beat a boss let me see him die, please. I'm so sick of "actually you DIDN'T beat me" fights and it feels like they are a Japanese thing. So many times you struggle through a real pain in the ass, beat him, only for him to run from the room and the player character show up 2 minutes later somehow! One guy even had the nerve to get stabbed by another character after the boss fight. Yeah man, I tried stabbing that guy about 100 times and it didn't give!! Why is it different now?? This is such a deflating trope that Dark Souls got so right. When you beat a boss you watch that motherfucker dissolve into dust. That mfer is DEAD. You use the power of the ancient dragon to fire a comet at a boss in Wo Long he sprints out of the room only to fall on a banana peel and die in a cutscene. Fuck you.
What there is to like here is so good that I would dare say I LOVE Wo Long. At certain points this is an all-time favorite, the fights are good, the animations are beautiful, and the systems are engaging, but when it is asking you to 1v3 a bunch of fucking dudes when its combat system is very firmly a 1v1 combat system, it makes me worried that Team Ninja are going for the From Soft school of game design to "make it harder by just suffocating the player." It briefly reaches the highs of Nioh 2 just enough to make these dalliances with shittiness all the more infuriating.
I hope to god this is a test bed for Rise of the Ronin, because there are so many good ideas here in so many bad templates for me to believe they would cook up such a fun parry system only to abandon it after one game. Nioh fans are going to like this one, but from what I've played of Stranger of Paradise I would honestly call that the must-buy of these two games, this one is still worth a shot if you are curious.
Sendo uma evolução completa de Nioh, o jogo consegue cumprir com excelência sua proposta, tem um dos melhores combates da história, bosses excelentes e ótimo level design. Peca na história e variedade de inimigos, mas não atrapalha muito.
Team Ninja definitely knows what they're doing when it comes to creating a souls-like game but, the lack of originality still remains a huge issue for some of their titles and this is one of them... While Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty delivered with its incredibly addicting combat system, challenging bosses and variety of weapons it struggled a lot with it's unsatisfying looting system, (most of its)level designs, performance, unoriginal combat patterns with its bosses/enemies and it relied on it's inspiration to carry it through most of the game which was a huge let down considering how great this story idea was...
I was extremely excited for this game and while it definitely had potential, the execution just wasn't there for me...
I was extremely excited for this game and while it definitely had potential, the execution just wasn't there for me...
I am a few hours and bosses into this snackified sekiro souls and I adore it.
it's not on the same level of elegance, but the fun in the game is so translucently purely fun. you get smooooth combat flow, goofy bosses, cool skillmagicstatstuff, and it's all wrapped up in flawless application of the three kingdoms mood. wo long gay bowser
it's not on the same level of elegance, but the fun in the game is so translucently purely fun. you get smooooth combat flow, goofy bosses, cool skillmagicstatstuff, and it's all wrapped up in flawless application of the three kingdoms mood. wo long gay bowser
Good but it's over and it's too simple and it's not nioh and it's over
wet noodle ass video game
i like souls games, and i seriously love the combat in this game, when it clicks it’s so much fun. but the random difficulty spikes and lackluster gear/multiplayer systems just kill the fun for me, i think i’ll stick with sekiro.
It really is Sekiro to Nioh's Dark Souls, but Sekiro is more careful about what it cuts and keeps from its sibling series.
One of the things that keeps Nioh playable despite all its cluttered menus and Diablo-like loot drops is the ability to press a single button that will explain almost anything on your screen. It's not perfect - Nioh's got a lot going on - but it will at least help you understand the value in keeping equipment with bonuses to "Tenacity" and "Low Attack Break". Wo Long doesn't even bother with actual explanations for game mechanics, resulting in a situation where you can read multiple paragraphs about the real life philosophy behind the Five Phases but the actual effects of morale, a central concept in the game, are never explained beyond "it increases your combat power". This lax approach to game clarity carries over into that Help feature too, with most explanations offering up "Health Recovery improves Health Recovery" or similarly enlightening statements.
Combat has been pared down a bit, with the complete removal of weapon-specific skill trees, stamina, and stances. Instead of stamina and limited charges for magic spells, your Spirit bar serves as as a combined mana pool and posture meter, depleting as you do bad things or special moves (dodging, taking damage, using magic) and replenishing by doing good things (successfully landing hits, deflecting attacks). It's a fine system, one that's more intuitive than it sounds because you're likely already avoiding damage and landing hits of your own. Spells, on the other hand, require such a large investment in their stat and the spirit costs are so punitive that hybrid builds are nonexistent for large chunks of the game. What this amounts to for most players is a game in which you have very little incentive to do anything other than light attack or deflect. The window in which you can deflect an attack is much larger than you'd expect - think of a Dark Souls roll that regenerates stamina when you successfully dodge an attack. When deflecting is so easy and actively benefits you, it's easy to forget that blocking is even possible.
And companions? Complaining about NPC companions is as old as NPC companions are, so we'll keep it short. The game is visually busy already, and the companions are as visually noisy as they are incompetent in battle. What's worse, the companions have collision - I was knocked off ledges multiple times while platforming due to my companion landing on my head. I also frequently found that if (and that's a BIG "if") my companions were able to survive more than one or two attacks from a boss, the boss frequently gets stuck in a loop of big, AOE, zoning attacks that make it harder to hit. It's hard to appreciate that you're fighting alongside Liu Bei or Cao Cao when they're getting one-shot by a horse demon within ten seconds of the fight starting.
It's a shame, then, that it feels great! Your character moves like they're in a musou game. Deflecting attacks is hands-down the most satisfying thing in this game despite its ease, emitting a ka-SHING with an impact that has more in common with a lightning strike than two swords meeting. The game feels so good that you can play for a long while on that alone, riding the high of scoring a fatal blow on the boss right when you were most desperate for it. That you can spend the entire game coasting on light attacks and deflects doesn't matter when you're still enjoying the novelty of trying out each weapon's Martial Arts.
Kotaku's Levi Winslow repeatedly called it an "accessible" Souls-like in their review of the game, and I think I would agree with that assessment if we're speaking strictly about the combat. The main issue is that at some point you're going to have to interact with those menus and the loot and the Five Phases system as it interacts with leveling and magic and resistances and it's going to be a LOT to throw at someone who can't touch on reference points from Dark Souls, Nioh, and Diablo. Hell, the PC version displays Playstation button prompts when I'm using an Xbox controller, so something as simple as "the ability to match what's on the screen to my controller" is out the window too. I wouldn't go so far as to call this game "safe," but it's squarely in Team Ninja's comfort zone, and they've done very little to make this game stand out as its own IP and very little to offer an olive branch to new players, even those coming from Nioh. It's a fine time (especially early on!), but there are so many frustrations for a game that lacks a distinct personality.
EDIT: It's been pointed out that you can manually switch the button prompts from Playstation to Xbox in the settings - thank you to HazeRedux for the correction!
One of the things that keeps Nioh playable despite all its cluttered menus and Diablo-like loot drops is the ability to press a single button that will explain almost anything on your screen. It's not perfect - Nioh's got a lot going on - but it will at least help you understand the value in keeping equipment with bonuses to "Tenacity" and "Low Attack Break". Wo Long doesn't even bother with actual explanations for game mechanics, resulting in a situation where you can read multiple paragraphs about the real life philosophy behind the Five Phases but the actual effects of morale, a central concept in the game, are never explained beyond "it increases your combat power". This lax approach to game clarity carries over into that Help feature too, with most explanations offering up "Health Recovery improves Health Recovery" or similarly enlightening statements.
Combat has been pared down a bit, with the complete removal of weapon-specific skill trees, stamina, and stances. Instead of stamina and limited charges for magic spells, your Spirit bar serves as as a combined mana pool and posture meter, depleting as you do bad things or special moves (dodging, taking damage, using magic) and replenishing by doing good things (successfully landing hits, deflecting attacks). It's a fine system, one that's more intuitive than it sounds because you're likely already avoiding damage and landing hits of your own. Spells, on the other hand, require such a large investment in their stat and the spirit costs are so punitive that hybrid builds are nonexistent for large chunks of the game. What this amounts to for most players is a game in which you have very little incentive to do anything other than light attack or deflect. The window in which you can deflect an attack is much larger than you'd expect - think of a Dark Souls roll that regenerates stamina when you successfully dodge an attack. When deflecting is so easy and actively benefits you, it's easy to forget that blocking is even possible.
And companions? Complaining about NPC companions is as old as NPC companions are, so we'll keep it short. The game is visually busy already, and the companions are as visually noisy as they are incompetent in battle. What's worse, the companions have collision - I was knocked off ledges multiple times while platforming due to my companion landing on my head. I also frequently found that if (and that's a BIG "if") my companions were able to survive more than one or two attacks from a boss, the boss frequently gets stuck in a loop of big, AOE, zoning attacks that make it harder to hit. It's hard to appreciate that you're fighting alongside Liu Bei or Cao Cao when they're getting one-shot by a horse demon within ten seconds of the fight starting.
It's a shame, then, that it feels great! Your character moves like they're in a musou game. Deflecting attacks is hands-down the most satisfying thing in this game despite its ease, emitting a ka-SHING with an impact that has more in common with a lightning strike than two swords meeting. The game feels so good that you can play for a long while on that alone, riding the high of scoring a fatal blow on the boss right when you were most desperate for it. That you can spend the entire game coasting on light attacks and deflects doesn't matter when you're still enjoying the novelty of trying out each weapon's Martial Arts.
Kotaku's Levi Winslow repeatedly called it an "accessible" Souls-like in their review of the game, and I think I would agree with that assessment if we're speaking strictly about the combat. The main issue is that at some point you're going to have to interact with those menus and the loot and the Five Phases system as it interacts with leveling and magic and resistances and it's going to be a LOT to throw at someone who can't touch on reference points from Dark Souls, Nioh, and Diablo. Hell, the PC version displays Playstation button prompts when I'm using an Xbox controller, so something as simple as "the ability to match what's on the screen to my controller" is out the window too. I wouldn't go so far as to call this game "safe," but it's squarely in Team Ninja's comfort zone, and they've done very little to make this game stand out as its own IP and very little to offer an olive branch to new players, even those coming from Nioh. It's a fine time (especially early on!), but there are so many frustrations for a game that lacks a distinct personality.
EDIT: It's been pointed out that you can manually switch the button prompts from Playstation to Xbox in the settings - thank you to HazeRedux for the correction!
This year's had a real drought of good character creators. Street Fighter 6 is almost entirely designed for generating monsters, and Silent Hill Ascension is... well, you know. So Wo Long made a very strong first impression simply by letting me create an attractive human being. I'm a man who loves some good hair options, and this game left me straight up indecisive. With my feudal warrior properly yassified, I bounced into the main game... literally. Whole lot of jiggling going on here.
Oh right, this is a Team Ninja game. I almost forgot.
I have a real love/hate relationship with Team Ninja, in that I love Dead or Alive and hate everything they release that doesn't have "dead" and "alive" in the title. I've been told Ninja Gaiden Black is good, but I got filtered out by the second boss. Metroid Other M is the worst old game I've played this year. Nioh never left much of an impression on me and I grew bored of it a few hours in. I'll hoot and holler at the top of my lungs for the DOA movie - my username is a direct reference to one of its characters - but trying to experience any other Team Ninja property feels like torture.
And as I was diving into Wo Long's early missions, struggling with combat that felt just as weightless and floaty as my character's chest, I worried that might be the case here as well. But after trading out swords for weightier pole arms and getting a better feel for the more unique systems, like the spirit gauge, I found that I was actually starting to have a good time.
It helps that, unlike other games I've played this year with combat that is heavily reliant on countering enemy attacks, Wo Long is pretty forgiving and plenty generous with its parry timing. I've complained at length that stagger meters are often used to prolong battles in these types of games, effectively severing as armor that must be depleted before you can do "real damage." While it is the case that draining your opponent's spirit gauge will leave them stunned and open them up to a finishing attack that deals a high amount of damage, your basic attacks and spells are all pretty effective on their own. Combat does not feel nearly as rigid as something like Lies of P, and not needing to be surgical with my timing and actually having versatility felt refreshing.
In fact, there were times where I felt the game might be a bit too easy. Thankfully, you can always even that back out by summoning AI partners. You'd think that would trivialize the game but considering Wo Long abides by Souls rules and buffs enemies and bosses when summons are present, and considering AI partners are effectively braindead, they become such a liability that it actually raises the difficulty.
Wo Long is also lacking in variety. By about halfway through the game, you'll have likely seen every weapon, every piece of armor, and every enemy that you'll ever encounter. There is so much loot to pick up, and yet it's always the same low-level swords and axes, clogging up your inventory with dozens upon dozens of duplicates. The shop rarely updates, so selling excess items feels a bit pointless, and breaking them down for upgrade material is about as trivial.
Though much of my enthusiasm for Wo Long is bottled up in its combat, there's thankfully enough offff iiiiiiit thaaHHHHT IIIII HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRHHHHHHHH-DRRRRRRRRRRRGGGHHHHH
Uh oh. The review slowed down. Hold on, let me back out to the main page and start again. At least it autosaved before it crashed...
Wo Long updated a few days ago, and something about this particular patch broke the game. For me, personally. I can't find anyone else bringing up any of this crap.
I have no idea what happens narratively in the last quarter of the game, as every time a cutscene loaded it would suddenly freeze and audio would grind down to a demonic growl. These softlocks happened over and over again and required relaunching the app every single time. I've never seen a game do this before, and I suspect the uniqueness of it is due to the proprietary nature of the Katana engine.
I also began encountering persistent notifications that I had been disconnected from online play, despite remaining logged into my PSN account and experiencing no actual service interruptions with my internet. These notifications pop up using the PS5's UI, and I could go on a whole rant about how it should be standard for notifications like this to pause a game, especially when Wo Long does have a pause function built in, but unfortunately having to hit the O button to dismiss this mid-combat just became a natural part of the game for the last three or so hours I played.
I could've reinstalled the whole game, go offline and keep it at a more stable version, but that felt like too much of a hassle when I was so close to the end, so I just pushed my way through until I rolled credits.
So, yeah, Wo Long is pretty fun but marred by a lack of variety, an abundance of systems that the player is rarely incentivized to use, a stunning lack of variety, and (in my case) glitches that made the game borderline unplayable. I guess that's what I get for playing a Team Ninja game. Now if you'll excuse me, I left the stove on and I really need to touch the burners with my bare hands, again.
Oh right, this is a Team Ninja game. I almost forgot.
I have a real love/hate relationship with Team Ninja, in that I love Dead or Alive and hate everything they release that doesn't have "dead" and "alive" in the title. I've been told Ninja Gaiden Black is good, but I got filtered out by the second boss. Metroid Other M is the worst old game I've played this year. Nioh never left much of an impression on me and I grew bored of it a few hours in. I'll hoot and holler at the top of my lungs for the DOA movie - my username is a direct reference to one of its characters - but trying to experience any other Team Ninja property feels like torture.
And as I was diving into Wo Long's early missions, struggling with combat that felt just as weightless and floaty as my character's chest, I worried that might be the case here as well. But after trading out swords for weightier pole arms and getting a better feel for the more unique systems, like the spirit gauge, I found that I was actually starting to have a good time.
It helps that, unlike other games I've played this year with combat that is heavily reliant on countering enemy attacks, Wo Long is pretty forgiving and plenty generous with its parry timing. I've complained at length that stagger meters are often used to prolong battles in these types of games, effectively severing as armor that must be depleted before you can do "real damage." While it is the case that draining your opponent's spirit gauge will leave them stunned and open them up to a finishing attack that deals a high amount of damage, your basic attacks and spells are all pretty effective on their own. Combat does not feel nearly as rigid as something like Lies of P, and not needing to be surgical with my timing and actually having versatility felt refreshing.
In fact, there were times where I felt the game might be a bit too easy. Thankfully, you can always even that back out by summoning AI partners. You'd think that would trivialize the game but considering Wo Long abides by Souls rules and buffs enemies and bosses when summons are present, and considering AI partners are effectively braindead, they become such a liability that it actually raises the difficulty.
Wo Long is also lacking in variety. By about halfway through the game, you'll have likely seen every weapon, every piece of armor, and every enemy that you'll ever encounter. There is so much loot to pick up, and yet it's always the same low-level swords and axes, clogging up your inventory with dozens upon dozens of duplicates. The shop rarely updates, so selling excess items feels a bit pointless, and breaking them down for upgrade material is about as trivial.
Though much of my enthusiasm for Wo Long is bottled up in its combat, there's thankfully enough offff iiiiiiit thaaHHHHT IIIII HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRHHHHHHHH-DRRRRRRRRRRRGGGHHHHH
Uh oh. The review slowed down. Hold on, let me back out to the main page and start again. At least it autosaved before it crashed...
Wo Long updated a few days ago, and something about this particular patch broke the game. For me, personally. I can't find anyone else bringing up any of this crap.
I have no idea what happens narratively in the last quarter of the game, as every time a cutscene loaded it would suddenly freeze and audio would grind down to a demonic growl. These softlocks happened over and over again and required relaunching the app every single time. I've never seen a game do this before, and I suspect the uniqueness of it is due to the proprietary nature of the Katana engine.
I also began encountering persistent notifications that I had been disconnected from online play, despite remaining logged into my PSN account and experiencing no actual service interruptions with my internet. These notifications pop up using the PS5's UI, and I could go on a whole rant about how it should be standard for notifications like this to pause a game, especially when Wo Long does have a pause function built in, but unfortunately having to hit the O button to dismiss this mid-combat just became a natural part of the game for the last three or so hours I played.
I could've reinstalled the whole game, go offline and keep it at a more stable version, but that felt like too much of a hassle when I was so close to the end, so I just pushed my way through until I rolled credits.
So, yeah, Wo Long is pretty fun but marred by a lack of variety, an abundance of systems that the player is rarely incentivized to use, a stunning lack of variety, and (in my case) glitches that made the game borderline unplayable. I guess that's what I get for playing a Team Ninja game. Now if you'll excuse me, I left the stove on and I really need to touch the burners with my bare hands, again.
poo long
fallen dy-nasty
fallen dy-nasty
I haven't played any other Team Ninja games, so I have no direct comparison to make to those, specifically Nioh. But do you know what game I have played? Sekiro.
I'm not one to play games like this that are obviously inspired by other things and chastise them for clearly liking it and wanting to do it, or maybe it's just corporate homogeneity. Idk but I like these guys so I'll be nice. That being said man they really did take a LOT from Sekiro, not just in combat but in concept. Multiple bosses that are straight up just copy and pasted from Sekiro, set pieces that are exactly like set pieces in Sekiro. Honestly? It was fun. I'm a hack. I haven't played Nioh so I don't know how similar this game is to Nioh mechanically, but this is basically Sekiro light. Parries still feel good but not as good as Sekiro, general game feel and moment to moment gameplay FEELS great. The praise ends here pretty much.
The game feeling great would be a great compliment to hammer home if there was anything around it to make it wholly worthwhile. Combat is fun for a while until you realize there are maybe 6 different enemies to fight? The bosses are mostly good at least. Mostly... Exploration? Huh? Walking in circles and hallways you mean? They trick you later in the game when they start introducing much more visually interesting environments that still have the same 6 enemies and nothing else going on. Like they made something great here I feel, even if it was highly derivative, but just kinda gave up? This is what happens when you're making 3 big games at once. You get the dud, the half a dud, and the please oh god please don't be a dud (Rise of the Ronin looks fuckin cool).
Music in this game is very good too. For the bosses at least. All the incidental music is also very good but gets reused a lot. Very jarring when your final major cut scenes are playing random field tracks in the background that you've been listening to for 40 hours already (yes it took me 40 hours I did a lot of optional stuff).
Not a lot more to say really, there are some weird QOL absences, like going all the way back to the fucking black smith every time you run out of an item just to refill your inventory from a menu that they practically hide from you is kind of insane. Also the performance on PC is comically bad. Like in every conceivable way basically. For me it seemed like simply just turning off the fucking film grain setting fixed most of it. Nioh runs fine afaik, so fix your game bitch. There's a story too, idk what happened in it. Some shit about the elixir, Chinese historical figures were here and they were very pretty. I don't have anything else. This game ain't worth your money right now really, just play Nioh or Sekiro.
I'm not one to play games like this that are obviously inspired by other things and chastise them for clearly liking it and wanting to do it, or maybe it's just corporate homogeneity. Idk but I like these guys so I'll be nice. That being said man they really did take a LOT from Sekiro, not just in combat but in concept. Multiple bosses that are straight up just copy and pasted from Sekiro, set pieces that are exactly like set pieces in Sekiro. Honestly? It was fun. I'm a hack. I haven't played Nioh so I don't know how similar this game is to Nioh mechanically, but this is basically Sekiro light. Parries still feel good but not as good as Sekiro, general game feel and moment to moment gameplay FEELS great. The praise ends here pretty much.
The game feeling great would be a great compliment to hammer home if there was anything around it to make it wholly worthwhile. Combat is fun for a while until you realize there are maybe 6 different enemies to fight? The bosses are mostly good at least. Mostly... Exploration? Huh? Walking in circles and hallways you mean? They trick you later in the game when they start introducing much more visually interesting environments that still have the same 6 enemies and nothing else going on. Like they made something great here I feel, even if it was highly derivative, but just kinda gave up? This is what happens when you're making 3 big games at once. You get the dud, the half a dud, and the please oh god please don't be a dud (Rise of the Ronin looks fuckin cool).
Music in this game is very good too. For the bosses at least. All the incidental music is also very good but gets reused a lot. Very jarring when your final major cut scenes are playing random field tracks in the background that you've been listening to for 40 hours already (yes it took me 40 hours I did a lot of optional stuff).
Not a lot more to say really, there are some weird QOL absences, like going all the way back to the fucking black smith every time you run out of an item just to refill your inventory from a menu that they practically hide from you is kind of insane. Also the performance on PC is comically bad. Like in every conceivable way basically. For me it seemed like simply just turning off the fucking film grain setting fixed most of it. Nioh runs fine afaik, so fix your game bitch. There's a story too, idk what happened in it. Some shit about the elixir, Chinese historical figures were here and they were very pretty. I don't have anything else. This game ain't worth your money right now really, just play Nioh or Sekiro.
Nunca me aventurei muito em Souslikes por não ser o maior fã de me irritar com o videogame. Mas acabei decidindo por mudar isso e experimentei alguns, mas Wo Long foi o que, de longe mais me chamou atenção. O pano de fundo misturando história e dark fantasy me atraiu, ainda mais porque sempre fui muito curioso sobre a Dinastia Chinesa, assim como os Samurais no Japão e por aí vai.
Wo Long definitivamente é um game muito, mas muito divertido. Diferente da fórmula estabelecida pela FromSoftware, aqui o gameplay tá muito mais pra um hack and slash frenético do que pra um souls propriamente dito. Isso foi o que mais me pegou no game. O combate é gostoso pra caramba, tu acaba ficando engajado no game por conta disso e vai avançando cada vez mais e mais. A história também é bem legal, achei interessante como pegaram heróis folclóricos chineses e os colocaram dentro de uma ambientação de dark fantasy envolvendo demônios, qi corrompido, feras divinas. Tudo é muito bem feito.
Os gráficos não são dos melhores mas, sinceramente, não achei ruins também não. Achei alguns cenários bem bonitos e os efeitos visuais do game bem impactantes também. É claro que não é um gráfico de nova geração, mas o game sendo divertido, o gráfico é o de menos.
Eu gostei bastante da história, apesar de achar o vilão bem mais ou menos. Ele tem muito mais aparência do que qualquer outra coisa. Os personagens, tanto os históricos quanto os originais, são bem carismáticos e tu acaba te afeiçoando a eles. Mas eu recomendo a dublagem Chinesa (a que eu usei) ou a Japonesa, elas ajudam muito mais a dar vida e personalidade pra eles do que aquela dublagem inglês canastrona pra caramba. A história também se perde em momentos de diálogos expositivos e longos demais que só servem pra tentar estender o que não precisa, mas não acho que seja nada que prejudique ela no fim das contas. Só deixa ela um pouquinho chata em alguns pontos. Acho uma pena nosso personagem ser um boneco mudo que só reage, deixa ele sem vida. Faria muita diferença ter linhas de diálogo pra ele, principalmente pela importância dele pra trama.
De coisas que eu posso reclamar, definitivamente eu aponto aquele mini mapa tosco que não serve de nada. Tu constantemente te perde nos mapas enormes e labirínticos do game. Isso se mostra um defeito principalmente quando tu tá içando as bandeiras de batalha e falta uma só, até achar ela é um saco. Também preciso falar da inteligência artificial dos NPCs que te acompanham, que é PÉSSIMA. O game te dá a oportunidade de abordar alguns inimigos em stealth (a mecânica é bem tosca, mas ajuda) e isso se torna uma vantagem muito boa contra inimigos mais poderosos. Só que diversas vezes eu tava tentando chegar no stealth e meus companheiros iam lá, davam uma porrada no bicho, deixavam ele em alerta e SAÍAM DE PERTO. Aí é de fuder. Isso sem contar que eles são paredes, um deles ficou parado numa porta e eu demorei quase 5 minutos pra sair da porra do lugar porque ele bloqueou a saída e eu não conseguia tirar ele dali.
Agora vamos pra um ponto que eu PRECISO comentar, eu não quero ser o cara que reclama de dificuldade em Soulslike. Eu não quero MESMO. Só que a dificuldade pra mim é o maior problema desse jogo. A Team Ninja não soube balancear a parada aqui.
Logo no início do jogo, eu enfrento o Zhang Liang. Que seria uma espécie de boss tutorial. Óbvio que o fato de eu não ter recurso nenhum ia dificultar minha vida, só que esse boss é um absurdo de difícil. Coisa insana mesmo. E o pior é que eu descobri que, no lançamento, o negócio era ainda pior, chegando ao ponto de muita gente ter dropado o game logo nele e a Team Ninja ter que lançar um patch nerfando o boneco. Não quero nem imaginar como era a luta antes, eu já sofri nessa. Daí em diante, o game sofre uma queda brusca de dificuldade. Todos os boss do jogo dali em diante ou eu matava na primeira ou na segunda tentativa, fiquei surpreso com o quão acessível o game tava nessa questão, apesar do primeiro chefe.
Eis então que chega um personagem que me dá gastura só de lembrar. O Lu Bu. Irmão, o que esse boss maldito é difícil é PIADA. O cara tá montado num cavalo gigante que dá dano elemental de fogo, ele lança flechas gigantes e dá ataques que tem um raio de alcance absurdamente alto. Ao ponto de, mesmo sendo uma arena grande, ele conseguir te alcançar com, pelo menos, um golpe. Foi um spike MUITO brusco de dificuldade e que empacou minha gameplay por 4 dias. Depois de FINALMENTE passar ele, mais uma vez o game teve uma queda brusca de dificuldade.
Não digo que não houveram mapas ou chefes difíceis. É claro que tiveram. Mas todos eram completamente viáveis, que levavam, no máximo, umas 4 tentativas. Nada se compara ao Lu Bu em termos de dificuldade. Cacete, nem a versão demoníaca do próprio Lu Bu me deu trabalho. Eu matei o filho da puta na primeira tentativa, eu não tava nem acreditando.
Dando uma olhada pra descobrir alguma estratégia que me ajudasse a matar o Lu Bu, eu vi um ranking dos chefes do game e o site colocou o Lu Bu como 7/10 e o último boss como 9/10. Eu só pensava "mano fodeu muito, se esse desgraçado é 7/10 e eu tô preso nele há 4 dias, como é que vou finalizar o game". Mas eu fui enganado. Como eu fui fazendo as DLCs antes de finalizar o game, acredito que isso possa ter me ajudado, só que eu cheguei na reta final com minha personagem no lvl 138 e simplesmente destruí os dois boss finais na primeira tentativa. Fiquei até achando que tinha algo errado.
Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty é um game com gráficos ok, uma jogabilidade muito gostosa (defletir um golpe perfeitamente é satisfatório demais), com uma história e ambientação dignas de um filme wuxia. Que é basicamente o que esse jogo é, um filme wuxia interativo. Só que ele sofre muito com pequenos probleminhas e um desbalanceamento absurdo de dificuldade.
Ainda assim, eu acho que o game vale muito a pena justamente pela ambientação e pela gameplay. É um daqueles games que tu entra e não vê o tempo passar, até porque alguns chefes vão te exigir bastante tempo até passar eles. Pra quem gosta de Soulslike, principalmente de Nioh, é uma boa pedida. Pra quem quer começar, acho que pode ser uma boa porta de entrada.
Wo Long definitivamente é um game muito, mas muito divertido. Diferente da fórmula estabelecida pela FromSoftware, aqui o gameplay tá muito mais pra um hack and slash frenético do que pra um souls propriamente dito. Isso foi o que mais me pegou no game. O combate é gostoso pra caramba, tu acaba ficando engajado no game por conta disso e vai avançando cada vez mais e mais. A história também é bem legal, achei interessante como pegaram heróis folclóricos chineses e os colocaram dentro de uma ambientação de dark fantasy envolvendo demônios, qi corrompido, feras divinas. Tudo é muito bem feito.
Os gráficos não são dos melhores mas, sinceramente, não achei ruins também não. Achei alguns cenários bem bonitos e os efeitos visuais do game bem impactantes também. É claro que não é um gráfico de nova geração, mas o game sendo divertido, o gráfico é o de menos.
Eu gostei bastante da história, apesar de achar o vilão bem mais ou menos. Ele tem muito mais aparência do que qualquer outra coisa. Os personagens, tanto os históricos quanto os originais, são bem carismáticos e tu acaba te afeiçoando a eles. Mas eu recomendo a dublagem Chinesa (a que eu usei) ou a Japonesa, elas ajudam muito mais a dar vida e personalidade pra eles do que aquela dublagem inglês canastrona pra caramba. A história também se perde em momentos de diálogos expositivos e longos demais que só servem pra tentar estender o que não precisa, mas não acho que seja nada que prejudique ela no fim das contas. Só deixa ela um pouquinho chata em alguns pontos. Acho uma pena nosso personagem ser um boneco mudo que só reage, deixa ele sem vida. Faria muita diferença ter linhas de diálogo pra ele, principalmente pela importância dele pra trama.
De coisas que eu posso reclamar, definitivamente eu aponto aquele mini mapa tosco que não serve de nada. Tu constantemente te perde nos mapas enormes e labirínticos do game. Isso se mostra um defeito principalmente quando tu tá içando as bandeiras de batalha e falta uma só, até achar ela é um saco. Também preciso falar da inteligência artificial dos NPCs que te acompanham, que é PÉSSIMA. O game te dá a oportunidade de abordar alguns inimigos em stealth (a mecânica é bem tosca, mas ajuda) e isso se torna uma vantagem muito boa contra inimigos mais poderosos. Só que diversas vezes eu tava tentando chegar no stealth e meus companheiros iam lá, davam uma porrada no bicho, deixavam ele em alerta e SAÍAM DE PERTO. Aí é de fuder. Isso sem contar que eles são paredes, um deles ficou parado numa porta e eu demorei quase 5 minutos pra sair da porra do lugar porque ele bloqueou a saída e eu não conseguia tirar ele dali.
Agora vamos pra um ponto que eu PRECISO comentar, eu não quero ser o cara que reclama de dificuldade em Soulslike. Eu não quero MESMO. Só que a dificuldade pra mim é o maior problema desse jogo. A Team Ninja não soube balancear a parada aqui.
Logo no início do jogo, eu enfrento o Zhang Liang. Que seria uma espécie de boss tutorial. Óbvio que o fato de eu não ter recurso nenhum ia dificultar minha vida, só que esse boss é um absurdo de difícil. Coisa insana mesmo. E o pior é que eu descobri que, no lançamento, o negócio era ainda pior, chegando ao ponto de muita gente ter dropado o game logo nele e a Team Ninja ter que lançar um patch nerfando o boneco. Não quero nem imaginar como era a luta antes, eu já sofri nessa. Daí em diante, o game sofre uma queda brusca de dificuldade. Todos os boss do jogo dali em diante ou eu matava na primeira ou na segunda tentativa, fiquei surpreso com o quão acessível o game tava nessa questão, apesar do primeiro chefe.
Eis então que chega um personagem que me dá gastura só de lembrar. O Lu Bu. Irmão, o que esse boss maldito é difícil é PIADA. O cara tá montado num cavalo gigante que dá dano elemental de fogo, ele lança flechas gigantes e dá ataques que tem um raio de alcance absurdamente alto. Ao ponto de, mesmo sendo uma arena grande, ele conseguir te alcançar com, pelo menos, um golpe. Foi um spike MUITO brusco de dificuldade e que empacou minha gameplay por 4 dias. Depois de FINALMENTE passar ele, mais uma vez o game teve uma queda brusca de dificuldade.
Não digo que não houveram mapas ou chefes difíceis. É claro que tiveram. Mas todos eram completamente viáveis, que levavam, no máximo, umas 4 tentativas. Nada se compara ao Lu Bu em termos de dificuldade. Cacete, nem a versão demoníaca do próprio Lu Bu me deu trabalho. Eu matei o filho da puta na primeira tentativa, eu não tava nem acreditando.
Dando uma olhada pra descobrir alguma estratégia que me ajudasse a matar o Lu Bu, eu vi um ranking dos chefes do game e o site colocou o Lu Bu como 7/10 e o último boss como 9/10. Eu só pensava "mano fodeu muito, se esse desgraçado é 7/10 e eu tô preso nele há 4 dias, como é que vou finalizar o game". Mas eu fui enganado. Como eu fui fazendo as DLCs antes de finalizar o game, acredito que isso possa ter me ajudado, só que eu cheguei na reta final com minha personagem no lvl 138 e simplesmente destruí os dois boss finais na primeira tentativa. Fiquei até achando que tinha algo errado.
Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty é um game com gráficos ok, uma jogabilidade muito gostosa (defletir um golpe perfeitamente é satisfatório demais), com uma história e ambientação dignas de um filme wuxia. Que é basicamente o que esse jogo é, um filme wuxia interativo. Só que ele sofre muito com pequenos probleminhas e um desbalanceamento absurdo de dificuldade.
Ainda assim, eu acho que o game vale muito a pena justamente pela ambientação e pela gameplay. É um daqueles games que tu entra e não vê o tempo passar, até porque alguns chefes vão te exigir bastante tempo até passar eles. Pra quem gosta de Soulslike, principalmente de Nioh, é uma boa pedida. Pra quem quer começar, acho que pode ser uma boa porta de entrada.
give up that loot system team ninja literally nobody wants that
in desperate need of a jack garland type character to make things interesting.
since it's on gamepass I would recommend playing till you fight Lu Bu, the highlight of the game, watch him retreat as he does (spoilers for the romance of the three kingdoms?) and just turn it off. the second half has almost nothing new to offer unless you have the team ninja soulslike loot game brainrot, in which case please indulge yourself.
to speak positively the morale system with the flags is a genuinely interesting wrinkle to the soulslike game but it does require the maps being more well thought out and that really just unravels into a mess in the latter half of the game. the ai battle party system is weaker than stranger where it actually felt like an integral part of the game, here it's more of an annoyance that you bear with for the sake of having Cao Cao (he looks so cool) hang out with you. the dark fantasy angle is so dull and pointless i wish it was more of a straight three kingdoms game. oh well, still had fun.
since it's on gamepass I would recommend playing till you fight Lu Bu, the highlight of the game, watch him retreat as he does (spoilers for the romance of the three kingdoms?) and just turn it off. the second half has almost nothing new to offer unless you have the team ninja soulslike loot game brainrot, in which case please indulge yourself.
to speak positively the morale system with the flags is a genuinely interesting wrinkle to the soulslike game but it does require the maps being more well thought out and that really just unravels into a mess in the latter half of the game. the ai battle party system is weaker than stranger where it actually felt like an integral part of the game, here it's more of an annoyance that you bear with for the sake of having Cao Cao (he looks so cool) hang out with you. the dark fantasy angle is so dull and pointless i wish it was more of a straight three kingdoms game. oh well, still had fun.
Seems ok but I’ve got plenty of Soulslikes in my life and I don’t like the Diablo-style loot; too much inventory management. It does a lot well, though, and has fun, fluid combat.
I'll start with praise: Wo Long's spirit system is genuinely brilliant, elegantly intertwining Bloodborne's reward for aggression with Sekiro's posture- and deflect-oriented combat, giving an extra dimension to combat and organically rewarding the player for mixing and matching between normal attacks, heavy attacks, and martial arts. I think you could build an excellent game on top of that system, but I don't think Wo Long quite hits that mark.
The first chunk of this game, through about the Ayoe boss fight, is paced so that this combat system shines. But as time goes on, the difficulty ramps up in ways that specifically undermine its greatest strengths. Enemies start having long, frenetic normal-attack combos that are very difficult for mere mortals to consistently deflect and which simultaneously leave no room for normal attacks. Fights start to boil down to dodging out of range, memorizing the timing of exploitable critical attacks, and nothing more.
This is compounded as the game starts dumping multi-foe fights on you, demanding that you react to layered overlapping combos that are barely feasible on their own. It's not even the difficulty that's frustrating—you can smash your way through these fights with enough patience—but all the nuance that's compelling about the combat is gone. After beating Lu Bu and feeling nothing more than vague annoyance, I think I'm done with this game for good.
The first chunk of this game, through about the Ayoe boss fight, is paced so that this combat system shines. But as time goes on, the difficulty ramps up in ways that specifically undermine its greatest strengths. Enemies start having long, frenetic normal-attack combos that are very difficult for mere mortals to consistently deflect and which simultaneously leave no room for normal attacks. Fights start to boil down to dodging out of range, memorizing the timing of exploitable critical attacks, and nothing more.
This is compounded as the game starts dumping multi-foe fights on you, demanding that you react to layered overlapping combos that are barely feasible on their own. It's not even the difficulty that's frustrating—you can smash your way through these fights with enough patience—but all the nuance that's compelling about the combat is gone. After beating Lu Bu and feeling nothing more than vague annoyance, I think I'm done with this game for good.
Got to Part 4 and just said nah, no thanks. Cleaning up the design from Nioh's extreme bloat is a good impulse, it made SoP probably TN's best action RPG to date, but in this game its been cleaved to the bone with nothing left to make up for it. Obv ripped from Sekiro, the new parry system that combat orients around is just not exciting, it's trivial to simply mash light attack on normal enemies until they go into their unblockable, bait it, deflect, and move on. There's very little tactical variety even when you meet new enemies or bosses, and like their previous games the encounters are liberally copy pasted thru the game. The Nioh games always looked bad and had bad stories but at least went for some kind of distinct visual atmosphere, this game is Grey Cave City. They're large levels, but all there is to find is extremely lame useless loot and flag points that magically give you a bigger number so you can actually deal damage to enemies. All this could be tolerable if the game had solid feel, but it has that weird modern Team Ninja Jank where enemies barely react to your hits so it feels more like you're just doing canned animations into them rather than actually fighting them. It just compounds with the problem of how little tactical variety there is, weapons feel samey, martial arts feel samey, there's some kind of RPS system in place but spamming fireballs seemed to work every time for me. Never forgive Koei
After putting it down at maybe the third level a full year ago, I came back and beat it. Given that the consensus is fairly lukewarm, I was surprised to discover that I mostly loved it!
Wo Long’s biggest sin is that it takes such direct inspiration from Sekiro and isn’t quite as good as one of the best video games ever made. But dang it, more games should do awesome pressure combat! More Sekiro spiritual sequels please!
The big differences with Wo Long are that it’s a lot easier than Sekiro (thanks to its clever Morale/flag system where the more you explore the easier everything is), everything is broken down into small Nioh-style levels (makes sense since Team Ninja made this), and that the Sekiro combat is completely dictated by unblockable (but parryable) super moves with huge windups.
It’s way easier than nearly every big budget Soulsy game I’ve ever played AND the story is kinda junk, but damn it it’s fun! Super cool bosses and historical fiction concepts. The difficulty reminded me of a good Platinum game on default difficulty or a challenging platformer. Not crazy, but you’ll get the blood pumping.
If you recalibrate your expectations to Wo Long being a fun ~20 hour Sekirolike rather than anything overly special, I think you’ll have a pretty nice time. Great Game Pass game!
Wo Long’s biggest sin is that it takes such direct inspiration from Sekiro and isn’t quite as good as one of the best video games ever made. But dang it, more games should do awesome pressure combat! More Sekiro spiritual sequels please!
The big differences with Wo Long are that it’s a lot easier than Sekiro (thanks to its clever Morale/flag system where the more you explore the easier everything is), everything is broken down into small Nioh-style levels (makes sense since Team Ninja made this), and that the Sekiro combat is completely dictated by unblockable (but parryable) super moves with huge windups.
It’s way easier than nearly every big budget Soulsy game I’ve ever played AND the story is kinda junk, but damn it it’s fun! Super cool bosses and historical fiction concepts. The difficulty reminded me of a good Platinum game on default difficulty or a challenging platformer. Not crazy, but you’ll get the blood pumping.
If you recalibrate your expectations to Wo Long being a fun ~20 hour Sekirolike rather than anything overly special, I think you’ll have a pretty nice time. Great Game Pass game!
The GOATs at Team Ninja do it again and make something I'm going to spend a hundred hours playing obsessively.
I love the action here, as the deflect system is probably the most satisfying parry system I've used since Sekiro, which this game obviously takes influence from. While there is no chance in hell Team Ninja is ever going to match From Soft's superior level design, they sure as hell know how to design a boss fight and combat system.
If you like Nioh and Nioh 2, you don't need ME telling you that you'll dig this, you already own it! I'm the one who is behind.
Oh, it does bear mentioning that the technical issues on PC are FOR REAL. this port is crap and it's honestly unacceptable to have this many crashes in a game.
I love the action here, as the deflect system is probably the most satisfying parry system I've used since Sekiro, which this game obviously takes influence from. While there is no chance in hell Team Ninja is ever going to match From Soft's superior level design, they sure as hell know how to design a boss fight and combat system.
If you like Nioh and Nioh 2, you don't need ME telling you that you'll dig this, you already own it! I'm the one who is behind.
Oh, it does bear mentioning that the technical issues on PC are FOR REAL. this port is crap and it's honestly unacceptable to have this many crashes in a game.
ya boy kongming
jogo merda tudo igual os combate eu odeio chines
Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty is the ultimate B-tier game. It never feels as epic and all-encompassing as, say, Breath of the Wild or Elden Ring, but that hardly matters because it’s just so much damn fun to play. It knows what it wants to be and executes with spellbinding precision.
As we’ve come to expect from Team Ninja, combat is central to the experience. The big innovation here is the Spirit Meter. It’s functionally similar to a stamina bar but the difference is in how you fill it. Dodging, blocking, heavy attacks, and spellcasting drain the bar, as you might expect. Filling it, though, is done by connecting with normal attacks and parrying enemy attacks. The result is that you’ll want to get up in the enemy’s face and push the pace, slashing and deflecting until you’ve gathered enough spirit to deliver a knockout blow. Aggression is the name of the game.
One reason why the game feels so great to play is because Team Ninja boldly decided to bind dodge and deflect to the same button. One tap deflects; two taps dodges. What makes this so brilliant is that it actively encourages players to deflect. I don’t know about you, but when I play Dark Souls and Elden Ring I never use the parry mechanic. It feels too risky – why expose myself when I can dive out of the way or turtle behind a shield instead? Wo Long, in contrast, quickly taught me that deflecting was the way of a true warrior. There’s nothing more rewarding than deflecting a boss’s critical blows only to immediately respond with a finisher of your own.
Visually, Wo Long more than holds its own. Camera work is impeccable, with seamless zooms and pans intensifying the impact of criticals and finishers. Environmental design is varied, featuring lush jungles, bloody battlefields, toxin-drenched sewers, and everything in between. And it’d be a disservice not to mention the character creator, which offers an incredible amount of customization options. You could spend hours fine-tuning just your hero’s cheekbones.
Yes, there is still plenty to grumble about. There are heaps of mostly useless loot to sift through. Enemy variety is on the paltry side, and by the end you’ll be wondering what’s up with Imperial China and burning hedgehogs. The story, meanwhile, is neither good nor “so bad it’s good.” Romance of the Three Kingdoms fans may appreciate it, but as someone who is unfamiliar with the story, I found the large cast of characters and their shifting alliances hard to follow.
But these are minor quibbles. Wo Long is an amazing game, one that kept me completely engaged from beginning to end. Usually by the time I finish a game I’d glad for it to be over, but in this case I absolutely want more. Let us all pour one out for Lu Bu as we await the DLC.
As we’ve come to expect from Team Ninja, combat is central to the experience. The big innovation here is the Spirit Meter. It’s functionally similar to a stamina bar but the difference is in how you fill it. Dodging, blocking, heavy attacks, and spellcasting drain the bar, as you might expect. Filling it, though, is done by connecting with normal attacks and parrying enemy attacks. The result is that you’ll want to get up in the enemy’s face and push the pace, slashing and deflecting until you’ve gathered enough spirit to deliver a knockout blow. Aggression is the name of the game.
One reason why the game feels so great to play is because Team Ninja boldly decided to bind dodge and deflect to the same button. One tap deflects; two taps dodges. What makes this so brilliant is that it actively encourages players to deflect. I don’t know about you, but when I play Dark Souls and Elden Ring I never use the parry mechanic. It feels too risky – why expose myself when I can dive out of the way or turtle behind a shield instead? Wo Long, in contrast, quickly taught me that deflecting was the way of a true warrior. There’s nothing more rewarding than deflecting a boss’s critical blows only to immediately respond with a finisher of your own.
Visually, Wo Long more than holds its own. Camera work is impeccable, with seamless zooms and pans intensifying the impact of criticals and finishers. Environmental design is varied, featuring lush jungles, bloody battlefields, toxin-drenched sewers, and everything in between. And it’d be a disservice not to mention the character creator, which offers an incredible amount of customization options. You could spend hours fine-tuning just your hero’s cheekbones.
Yes, there is still plenty to grumble about. There are heaps of mostly useless loot to sift through. Enemy variety is on the paltry side, and by the end you’ll be wondering what’s up with Imperial China and burning hedgehogs. The story, meanwhile, is neither good nor “so bad it’s good.” Romance of the Three Kingdoms fans may appreciate it, but as someone who is unfamiliar with the story, I found the large cast of characters and their shifting alliances hard to follow.
But these are minor quibbles. Wo Long is an amazing game, one that kept me completely engaged from beginning to end. Usually by the time I finish a game I’d glad for it to be over, but in this case I absolutely want more. Let us all pour one out for Lu Bu as we await the DLC.