Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty

Technical issues aside, Wo Long is a master of its craft that future soulslikes should study under.

Undeniably enjoyable, Wo Long skates the line between tired, repetitive design and immersive action. Anyone with an itch to get away from the Dynasty Warriors series is going to fall in love with what Team Ninja has put together, but not without wondering if more could have been done. With three DLC planned this year, I cannot wait to get back into the saddle and hopefully get out of my comfort zone.

Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty is another solid entry from Team Ninja and is a good option for you that wants to try the Soulslike genre for the first time. Deflection/Parry and the Morale System are the two main mechanics in this game, and Team Ninja manages to implement them incredibly well while making them seamless with other aspects in Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty.

After Nioh, Team Ninja once again proves its great mastery of action-RPG with Wo Long Fallen Dynasty. Admittedly, the copy is not perfect (bestiary not provided enough, rather disappointing endgame, side missions which take up areas already visited) but the gameplay is so solid that we are ready to excuse almost everything! Here, it's all about parry, martial arts and spells, in a novel approach for the genre. Most of the atmospheres are successful, there is plenty to choose your path as a warrior and everything is even more accessible than the studio's Japanese Souls-like. An excellent pickaxe.

Its structural proximity to Nioh will perhaps be a bitter pill to swallow for those who have never loved inventory management and the progression of that saga, yet Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty completely revolutionizes the combat system of those games and manages to offer a generally much more balanced and adrenaline-pumping experience, despite the simplification of the offensive mechanics. Team Ninja's latest work is an extremely well-finished and long-lived game, which demonstrates the growth of its developers in many aspects, and overall manages to eliminate many defects of the works from which it took the basis. We are far from perfect, but we recommend it without fear to any fan of quality action.

Head into Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty with the right frame of mind and you’ll find an enjoyable adventure that refuses to pull its punches.

Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty excels thanks to its combat and dark fantasy Three Kingdoms setting. Even though I loved Nioh 2, I'm glad to see Team Ninja do something different here while retaining the challenge you'd expect from the developer's masocore games. Hopefully the PC port can be improved after some updates.

Another well-done Souls-like from the Nioh devs, whose setting and silly story you either like or better ignore.

The performance issues from launch seem to be largely gone, making Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty – Complete Edition a much more attractive proposition than perhaps it previously was.

Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty is another remarkable Team Ninja production, which in my opinion, shouldn't be seen as a "sequel to NiOh", but as a different "fruit". Familiar, but different, just as Sekiro was different from Dark Souls. With that correlation in mind, the game is highly recommended to fans of the genre. For the rest, there's also the demo.

If you’re not a fan of combat focused on the precisely-timed parry, Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty isn’t going to change your mind. But masochists who are mesmerized by methodically studying enemy tells should find quite a bit of enjoyment in the game’s fantastical adaptation of Warring State peril.

Ultimately, when I finished Nioh 2, I was more than ready to head into New Game+ after the lengthy campaign. Yet with Wo Long, clocking around half the playtime to reach the credits I had already had my fill. Other aspects, like the state of the game's PC port - unfortunately, this is yet another game plagued by what appears to be the now dreaded shader compilation stutter - certainly contributed to matters, but while Wo Long was certainly worth the time spent finishing it, and a great game in its own right, somehow I doubt I'll be returning to it in the same way as Nioh 2 in the months and years ahead.

Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty is a thoroughly enjoyable Soulslike with intensely fun combat mechanics, slightly marred by jarring difficulty spikes and by-the-numbers music and sound.

When all of Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty’s systems are going, they masterfully work in harmony to make the player want to see more, fight more, and challenge themselves. When players are pushing their limits and conquering the game's mechanics, Wo Long becomes a hard game to put down. It doesn’t totally reinvent the mechanics that Team Ninja has been building since Nioh, nor does it fully flesh out concepts from Sekiro that inspired it; however, Wo Long takes enough from both to make something engrossing.

With its Three Kingdoms setting, fast-paced combat centered on the Deflection mechanics, improved level design, and renewed focus on action gameplay mechanics, Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty is another solid action role-playing game by Team NINJA that all fans of the genre will enjoy. While the complex RPG mechanics and loot system of the Nioh games have been toned down for a much more accessible experience for newcomers, they also make the game easier than most of the studio's previous games, something that will undoubtedly disappoint those looking for a real challenge on their first playthrough.

Its parry-based combat is frequently stellar, and Team Ninja has made a number of smart changes to keep Wo Long feeling fresh, even if there's always a tinge of familiarity. It has its issues, but if you're craving a fast-paced action RPG built on satisfying combat, Wo Long ticks most of the right boxes.

Taking its cues from Nioh and Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty boasts a number of challenging mechanics. The simple yet profound Kisei system and the Morale Rank system are innovative features, and the sheer speed of the combat is addictive. However, while the fundamentals of Wo Long are excellently made, it suffers from a number of problems both large and small, including an unwieldy UI, a one-dimensional story, and a lack of variety in both melee attacks and enemy types. If developer Team Ninja’s Nioh series is anything to go by, it’s possible that many of these problems will be resolved in future updates and DLC. For now, at least, Wo Long is a highly enjoyable game that falls just short of hitting the next level.

Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty is nearly always a rush to play, and even when you're getting pummelled, it still feels as though you could overcome the fight if you just learned the attack patterns a little better, or maybe just summoned some more help.

Nioh was Team Ninja’s take on the “Souls-like” genre and was pretty good at doing its own thing with it. Wo Long on the other hand is what you might call a “Sekiro-like” but it doesn’t set itself apart well enough from neither Sekiro, nor Nioh.

Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty is a solid foundation for a new IP with fluid combat and fun exploration but fails to topple its spiritual predecessor due to oversimplification of customization and a lackluster PC port.

Despite the optimization issues and random difficulty spikes, I do think that Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty is ultimately good – it just could have been so much better.

Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty offers a cool morale system, leaping attacks, and fresh spins on magic and character customization, though stilted storytelling and underwhelming stage designs prevent it from reaching the heights of other Nioh games.

Far from an unqualified win, Wo Long does manage to be an entertaining ride. When it leans into the strength of its combat it’s a joy. But much like that combat, there’s a push and pull to the changes that never quite coalesce. The inclusion of jumping makes the levels more fun to explore but the addition of Morale blunts any surprise the exploration might yield. The level of freedom given to customizing weapons is admirable, but when parrying is always the most powerful option everything else feels flatter as a result. Still, with top notch combat and a good amount of player experimentation there’s a lot of fun to be had. Just don’t expect to be blown away.

Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty is yet another addition to the Souls family. Like its combat, the story goes very fast, your character doesn't express himself and the performance on PC is bad. The graphic level is amazing mixed with the implemented game mechanics make this a good experience considering that you are going to die over and over again.

Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty is a really fun game, but it just squanders its potential at every turn. Things like lack of enemy variety and boring loot don't exactly help the title stand out from the crowd. Fans of the team ninja combat familiar from the Nioh series will definitely enjoy Wo Long, but at least for the PC version, you should wait until the developers get a grip on the numerous performance problems.

Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty is almost great. Its unfair difficulty is its most substantial flaw, but this is something that could be tweaked in an update. Exploring the world is an immense amount of fun, its controls and movement are fluid, and the world has a definitive sense of style. But many players won’t get to experience all that it has to offer due to its overpowered bosses, especially at the start of the game.

A notable drop in depth compared to the Nioh games, Wo-Long still has some engaging additions inspired by Sekiro. I often enjoyed myself but repetition and a horribly uneven difficulty curve certainly don't help.