zargy
3 reviews liked by zargy
Lies of P
2023
Here’s a boss fight video I have recorded for this review. It doesn’t necessarily support my thoughts, but in case you want to watch it, here you go: https://youtu.be/ALLPMFvZ0Mo?si=0BJtAlatypNdsbwH
Also, spoiler warning. I’m gonna namedrop every important boss and local so consider reading this after you are done with the game.
What I expected from the demo playthrough was that this game was just gonna be a typical Souls game with a deflection mechanic. What I got in the end with the 30+ hours of journey is that this game is…. still a typical souls game, but with the combination of the best aspects of the modern post-DeS/pre-ER FROM games. Of course, there are some downfalls driven from that scope, but I won’t sugarcoat that my experience with this game was almost close to my first playthrough of Bloodborne. If this game came out in 2015, it would have been my identity to praise this game till death. Of course, this won’t be my game of life, because at this point in my gaming journey, I’m more interested in games that aren’t really souls-like, but there was a spark of joy to have for a long-time fan of the formula.
Lies of P’s thematical structure is similar to BB at first glance. There’s a dying city, there’s also a problem with outbreak of monstrosities, celestial beings behind the veil, yadayda… you know the drill. But once you dive into the game, you can see that the game is trying to convey a different thing while maintaining the value of the traditional Souls game.
In the older Myazaki’s Souls games. There’s a sense that the world in that game is an elaborated place instead of just being a pretty background. When we go back to Demon’s Souls, you might remember that you have to open the giant gate in the castle area, pick up the key and use it to open the doors in the asylum area and activate the mining elevator in the mine area, all for the one purpose: opening the shortcut or the next passage. Even though they are just a little detail, you wouldn’t disagree that this little detail in interactions make each level feel distinguished and elaborated. While this environmental detail is what FROM still excels at, you can’t deny that modern FROM games aren’t really good at delivering that premise as they look more dungeon-y than a thematically accurate place. This aspect got worse after Dark Souls 3 and we all know that Elden Ring introduced soulless manufactured mini-dungeons, which kinda ruined the game as a whole even with the inclusion of Legacy Dungeons.
Compared to this, Lies of P is full of elaborated environmental details and interactions that convey the game feel. For example, one thing you will realize soon is that this game took place around the pseudo-Belle-Époque era. To elaborate it, the game actually introduces levels themed around such as a gigantic factory manufacturing dolls, a gigantic market arcade, and a world expo with grandiose exhibitions. And those levels are, instead of being too dungeon-y, structured like an actual place for that purpose. You have to lower the pipe hanging on the crane to make a shortcut in the factory. You can ride the tram that was shown at the beginning to open a way to the expo. The arcade area is full of little shops that function as ambushes, lootable places, and backdoor shortcuts. In this aspect, Lies of P holds the torch as the best non-FROM souls-like that gave a shit about environments. If I have to nitpick, there are some obstacles that made me question “Why can’t I just jump over this”, but honestly the stronger part is so strong that I kinda forgot about it.
We are still talking about the world-building so I can add more about the thing I liked about Lies of P’s way of distinguishing itself from other FROM Souls games.
Firstly, I think the members of Hotel Krat are much more likable and sympathetic than any FROM’s hub dwellers. In FROM Souls games, after the 4 similar entries, you kinda see the boring patterns of the NPC placements. A calm and cryptic maiden figure that levels you up, A cynical-ass depressed soldier, A bulky blacksmith, and some boring merchants here and there. And you know some of them will go off and die in a ditch at some point. Bloodborne did kinda experimental things with survivors in the chapel, but they didn’t do stuff like that after BB which is pretty weird. While Lies of P still has that cryptic maiden figure, the other NPCs are full of distinguishable characteristics. A nerd girl who is very enthusiastic about gears, A CEO of the puppet industry who has a depressing backstory even with the hilarious facade, a swindler treasure hunter who tries so hard to be known as a real one, and a hotel counter robot that secretly loves the hotel owner. You may say these characters are almost like caricatures, but I personally think some amount of campiness can work as a good contrast in the consistently depressing scenario. Also, the motivations of those characters are well-established compared to FROM game NPCs which require two parts of Vaatividya videos to understand the full context.
Secondly, I think the collectables in this game are pretty neat. Unlike Souls games, there are varied types of collectables to get the lores and trivia behind the world. Message notes, guide tour books, newspapers, advertisement posters, and all that. While there are some Resident Evil documents moments that made me think “There’s no way that people would write this thing before dying lmao”, the varied way of describing the worldbuilding establishes that this world is a place where people actually lived, not a glorified dungeon after dungeon. There were some cute moments too, like the notes from Black Rabbit brotherhood. The message cylinders are probably my favorite addition to this formula since it is thematically accurate and I just like doing the treasure hunt while looking at the visual clues. This game’s strong suit is the environment department, so it works wonderfully when I just can guess the location right away with a blurred picture in the clue. There are also vinyl records to collect which can be played in the hotel lobby. Here’s a thing you should know: this is not the same as the Nier Automata’s jukebox where you can play the in-game themes again. This plays an actual original song just for this sole function! And all the vinyl record music is wonderfully composed fitting to the narrative of certain characters or the general mood so it actually had an intrinsic value for me even if it doesn’t benefit the gameplay department at all. It’s not a lie that I was happier to find records more so than the weapons.
Speaking of weapons, I think Lies of P has probably the best weapon customization in all the souls-likes I’ve played. (I’m only talking about the weapons here. If we are talking about player toolsets as a whole, there are many games that did better than this.) One of the biggest gripes I had with Souls games, in general, is that experimenting with other weapons requires an entire stat rollback or a complete re-upgrade for that new weapon just to make it useful. And even then you are limited to given weapons moves which are pretty basic most of the time. In a way, all the Souls games “build progression” can be boiled down to [Get the base weapon] - [Stick to that weapon till you find a better weapon with the same stat requirements] - [Change it to that new weapon and fully upgrade it] - [Stick to it till the end]. Even with the stat rollback functions, people rarely want to change the gears ignoring the floods of “other options” in their inventory, because trying out other weapons optimally is such busy work to do in the initial playthrough. In an ideal world, we should be able to get the Armored Core treatment where you can pull out every weapon from a cargo, but that won’t happen in the Souls game structure because they need to drip-feed the reward to fill the exploration aspect, like the hidden weapons or upgrade materials.
Lies of P took the middle ground by making the weapon parts combinable. Blades are completely separate from your stat requirement and you can upgrade these parts with moonstones. Handles on the other hand require your stat requirement, but it doesn’t determine the overall power of the weapon and it changes the moveset instead. By combining these two, you can experiment with the builds freely, as your stat requirement or the lack of upgrade materials doesn’t halt you from trying out the weapon customization. For example, you want to try out the drill-like lance which fits your stat requirement. but you may think it is obnoxious to upgrade it from the +1. Then you can just go to the Stargazer, switch the blade to the fully upgraded one, and there you have it! It may have a different speed or attack range, but you still can use the drill lance. By the end of the game, I used 5 or 6 weapons throughout the game without reallocating the stats even once. People say Souls games thrive on build variety, and Lies of P shows how to upgrade the formula to meet that expectations.
If we dig deeper into the combat side, we can find even more interesting changes to the formula. While it is basic, the fable arts and charge attacks are neat additions to the combat system. In a way, this is not a new thing as these things have become standardized since Bloodborne, but these combat options have much more clear purpose in this combat loop - the groggy attack. Unlike the traditional souls games where your basic maneuver leads you to the small victories (enemy stagger) and then big victories(enemy death) in a linear fashion, Lies of P makes you “earn” the small victory by requiring you to do a high skill action: dealing damage with fable arts or charge attacks while the enemy healthbar is glowing white. This mechanic provides two interesting things in your gameplay. Since your fable arts consume the meter and charge attack requires a long start-up time, you have to be more knowledgeable about enemy patterns or your positioning to actually punish, and sometimes you have to make hard decisions as the white bar won’t stay longer. Because some enemies just don’t give you a lot of breathing ground, you have to think about hit trading or ignoring the white bar for now and waiting for the next one.
This interesting dynamics also can be seen from the guard mechanic. Lies of P’s twist on the BB’s regain system is that players can regenerate the lost health by hitting the enemies, but only after you guard the damage. The raw damage will just go straight to the health bar and you won’t get anything after that. However, once you manage to nail down the perfect parry with the guard button, it gives a groggy damage to the enemies and you can also regenerate the lost health a bit, just like when you hit the enemies. But the perfect parry’s frame window is much shorter than Sekiro or Wo Long, so there’s definitely a high-skill ceiling aspect to master this.
This little dynamism makes the game much more than strict whip punishes even if the game is framed as a reactive side on the whole action game spectrum. Also, with this combat framework, the enemies are just fantastically designed. Fitting to the narrative, most of the enemies are malfunctioning dolls or erratic zombies. So most attacks have non-conventional timing with all the twitching joints and irregular steps. Because of this aspect, you can’t just comfortably parry or I-frame dodge every attack from the get-go. You have to consider the enemy attack distance, tracking angle, and your position in the environment to make yourself safe. This is something that lacked in Sekiro where you could comfortably deflect everything (Well, except for some main bosses, mind you!) while being stationary to the point that it feels like a rhythmical Punchout.
The bosses are great examples that elaborate the importance of positioning. The second main boss Scrapped Watchman has insane amount of patterns for an early game boss. It starts out as a simple parry/i-frame dodge test, but then the boss quickly introduces lightning effects on the ground which makes you adjust your movements more thoughtfully. Probably my favorite bosses would be Archbishop and The Swamp Monster. Visually they both look grotesque and cool, there’s a fun aspect of finding a good spot to deflect the attack while maintaining the distance, and also there were some satisfying moments where you have to pull off the groggy attack while the gigantic monstrosity is sweeping around the arena erratically.
Bosses are the highlights of this game, but where the game exceptionally excels at is how they handle the normal enemies. I heard that the director’s favorite Souls game is Dark Souls 2 from some rumors around here, but it surely shows his taste in some areas with an extreme amount of ambushes, traps, enemy compositions, and just a sheer amount of enemy numbers after the mid-game levels. I reviewed in Thymesia that souls-like games really need to grow balls to introduce multiple hazards at once, but they did it with this game. Also, there are just TONS of different mini-bosses. Each of them has borderline-boss-tier move lists hidden in their sleeves, and there is a bunch of new type of elites in one area. And these enemies appear only two or three times in the whole game? This uniqueness makes the area much more memorable than it should be. There’s a swamp level near the end of the game where all the abandoned dolls are gathered and crushed, and there was a unique scary-looking scrapped monkey mini-boss which scared the shit out of me. It has a fun moveset, but also it really elevated the mood of that freakish environment. Considering that most games just try to reuse the elite enemies over and over once it was introduced, I kinda liked the approach here, where it uses the unique enemy sparingly to make the area more special.
However, there are some dirty tricks the game abuses to the point that it kinda soured my enjoyment a bit -which is also the reason why I couldn’t give this game the perfect score-. Even though the game respects your positioning, there are some baffling enemy patterns that are just designed to “hit” you. If you have read all of my other reviews, you know what I’m talking about. It’s the god damn automatic movement assist from the enemy's side. If you ever felt like this game is a bit “floaty”, it’s because of this. Some of the patterns just ignore the context of that animation and slide them to the front so that the attack swing collides with the player. The Eldest of Black Rabbit Brotherhood shows a clear example -even though conceptually, the fight is good-. There’s a vertical strike attack combo which gives you massive damage if you get hit. Looking at the animation, it looks like he is swinging the blade in the same position as the legs are locked in one place, so you think it is safe to distance from him a bit and then prepare your next move by charging up the heavy attack, healing, or grinding your weapons… something like that. But then he slides way further than you anticipated so you get smacked by the chunk of iron, and then stun-locked to death. This dirty trick can be worse if it is combined with red attacks which require you to do a perfect parry or do a manual positioning to negate the damage. If you have completed the game, there’s no denying that Laxasia’s first phase is the perfect example of the great test of spacing, finding the punish window, and parrying. But then the second phase shows up and it forces you to parry the red attack from the sky above and the attack distance is absurdly large and fast that you are forced to remember the exact TIME to parry that attack. Considering that most red attacks so far had some window to play safe, this one felt absurdly forced. At this point, the automatic gap closer became a normal thing in action games built with Unreal Engine (I’m looking at you, En Garde, Sifu, Thymesia, and all that janky shit I played) but I wish this game didn’t abuse this trick at all, because when it didn’t rely on it, it worked wonderfully.
There are more nitpicks to add to this critique, like why are there so many gigantic two-phase bosses, why the puppet king’s first phase is much more interesting than the second phase but then the devs decided to nerf the first phase, why aren’t there many boss weapon upgrade materials in the mid-late game, and why the game didn’t have the interconnectivity of Dark Souls 1 even though there are many oppourtunities with the structures of levels, but even excluding that, there are more reasons to love this game, and it is very cultural one. It might be a cringe reason, but it’s because it’s a Korean game.
You see, I didn’t expect a lot from my home country’s industry. The whole industry here has earned titles like “the gotcha factory of the East”, and “the place where MMORPGs are born and die” and there’s no way I can deny that. It’s a cynical landscape where people’s enjoyment about videogames is heavily concentrated in irl transactions, number crunching and gamblings in disguise. This aspect extends to the indie scene except for some glowing exceptions like Unsouled. But then there’s this game, released by the company built from the web card game in the old days. I was expecting a soul-less clone, a husk of a game with money-grabbing scheme but this actually turned out to be a good game. It also understood the merits of the original Souls games, but it also paved its own ways to twist the source material(Pinocchio) in their unique taste and addressed many issues the original Souls games had. It’s a beautiful holistic combination.
And looking around the forum or communities, even with some mild criticism here and there, it’s quite a scenery to see this game getting big praise from everywhere. Even though I didn’t participate in the development at all, it made me feel happy in some sense. Maybe that subjective thought is the reason why it clouds my “fair and reasonable” eyes to read this game, but what I can’t lie about is that I really really adored this game in the end.
Also, spoiler warning. I’m gonna namedrop every important boss and local so consider reading this after you are done with the game.
What I expected from the demo playthrough was that this game was just gonna be a typical Souls game with a deflection mechanic. What I got in the end with the 30+ hours of journey is that this game is…. still a typical souls game, but with the combination of the best aspects of the modern post-DeS/pre-ER FROM games. Of course, there are some downfalls driven from that scope, but I won’t sugarcoat that my experience with this game was almost close to my first playthrough of Bloodborne. If this game came out in 2015, it would have been my identity to praise this game till death. Of course, this won’t be my game of life, because at this point in my gaming journey, I’m more interested in games that aren’t really souls-like, but there was a spark of joy to have for a long-time fan of the formula.
Lies of P’s thematical structure is similar to BB at first glance. There’s a dying city, there’s also a problem with outbreak of monstrosities, celestial beings behind the veil, yadayda… you know the drill. But once you dive into the game, you can see that the game is trying to convey a different thing while maintaining the value of the traditional Souls game.
In the older Myazaki’s Souls games. There’s a sense that the world in that game is an elaborated place instead of just being a pretty background. When we go back to Demon’s Souls, you might remember that you have to open the giant gate in the castle area, pick up the key and use it to open the doors in the asylum area and activate the mining elevator in the mine area, all for the one purpose: opening the shortcut or the next passage. Even though they are just a little detail, you wouldn’t disagree that this little detail in interactions make each level feel distinguished and elaborated. While this environmental detail is what FROM still excels at, you can’t deny that modern FROM games aren’t really good at delivering that premise as they look more dungeon-y than a thematically accurate place. This aspect got worse after Dark Souls 3 and we all know that Elden Ring introduced soulless manufactured mini-dungeons, which kinda ruined the game as a whole even with the inclusion of Legacy Dungeons.
Compared to this, Lies of P is full of elaborated environmental details and interactions that convey the game feel. For example, one thing you will realize soon is that this game took place around the pseudo-Belle-Époque era. To elaborate it, the game actually introduces levels themed around such as a gigantic factory manufacturing dolls, a gigantic market arcade, and a world expo with grandiose exhibitions. And those levels are, instead of being too dungeon-y, structured like an actual place for that purpose. You have to lower the pipe hanging on the crane to make a shortcut in the factory. You can ride the tram that was shown at the beginning to open a way to the expo. The arcade area is full of little shops that function as ambushes, lootable places, and backdoor shortcuts. In this aspect, Lies of P holds the torch as the best non-FROM souls-like that gave a shit about environments. If I have to nitpick, there are some obstacles that made me question “Why can’t I just jump over this”, but honestly the stronger part is so strong that I kinda forgot about it.
We are still talking about the world-building so I can add more about the thing I liked about Lies of P’s way of distinguishing itself from other FROM Souls games.
Firstly, I think the members of Hotel Krat are much more likable and sympathetic than any FROM’s hub dwellers. In FROM Souls games, after the 4 similar entries, you kinda see the boring patterns of the NPC placements. A calm and cryptic maiden figure that levels you up, A cynical-ass depressed soldier, A bulky blacksmith, and some boring merchants here and there. And you know some of them will go off and die in a ditch at some point. Bloodborne did kinda experimental things with survivors in the chapel, but they didn’t do stuff like that after BB which is pretty weird. While Lies of P still has that cryptic maiden figure, the other NPCs are full of distinguishable characteristics. A nerd girl who is very enthusiastic about gears, A CEO of the puppet industry who has a depressing backstory even with the hilarious facade, a swindler treasure hunter who tries so hard to be known as a real one, and a hotel counter robot that secretly loves the hotel owner. You may say these characters are almost like caricatures, but I personally think some amount of campiness can work as a good contrast in the consistently depressing scenario. Also, the motivations of those characters are well-established compared to FROM game NPCs which require two parts of Vaatividya videos to understand the full context.
Secondly, I think the collectables in this game are pretty neat. Unlike Souls games, there are varied types of collectables to get the lores and trivia behind the world. Message notes, guide tour books, newspapers, advertisement posters, and all that. While there are some Resident Evil documents moments that made me think “There’s no way that people would write this thing before dying lmao”, the varied way of describing the worldbuilding establishes that this world is a place where people actually lived, not a glorified dungeon after dungeon. There were some cute moments too, like the notes from Black Rabbit brotherhood. The message cylinders are probably my favorite addition to this formula since it is thematically accurate and I just like doing the treasure hunt while looking at the visual clues. This game’s strong suit is the environment department, so it works wonderfully when I just can guess the location right away with a blurred picture in the clue. There are also vinyl records to collect which can be played in the hotel lobby. Here’s a thing you should know: this is not the same as the Nier Automata’s jukebox where you can play the in-game themes again. This plays an actual original song just for this sole function! And all the vinyl record music is wonderfully composed fitting to the narrative of certain characters or the general mood so it actually had an intrinsic value for me even if it doesn’t benefit the gameplay department at all. It’s not a lie that I was happier to find records more so than the weapons.
Speaking of weapons, I think Lies of P has probably the best weapon customization in all the souls-likes I’ve played. (I’m only talking about the weapons here. If we are talking about player toolsets as a whole, there are many games that did better than this.) One of the biggest gripes I had with Souls games, in general, is that experimenting with other weapons requires an entire stat rollback or a complete re-upgrade for that new weapon just to make it useful. And even then you are limited to given weapons moves which are pretty basic most of the time. In a way, all the Souls games “build progression” can be boiled down to [Get the base weapon] - [Stick to that weapon till you find a better weapon with the same stat requirements] - [Change it to that new weapon and fully upgrade it] - [Stick to it till the end]. Even with the stat rollback functions, people rarely want to change the gears ignoring the floods of “other options” in their inventory, because trying out other weapons optimally is such busy work to do in the initial playthrough. In an ideal world, we should be able to get the Armored Core treatment where you can pull out every weapon from a cargo, but that won’t happen in the Souls game structure because they need to drip-feed the reward to fill the exploration aspect, like the hidden weapons or upgrade materials.
Lies of P took the middle ground by making the weapon parts combinable. Blades are completely separate from your stat requirement and you can upgrade these parts with moonstones. Handles on the other hand require your stat requirement, but it doesn’t determine the overall power of the weapon and it changes the moveset instead. By combining these two, you can experiment with the builds freely, as your stat requirement or the lack of upgrade materials doesn’t halt you from trying out the weapon customization. For example, you want to try out the drill-like lance which fits your stat requirement. but you may think it is obnoxious to upgrade it from the +1. Then you can just go to the Stargazer, switch the blade to the fully upgraded one, and there you have it! It may have a different speed or attack range, but you still can use the drill lance. By the end of the game, I used 5 or 6 weapons throughout the game without reallocating the stats even once. People say Souls games thrive on build variety, and Lies of P shows how to upgrade the formula to meet that expectations.
If we dig deeper into the combat side, we can find even more interesting changes to the formula. While it is basic, the fable arts and charge attacks are neat additions to the combat system. In a way, this is not a new thing as these things have become standardized since Bloodborne, but these combat options have much more clear purpose in this combat loop - the groggy attack. Unlike the traditional souls games where your basic maneuver leads you to the small victories (enemy stagger) and then big victories(enemy death) in a linear fashion, Lies of P makes you “earn” the small victory by requiring you to do a high skill action: dealing damage with fable arts or charge attacks while the enemy healthbar is glowing white. This mechanic provides two interesting things in your gameplay. Since your fable arts consume the meter and charge attack requires a long start-up time, you have to be more knowledgeable about enemy patterns or your positioning to actually punish, and sometimes you have to make hard decisions as the white bar won’t stay longer. Because some enemies just don’t give you a lot of breathing ground, you have to think about hit trading or ignoring the white bar for now and waiting for the next one.
This interesting dynamics also can be seen from the guard mechanic. Lies of P’s twist on the BB’s regain system is that players can regenerate the lost health by hitting the enemies, but only after you guard the damage. The raw damage will just go straight to the health bar and you won’t get anything after that. However, once you manage to nail down the perfect parry with the guard button, it gives a groggy damage to the enemies and you can also regenerate the lost health a bit, just like when you hit the enemies. But the perfect parry’s frame window is much shorter than Sekiro or Wo Long, so there’s definitely a high-skill ceiling aspect to master this.
This little dynamism makes the game much more than strict whip punishes even if the game is framed as a reactive side on the whole action game spectrum. Also, with this combat framework, the enemies are just fantastically designed. Fitting to the narrative, most of the enemies are malfunctioning dolls or erratic zombies. So most attacks have non-conventional timing with all the twitching joints and irregular steps. Because of this aspect, you can’t just comfortably parry or I-frame dodge every attack from the get-go. You have to consider the enemy attack distance, tracking angle, and your position in the environment to make yourself safe. This is something that lacked in Sekiro where you could comfortably deflect everything (Well, except for some main bosses, mind you!) while being stationary to the point that it feels like a rhythmical Punchout.
The bosses are great examples that elaborate the importance of positioning. The second main boss Scrapped Watchman has insane amount of patterns for an early game boss. It starts out as a simple parry/i-frame dodge test, but then the boss quickly introduces lightning effects on the ground which makes you adjust your movements more thoughtfully. Probably my favorite bosses would be Archbishop and The Swamp Monster. Visually they both look grotesque and cool, there’s a fun aspect of finding a good spot to deflect the attack while maintaining the distance, and also there were some satisfying moments where you have to pull off the groggy attack while the gigantic monstrosity is sweeping around the arena erratically.
Bosses are the highlights of this game, but where the game exceptionally excels at is how they handle the normal enemies. I heard that the director’s favorite Souls game is Dark Souls 2 from some rumors around here, but it surely shows his taste in some areas with an extreme amount of ambushes, traps, enemy compositions, and just a sheer amount of enemy numbers after the mid-game levels. I reviewed in Thymesia that souls-like games really need to grow balls to introduce multiple hazards at once, but they did it with this game. Also, there are just TONS of different mini-bosses. Each of them has borderline-boss-tier move lists hidden in their sleeves, and there is a bunch of new type of elites in one area. And these enemies appear only two or three times in the whole game? This uniqueness makes the area much more memorable than it should be. There’s a swamp level near the end of the game where all the abandoned dolls are gathered and crushed, and there was a unique scary-looking scrapped monkey mini-boss which scared the shit out of me. It has a fun moveset, but also it really elevated the mood of that freakish environment. Considering that most games just try to reuse the elite enemies over and over once it was introduced, I kinda liked the approach here, where it uses the unique enemy sparingly to make the area more special.
However, there are some dirty tricks the game abuses to the point that it kinda soured my enjoyment a bit -which is also the reason why I couldn’t give this game the perfect score-. Even though the game respects your positioning, there are some baffling enemy patterns that are just designed to “hit” you. If you have read all of my other reviews, you know what I’m talking about. It’s the god damn automatic movement assist from the enemy's side. If you ever felt like this game is a bit “floaty”, it’s because of this. Some of the patterns just ignore the context of that animation and slide them to the front so that the attack swing collides with the player. The Eldest of Black Rabbit Brotherhood shows a clear example -even though conceptually, the fight is good-. There’s a vertical strike attack combo which gives you massive damage if you get hit. Looking at the animation, it looks like he is swinging the blade in the same position as the legs are locked in one place, so you think it is safe to distance from him a bit and then prepare your next move by charging up the heavy attack, healing, or grinding your weapons… something like that. But then he slides way further than you anticipated so you get smacked by the chunk of iron, and then stun-locked to death. This dirty trick can be worse if it is combined with red attacks which require you to do a perfect parry or do a manual positioning to negate the damage. If you have completed the game, there’s no denying that Laxasia’s first phase is the perfect example of the great test of spacing, finding the punish window, and parrying. But then the second phase shows up and it forces you to parry the red attack from the sky above and the attack distance is absurdly large and fast that you are forced to remember the exact TIME to parry that attack. Considering that most red attacks so far had some window to play safe, this one felt absurdly forced. At this point, the automatic gap closer became a normal thing in action games built with Unreal Engine (I’m looking at you, En Garde, Sifu, Thymesia, and all that janky shit I played) but I wish this game didn’t abuse this trick at all, because when it didn’t rely on it, it worked wonderfully.
There are more nitpicks to add to this critique, like why are there so many gigantic two-phase bosses, why the puppet king’s first phase is much more interesting than the second phase but then the devs decided to nerf the first phase, why aren’t there many boss weapon upgrade materials in the mid-late game, and why the game didn’t have the interconnectivity of Dark Souls 1 even though there are many oppourtunities with the structures of levels, but even excluding that, there are more reasons to love this game, and it is very cultural one. It might be a cringe reason, but it’s because it’s a Korean game.
You see, I didn’t expect a lot from my home country’s industry. The whole industry here has earned titles like “the gotcha factory of the East”, and “the place where MMORPGs are born and die” and there’s no way I can deny that. It’s a cynical landscape where people’s enjoyment about videogames is heavily concentrated in irl transactions, number crunching and gamblings in disguise. This aspect extends to the indie scene except for some glowing exceptions like Unsouled. But then there’s this game, released by the company built from the web card game in the old days. I was expecting a soul-less clone, a husk of a game with money-grabbing scheme but this actually turned out to be a good game. It also understood the merits of the original Souls games, but it also paved its own ways to twist the source material(Pinocchio) in their unique taste and addressed many issues the original Souls games had. It’s a beautiful holistic combination.
And looking around the forum or communities, even with some mild criticism here and there, it’s quite a scenery to see this game getting big praise from everywhere. Even though I didn’t participate in the development at all, it made me feel happy in some sense. Maybe that subjective thought is the reason why it clouds my “fair and reasonable” eyes to read this game, but what I can’t lie about is that I really really adored this game in the end.
System Shock
2023
Even though I act like a hardened veteran of old-school video games sometimes, the truth is, I’m a filthy modern gamer in the end. I prefer when animations are fancier and the graphic looks more comprehensible at one glance.
That’s one of the petty excuses why I abandoned System Shock 1 when I played it for the first time. I was intrigued by the fact that it was the father of the Shock series (and Prey2017) and the game that did the “Metroidvania” design before SotN, but then the Grimace Shake of UI design splashed over me and I died. Also, I was busy doing other stuff at that time too, so I just hopelessly abandoned the playthrough.
So, the remake is out. And even though the outcome isn’t exactly the same, I heard that the developer’s premise was not ignoring the value of the original and recreating the same contexts and systems with the modern graphical touch.
And a lot of people who played both said the remake is the almost-perfect conversion of the original System Shock.
With these gathered opinions, I’m going to think that the core value and the feature of both games are all the same.
I played it on difficulty “2” for every department and I didn’t use a guide from start to finish, except for one time when I didn’t know what the CPU nods look like (yeah I can be that stupid sometimes).
And I can say that even though there are some moments that made me feel exhausted, I really appreciated the game overall. And if it is true that the remake’s outcome barely changed anything from the original’s design sensibility, then I would also respect the old devs for nailing down the dungeon design at that time.
If you have been in some gaming communities, you may have seen some memes comparing System Shock levels and Bioshock Infinite levels. While that’s a surface-level sneering at best, (there are better reasons to hate Bioshock Infinite than that) it is true that the level design of System Shock is the most impressive part.
I would say, even if you set the combat difficulty modifier to 0, you will still find enjoyment in the level navigation alone, because the level is like a giant jigsaw puzzle that gets larger and more convoluted as you progress.
You walk down the new corridor and there are two vents at the corner, three locked doors leading to completely different areas, and four hidden traps waiting for you to step on. Oh yeah, and there are like five patrolling security bots charging up the laser beams, so good luck!
That was a little bit exaggerated, but something as unhinged as that case happened all the time and it made me tense throughout the whole game.
The Storage Room is probably the best example of this case with the sheer size of the level, the swirling multiple branches, and the vertical structure of the small rooms that make you aware of the 3D spaces. That stage was disgustingly confusing and at the same time really memorable because of that.
Until the end game part, there’s never been a time when I felt “I know it will be a smooth ride from now on.” even though the game features a lenient form of the quick save system and the revive mechanic. (I would also argue that the resources in this game are pretty generous that you don’t have to horde the items all the time, at least on the difficulty “2” modifier.)
But the point of this game is not about surviving in a minute-to-minute real-time action. It’s about figuring out how the whole gigantic clusters are interconnected while also juggling the busy work.
The anxious thoughts constantly whispered that I won’t be able to beat this game, not because of the combat, but because of the missing pieces I couldn’t connect in the gargantuan maze.
Even after you mostly clear out the level and reveal most parts of the map, it isn’t enough to get rid of the whole underlying anxiety.
Only after you see the Citadel Station getting exploded in the cutscene, you can feel absolute relief and it was one of the most satisfying feelings I had with video games. (And even then, there’s a comparably simple and yet challenging ending mission right after that. The game never lets you take a break lol)
And the experience is amplified by the omnipresent entity Shodan.
Technically, every video game is just about dealing with shit thrown by the omnipresent entity - the developer, but what I really liked about her is how she is(or the developer is) so on the nose about showing the hidden cards in the sleeves.
There’s a seemingly mundane problem, so you solve it. But then she summons the horde of cyborg soldiers behind you while mocking and insulting you.
You think you solved the main big problem, but then she directly calls you and introduces a new problem -something that requires another hour and hours of multi-tasking and puzzle-solving.
Even though Shodan is just conceptualized quest giver and surprise encounter, I would say her existence elevated the experience because I could kinda connect to the developer’s sadistic intent behind that character. You can even hear her monologue that she is a god damn SHINTO of the citadel. Yeah, sure thing, developer. You and the dungeon design are one and the same, you evil bastard.
To get to the negative bits, I have to admit that I was slightly disappointed by the fact that, while the level progression is extremely liberal, the solutions for the small roadblocks are limited to specific key hunting or puzzles.
When I was in the Executive level, I got stuck there for a long time, because I didn’t know that there was a second unlockable cyber lock in cyberspace. That specific part halted my progression for a really long time, so I got really frustrated.
In the ideal world, the game could have provided some way to bypass the cyberspace challenges like the puzzle-skipping device.
To be fair, System Shock shouldn’t be considered as a sand-box imsim like Prey. It should be considered as a classic dungeon crawling. But even then, I think multiple solutions for each locked-door-type roadblock could have worked out better for the game. After all, the strength of this game is connecting the dots in the large unknown places, not beating a specific shooter mini-game located in the tiny corner.
Oh yeah, and I can’t express enough how the final boss was a shitshow. Though, there’s never been a good “imsim” boss so it makes sense that the forefather of the genre suffers from the same problem.
But it’s still a shame because the other bosses like Diego and Cortex Reavers were serviceable as a combat challenge where you actually have to care about what you are doing.
Negative comments aside, this is still a work of art.
It shows that the maze-like levels are much, much more than just a tedious roundabout. It can be an amazing ingredient or even a main dish if the devs can weave them well.
If I could stomach the old presentation, I could have experienced this journey early on with the original 1. Sadly I couldn’t, but I’m so glad that the remake turned out to be a real thing in the end. My appreciation goes to both the old devs and the new devs.
People just easily throw the sentence “this game design didn’t age well” like some kind of experts, but if I’m being honest, if a certain old game is mentioned fondly by some people even nowadays, there is a chance that the only things that aged from that game were presentation and graphic fidelity, not the design method.
Unshockingly, System Shock was the case.
That’s one of the petty excuses why I abandoned System Shock 1 when I played it for the first time. I was intrigued by the fact that it was the father of the Shock series (and Prey2017) and the game that did the “Metroidvania” design before SotN, but then the Grimace Shake of UI design splashed over me and I died. Also, I was busy doing other stuff at that time too, so I just hopelessly abandoned the playthrough.
So, the remake is out. And even though the outcome isn’t exactly the same, I heard that the developer’s premise was not ignoring the value of the original and recreating the same contexts and systems with the modern graphical touch.
And a lot of people who played both said the remake is the almost-perfect conversion of the original System Shock.
With these gathered opinions, I’m going to think that the core value and the feature of both games are all the same.
I played it on difficulty “2” for every department and I didn’t use a guide from start to finish, except for one time when I didn’t know what the CPU nods look like (yeah I can be that stupid sometimes).
And I can say that even though there are some moments that made me feel exhausted, I really appreciated the game overall. And if it is true that the remake’s outcome barely changed anything from the original’s design sensibility, then I would also respect the old devs for nailing down the dungeon design at that time.
If you have been in some gaming communities, you may have seen some memes comparing System Shock levels and Bioshock Infinite levels. While that’s a surface-level sneering at best, (there are better reasons to hate Bioshock Infinite than that) it is true that the level design of System Shock is the most impressive part.
I would say, even if you set the combat difficulty modifier to 0, you will still find enjoyment in the level navigation alone, because the level is like a giant jigsaw puzzle that gets larger and more convoluted as you progress.
You walk down the new corridor and there are two vents at the corner, three locked doors leading to completely different areas, and four hidden traps waiting for you to step on. Oh yeah, and there are like five patrolling security bots charging up the laser beams, so good luck!
That was a little bit exaggerated, but something as unhinged as that case happened all the time and it made me tense throughout the whole game.
The Storage Room is probably the best example of this case with the sheer size of the level, the swirling multiple branches, and the vertical structure of the small rooms that make you aware of the 3D spaces. That stage was disgustingly confusing and at the same time really memorable because of that.
Until the end game part, there’s never been a time when I felt “I know it will be a smooth ride from now on.” even though the game features a lenient form of the quick save system and the revive mechanic. (I would also argue that the resources in this game are pretty generous that you don’t have to horde the items all the time, at least on the difficulty “2” modifier.)
But the point of this game is not about surviving in a minute-to-minute real-time action. It’s about figuring out how the whole gigantic clusters are interconnected while also juggling the busy work.
The anxious thoughts constantly whispered that I won’t be able to beat this game, not because of the combat, but because of the missing pieces I couldn’t connect in the gargantuan maze.
Even after you mostly clear out the level and reveal most parts of the map, it isn’t enough to get rid of the whole underlying anxiety.
Only after you see the Citadel Station getting exploded in the cutscene, you can feel absolute relief and it was one of the most satisfying feelings I had with video games. (And even then, there’s a comparably simple and yet challenging ending mission right after that. The game never lets you take a break lol)
And the experience is amplified by the omnipresent entity Shodan.
Technically, every video game is just about dealing with shit thrown by the omnipresent entity - the developer, but what I really liked about her is how she is(or the developer is) so on the nose about showing the hidden cards in the sleeves.
There’s a seemingly mundane problem, so you solve it. But then she summons the horde of cyborg soldiers behind you while mocking and insulting you.
You think you solved the main big problem, but then she directly calls you and introduces a new problem -something that requires another hour and hours of multi-tasking and puzzle-solving.
Even though Shodan is just conceptualized quest giver and surprise encounter, I would say her existence elevated the experience because I could kinda connect to the developer’s sadistic intent behind that character. You can even hear her monologue that she is a god damn SHINTO of the citadel. Yeah, sure thing, developer. You and the dungeon design are one and the same, you evil bastard.
To get to the negative bits, I have to admit that I was slightly disappointed by the fact that, while the level progression is extremely liberal, the solutions for the small roadblocks are limited to specific key hunting or puzzles.
When I was in the Executive level, I got stuck there for a long time, because I didn’t know that there was a second unlockable cyber lock in cyberspace. That specific part halted my progression for a really long time, so I got really frustrated.
In the ideal world, the game could have provided some way to bypass the cyberspace challenges like the puzzle-skipping device.
To be fair, System Shock shouldn’t be considered as a sand-box imsim like Prey. It should be considered as a classic dungeon crawling. But even then, I think multiple solutions for each locked-door-type roadblock could have worked out better for the game. After all, the strength of this game is connecting the dots in the large unknown places, not beating a specific shooter mini-game located in the tiny corner.
Oh yeah, and I can’t express enough how the final boss was a shitshow. Though, there’s never been a good “imsim” boss so it makes sense that the forefather of the genre suffers from the same problem.
But it’s still a shame because the other bosses like Diego and Cortex Reavers were serviceable as a combat challenge where you actually have to care about what you are doing.
Negative comments aside, this is still a work of art.
It shows that the maze-like levels are much, much more than just a tedious roundabout. It can be an amazing ingredient or even a main dish if the devs can weave them well.
If I could stomach the old presentation, I could have experienced this journey early on with the original 1. Sadly I couldn’t, but I’m so glad that the remake turned out to be a real thing in the end. My appreciation goes to both the old devs and the new devs.
People just easily throw the sentence “this game design didn’t age well” like some kind of experts, but if I’m being honest, if a certain old game is mentioned fondly by some people even nowadays, there is a chance that the only things that aged from that game were presentation and graphic fidelity, not the design method.
Unshockingly, System Shock was the case.
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.