Wo Long Fallen Dynasty on PC/Steam – The DVDfever Review

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Wo Long Fallen DynastyWo Long Fallen Dynasty Wo Long Fallen Dynasty

Wo Long Fallen Dynasty is out tomorrow, and it is a game I have been looking forward to for a while now…

What we have is another Team Ninja Souls-like title, much like the excellent Nioh & Nioh 2, which I have put many hours into and finished. To this day at nearly 50! I do love the challenge of the Souls-style games. Managing the dance balancing stamina and various attacks has a certain nuance to it.

So yeah, I jumped on the opportunity to review Wo Long Fallen Dynasty (just Wo Long from herein). Nioh was set in Japan loosely following the travels of William Adams, and this time around we are put into Chinese folk lore and the Romance of the Three Kingdoms.

Combat is a lot different to your Souls games. This plays more like Bloodborne, with the speed and parrying required to knock your enemies off guard. Rather than have a stamina bar, you get a spirit bar below your health. This moves left into the red when using magic and taking damage, with furthermost left staggering you blue when deflect attacks and hit enemies. Once the blue meter is full, you can launch a heavy devastating attack. On top of the spirit meter, you have martial arts, whereby holding down R1 and hitting either square or triangle (using a PS4 DS4 controller on my PC which is natively supported by the game), you will launch a heavy attack doing more damage to an enemy possibly taking them out in one blow.

You will level up using 5 elements: Fire, Water, Wood, Metal and Earth. Once you have points in these, you can learn magic which will help you which you set to your 4 face buttons holding R2 to use them. These magics can be healing while attacking, fire blasts, poison puddles and many others for you to choose from depending on your play style.

There are no shields or stances in Wo Long, just a base selection of Chinese period weapons like staffs, swords, polearms, twin swords and the like. Each has a star rating, as shown on the inventory screen, and the higher the star rating, the more additional stats and bonuses the weapon will have. On top of the multitude of weapons, there is plenty armour to swap out, and you have the option to hide the helmet if you so wish.

Character creation is absolutely fantastic with options for everything. This is similar to what you would expect in an Elder Scrolls game.

Wo Long Fallen Dynasty Gameplay Walkthrough (1080p 60fps) – DVDfeverGames




Gameplay itself is very much like Nioh, with levels that have a few branching paths for exploration and finding extra armour, weapons or potions etc. There are also shortcuts which can be unlocked, like knocking rolled up planks of wood from a roof, which will allow you to scale it, skipping part of a level you have just done. It is a staple in the Souls genre, and ideal for hitting up a flag to rest and level up. Much like all the other Souls-like games, is that when you rest, all enemies will re-appear on the level, which can be handy if you want to get past a tough a tough level enemy or boss….

Now from what I have played of Wo Long Fallen Dynasty, I absolutely love. However, after 5 hours now, I have cleared the first stage activating all 6 flags, and come up against Xiang Liang. The first 25 mins or so of that five hours play time is working through the level itself. The remaining time has been trying to beat the above named first boss.

Now he is built heavy-set, and has a huge spiked club. His movements can be a little erratic, but the timed deflections aren’t too bad, and you do still have a block if you are struggling with the timing. The block will stop his standard attacks but will not block his red powered up attacks.

Thankfully, the timed deflections really mess up his flow, and if you are using a Cudgel (basically a wooden staff), you can literally go to town on him. If you have the white wood cudgel, it is even better as your spirit bar fills up quickly, allowing for more heavy and martial arts attacks. After a few goes, I took him down. The usual tricks by Souls games – where the boss will power up demonically and become even more aggressive – is seen here.

Wo Long Fallen Dynasty – Important TIPS & TRICKS I Wish I Knew Sooner (Wo Long Beginners Guide) – KhrazeGaming




Now, I don’t mind a challenge being a bit of a Souls veteran. I walked away from Elden Ring, due to the Fire Giant at around 80 hours, and have to this day still not beat him. This was initially where I was at with the tutorial level boss on Wo Long.

I clear his first phase every time, but his second phase is so damned erratic, and hits with so much damage. This isn’t a 4ft brick wall you need to hop over and overcome, it is the ice wall on Game of Thrones you are scaling! He has a huge flailing mutant left arm now with spikes, and the sweep he does with it covers a huge area, so you have to get out of there quick as a flash. If not, you take the initial hit, and get attached to said spiked appendage, then lifted up and slammed into the ground, killing you instantly – essentially, a one-hit kill. Trying to get close to the boss to do some major damage is tough, since when you do try to approach him, he backs off to do the sweeping attack again, or if you get a touch closer, a charged rush attack with his red spiked demonic mace.

So after five hours, I made the decision to quit Wo Long Fallen Dynasty… and then I had another crack at it and told the baddie where to get off 😀

I also completed beating subsequent bosses soon after – some in one go, but some after a few attempts, so it just goes to show how that first tutorial level boss is a nightmare.

All that said, accessibility for players should be a thing like they did with the excellent Steel Rising. I love challenging games and the worlds the Japanese developers create are some of my favourite.

Looking at the Steam forums, there are numerous posts from people not being able to clear this first boss from playing the demo, so I hate to think what the forums will be like come Friday when the game is released. However, as I get into this game more, I will update the review later.

PC performance is great on my Ryzen 5700x, 16GB 3200 DDR4 and MSI RTX3060Ti. I have the game installed on a Crucial SSD, so there are no stutters or long loading times, and I am getting a good steady framerate with everything set as high as the game allows, no DLSS or scaling and motion blur turned off.

Thanks to our friends at Koei Tecmo for the review code.

Wo Long Fallen Dynasty is out now on Xbox Series X / Xbox One / PC and PS5.

Wo Long Fallen Dynasty – Official Gameplay Trailer – Playstation

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