Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty GBAtemp review
Computer
Product Information:
- Release Date (NA): March 3, 2023
- Publisher: KOEI TECMO GAMES CO., LTD.
- Developer: Team Ninja
- Genres: Action, RPG
- Also For: PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S
Game Features:
Review Approach:
Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty is the new “souls-like” action RPG from Team Ninja. Most will know them for either Ninja Gaiden or the Nioh series. For many, including myself, the idea of another action RPG made by the Nioh team is enough to cause unease; Nioh 1 and 2 were heavily flawed in many ways, failing to capture any of the elements that made Dark Souls the phenomenon it is today. But I’m glad to say, Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty is proof Team Ninja learned exactly how to fix nearly all of those flaws.
Team Ninja's Latest Take on Souls-likes
Thanks to the wonderful Nioh 2 character creator, you begin the game as a nameless militia soldier…but a fabulous one. I’ve always said the later Han dynasty desperately needed an anime waifu to save the land. You quickly rise from a nameless soldier into a nameless hero, fighting alongside a large roster of Koei’s favourite Three Kingdoms characters. As well as a few new ones to fill things out. Unlike in typical Dynasty Warriors fashion, most of the conflict is now caused by demons, with a healthy amount of fighting over the mythical substance called “elixir”. And you’re here to chew bubblegum and kick some ass, and bubblegum hasn’t been invented yet.
While not literary genius, for Team Ninja fare, the story is quite enjoyable. There’s plenty of action, some twists and turns, as well as some drama sprinkled in. The scenes where you acquire divine beasts are incredibly satisfying with some really beautiful monologues and artwork--I thoroughly enjoyed every single one of them. If you’ve played Dynasty Warriors before, it’s certainly a decent guideline for what to expect in Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty.
Graphically, your socks won’t get blown off here either. Character models are nicely done, especially your own, and you look fantastic in cutscenes. Armours and weapons are detailed, with a reasonable amount of variety. Each mission has unique terrain and layouts; the scenery isn’t as sharp or as detailed as it could be, but it’s more than adequate from a gameplay perspective. I never felt as if the game was “ugly”, merely that it never strived to be a hyperrealistic experience. Much of the music is thematic and beautifully done, weaving perfectly into each situation.
Using the power of the Five Chinese Elements you’ll power up your character to take on bigger, badder foes. Each element acts as a stat, boosting a particular aspect of your character, as well as unlocking Wizardry Spells to use in combat. You’ll have 13 melee weapons, and 3 ranged to choose from. There isn’t much variance between differently named gear within the same category. Typically just a power increase, though sometimes they scale slightly differently or have a special martial art. Martial arts are 1 or 2 skills every weapon has from a random pool. All gear also has one set stat and then several random stats based on rarity, but you’re able to change the random ones as you see fit.
Improves Upon Nioh's Groundwork
Combat is by far the biggest highlight of Wo Long. The deflect mechanics makes battles feel incredibly smooth, with the smallest weakling to the largest boss feeling satisfying to beat down. You’re actively punished for dodging away from attacks, instead, you’re encouraged to deflect blows in order to break your opponent’s poise. There’s also rumoured to be a guard button, can’t say I ever found it. You’re always in a delicate dance where you need to manage your spirit gauge, whilst lowering your opponent’s gauge in turn. Being overly aggressive often leads to you being broken and opened up for a world of hurt. Thanks to the gear system and stat builds, you can greatly supplement a more aggressive playstyle, or further, bolster a cautious one. It’s really up to the player to figure out how to best enhance their playstyle. Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty facilitates this with a wonderful stat reset and saving system to easily quick-swap gear and stat builds on the fly.
One of the major aspects of exploration in each mission is your search for flags. There are battle flags, which act as this game’s “bonfire” system: you rest and respawn all enemies. You’re also able to switch your stat/gear builds, buy and sell items, travel to other missions, and summon allies. Marking flags simply refill your HP and upgrade your fortification stat, which stops your morale from dropping below a certain level. This will be quite important to some, as morale greatly dictates the difficulty of battles. When you die, the enemy steals some of your morale, making them much harder to beat. I dislike this system because in most cases I wouldn’t die or lose morale, so I would quickly overpower enemies and arrive at bosses with max morale, making the bosses feeble and weak. It feels like a system that will punish less skilled players while also making things easier for skilled players. The one silver lining, however, is that you can easily grind up morale if you’re struggling, to give yourself an edge. Upon beating the game, this issue is addressed somewhat but it’s unfortunate it takes so long to get there.
Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty is a wonderful addition to the ever-growing forest of “souls-likes”, and proved Team Ninja could actually learn how to make a fun one. I have minor gripes here and there, but my experience was overwhelmingly positive. I clocked in just over 50 hours, beating the base game, and still have a large quantity of content left to face. This is a must-have for fans of fast-paced combat, or the Three Kingdoms setting. It is much more accessible for a wider range of skill levels compared to Team Ninja’s previous titles.
NOTE: PC players on steam have noted some performance issues, however in my 50 hours of playtime I didn't experience anything, and wouldn't include platform-specific issues in a multi-platform review.
Further Thoughts
Deflection is the biggest aspect of combat, so you better enjoy it. Luckily, it's very easy TO enjoy. No matter what you build, every combat style interacts with deflection. They've effectively melded dodge and parry into a single button, and the results are an incredibly enjoyable combat experience. The timings feel very precise and responsive. Each weapon has a value that will widen or narrow the deflection window, and what weapons you pick largely depends on your stats. Similar to Dark Souls, you always want weapons that scale with your stats. Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty managed to find a way to make parries actually fun. I found games like Sekiro to be absurdly boring because typical parrying is such a slow, boring feature. In Wo Long, you're typically weaving deflects into your attacks making things feel very fluid.
Morale is such a conflicting feature in my mind, and I think it's purely because i've always sought the greatest challenge games have to offer. As I touched on in the main body of the review, morale is absurdly overpowered in the base game. Bosses sit at 20 morale, and you can max at 25. 5 morale levels is a quite significant advantage and allows you to pretty much facetank boss attacks with minimal effort deflecting attacks. This is, however, entirely negated by the New Game + difficulty, which sets enemies much higher, as well as setting bosses to 25. Providing much funner and more challenging gameplay.p
Wizardry Spells are an interesting system, you need specific levels of each stat to use better and better spells. Every spell seems to serve a purpose. Though some clearly require building into magic. The weapon imbue spells last such a pathetically short timeframe by default they're entirely worthless and cost a ton of spirit. Other buffs seem to be much more generous by default. There are also various attack spells, as well as enemy debuffing spells. Even as someone who didn't build at all into magic, I was able to find a variety of useful spells to complement my build. An odd aspect of wizardry spells is that you seem to gain skill points as you level, but every category gets a point when you do. So eventually you can just unlock every spell. It's a bit odd, it seems kind of pointless if you can just unlock EVERY spell in every tree. I can't help but assume the system may have been a bit more restrictive to begin with and was lazily patched later in development. It's not a big deal since you do require specific stat levels to actually use them, but it did feel like a bit of an oversight nonetheless.
I don't necessarily dislike the looter gear aspect of Wo Long, but it did feel a bit lackluster. There is an incredibly small pool of weapons per type. Typically 4-5 with 3 of those just being straight upgrades with no variance. Then 1 or 2 weapons with different scaling and/or a special martial art. Just felt like a bit of a wasted opportunity. But it's worth noting that the 13 melee weapon categories are nicely varied and unique, so there's still plenty to play with in general. Rarities devolve into the typical "keep the top tier and trash the rest", and rather quickly too. But still, I did enjoy it when I got a 4* of something I needed or was looking for. Armour is a lot better since there are different set effects, different weight classes, different guaranteed sub-stats (and not all sets have guaranteed stats either), etc. Finding 4* armour was much more exciting. NG+ even adds rare random set effects to collect and cobble together.
Creating gear builds via the embed system also felt a little lacking at times, but still has quite a few options to play around with. It's a nice way to offset the endless search for a miraculous stat set on gear, which is mostly just tedious. Given the game encourages you to try out multiple playstyles, it's nice to make gear building more accessible. You still need to find the more interesting effects attached to other items, and extract them to gain access to them. It's interesting to find a piece of gear with a cool effect, and simply pluck it off for your primary gear.
Verdict
- Excellent flowing combat
- Great character creator
- Fun and versatile character building
- A more welcoming difficulty curve
- Lu Bu exists
- Not enough inter-weapon variance
- Poor lip-syncing
- Cao Cao exists
