I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a tad apprehensive going into Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty, so much so in fact that I quickly changed the platform of my review playthrough from PC to PlayStation. The reason I did this was because of all the negative attention surrounding the game’s PC port and the narrative online that the game was being review-bombed on this platform. According to everything I read, PlayStation was where the game truly shined.
So off to my PlayStation 5 I went and if I’m being completely honest with you, I don’t feel like the platform was the issue. For those who don’t know, Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty is an action Souls-like game created by Team Ninja, the developers best known for the Nioh games. However, despite the similarities in setting and theme, the games aren’t connected.
The story of the game is heavily based on the 14th-century historical novel by Luo Guanzhong, Romance of the Three Kingdoms and like Nioh, takes real-life history and adds supernatural elements from folklore and mythology. On paper, this is great. It’s a formula that has worked before, it’s an esthetically pleasing setting and theme and it’s a genre that the world is more open to now than ever before. However, the one core element that Nioh had and that Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty does not is that Nioh was fun.
Now don’t get me wrong, I won’t sit here and claim that I’m some god at Souls-like games because nothing could be further from the truth. I’m pretty trash at them and find them to be more frustrating than not most of the time. But that doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy them. If enjoyment and skill were tied together I wouldn’t have spent the last 14-odd years playing League of Legends.
That being said, I just couldn’t seem to find the fun in Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty no matter how hard I tried or how long I played. The game itself is exceptionally straightforward and linear, players create a character and then get two close-range attacks. To succeed in combat and progress through the game players will need to deflect enemy attacks and then use this opportunity to land a counterattack.
Each enemy has its Morale rank which indicated how challenging the encounter will be and as players fight their spirit gauge will fill. When the gauge is filled players can then unleash special spirit attacks, which are either special combat moves or elemental spells. And as the game progresses, players can also choose from one of five Divine Beasts to help them in combat or provide passive perks while playing.
As players journey through the game they will find various Battle Flags scattered throughout the world which can be used to upgrade their characters and unlock new abilities as well as to save players’ progress. The game also has a cooperative multiplayer mode which allows players to call on a friend to help out during combat and that’s it. That’s the game.
Now written down that sounds pretty okay, but in reality, none of the separate elements truly feel properly fleshed out or polished. So let the review begin. First things first, Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty is a Souls-like game and I don’t think I need to tell anyone here that Souls-like games are notoriously difficult, and no, not just because of my lack of skill but because that’s how the games are designed.
However, I honestly don’t know if I believe that Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty is difficult. Instead, I feel like the game is only challenging because of poor game design. At this point, it’s pretty well documented that the first boss in the game is the hardest – honestly, that’s not wrong. The problem comes in that after I beat the first boss, I quickly realised that it wasn’t hard at all. The game didn’t bother to explain anything to me going in adequately.
Once I figured out I could back out of the boss arena to grind my way up to level 20 before approaching the boss again, and after spotting the ever-so-tiny instruction to cast my spirit beast, the fight was over before it had even begun. And the rest of the game follows the same rather unsatisfying pattern. I also believe that when your first boss is by far the most challenging one, and the rest of the game is a picnic the developers did something very, very wrong when creating and balancing their game.
The combat also lacks the excitement I expect from games like this. It’s very pretty, for sure, and if I had to complement the game on anything, the art direction would be it. But the actual combat is pretty dull. You have two attacks throughout the game, Light and Heavy. Heavy attacks take a while to charge up, and light attacks can be strung together to form a combo which, when paired with a Heavy attack, creates a nice little cinematic combo ender. But that’s as exciting as combat ever gets.
After the first few hours, all I wanted was some decent variety so that it didn’t feel like I was just button-mashing the same attacks repeatedly until either the enemy or me, died. And sure, other things get unlocked while you play, like spells etc. but none of these ever felt like they measured up to the two basic attacks or used up too much spirit to be truly viable in combat, so what’s the point?
The other part of the game that got old real fast was having to grind up my levels each time I started a new mission. Each of the areas is on the smaller side, and having to constantly run those same areas again and again, grinding up levels just so that I could kill the boss and then do it all over again ended up becoming tired fast.
At the end of the day, Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty has all the elements needed to be something truly great however, the game lacks soul, and because of that, it’s nothing more than a poorly balanced, frustrating romp through an ill-passed and badly executed story.
Oh, and as for the promised multiplayer mode? I couldn’t tell you if it was good or bad. During my review playthrough, the system was so laggy, bugged and glitchy that I felt like I was punishing my partner by asking him to join me.
