Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty Review – Romance of Three Souls

OUR Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty Review finds the game in familiar Koei Tecmo territory because, like the developer’s Dynasty Warriors series, it’s based on Luo Guanzhong’s novel Three Kingdoms. Dynasty Warriors is a popular hybrid of slash and slash strategy where players choose a general from one of three armies and use him to destroy thousands of soldiers in epic turf battles. Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty is a darker, Souls-like take on the same material. There are more magical and supernatural beings, fewer cheesy moments, and significantly more complex gameplay.

You play as an unknown soldier during a Yellow Turban rebellion, fleeing a burning town with a blind comrade who just saved your life. It is the setting for a plot that mixes a grim plot with the events of a Three Kingdoms novel. On the way to Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty, you will meet and greet many famous characters from the novel. If you’ve read the book or played Dynasty Warriors or Total War: Three Kingdoms, you’ll know that Zhang Fei is a brash guy who is tempered by his brothers Liu Bei and Guan Yu. You will recognize the calculating and ruthless side of Cao Cao. The design of these characters and their weapons are familiar from the earlier version of Koei Tecmo, but Wo Long’s supernatural elements make our allies more apprehensive as they are aware of the great evil that is causing instability in China. It’s a nice new twist on a story that, though unknown to some, especially in the West, has been told over and over again since the 14th century.

You can take these illustrious generals and fighters with you as companions. The longer you fight alongside a certain character, the more their Oath level will increase, making them more useful in battle. This system has the added benefit of making it easier for you to get into the tougher combat mechanics, giving you plenty of leeway to heal up if you make a mistake while dodging a big attack.

Combat takes some getting used to as you are actively encouraged to parry attacks. Fortunately, the diversion time is quite long. It works with just about any attack imaginable, even the magic of sniping mages that spread spells across the battlefield with suspicious accuracy. It won’t take long for you to be showered with furious blows and hit your enemy with a nice blow to the skull.

Part of what makes combat so much fun is the fluctuating “spirit gauge” below the life bar. Depending on your ability to parry enemy attacks while inflicting your own, a full spirit bar can give you the ability to deal large amounts of “balanced” damage, a secondary form of damage that doesn’t deplete the enemy’s health, but rather their defenses. . , setting them up for a killing blow when they break. Just like in Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, the opposite applies: if you exhaust yourself, you’re also vulnerable. Enemies also have a spirit bar, though their thresholds are usually much higher than yours. The trick to bringing the enemy’s spirit bar down to a manageable level is to deflect any attack that starts with your opponent glowing an ominous blood red. This will lower some of his max spirit gauge, making it easier to hit his stun point and thus allowing him to deal a lot of damage.

Developing your character is easier than in most games like Dark Souls. By investing points in one of the five virtues, you can increase your stats and earn points that can be spent on Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty spells. You have a limit on when you can cast spells related to the territory you’ve conquered throughout the level, which also increases your defense and attack stats, much like Dynasty Warriors’ morale system. However, most of the spells you can cast will only deal a small amount of damage, which is not practical or useful. Instead, I find the most useful spells that affect the spirit sensors of my allies and opponents. So this encouraged me to explore each map and claim territory on the map to keep my courage up.

While all of these mechanics mesh together nicely to create a fun overall experience, Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty has the occasional difficulty spike that comes out of nowhere. For example, while I had an endless fight with various bosses of Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty in the Yellow Turbans chapter and even a few after, my progress would sometimes stall due to a certain enemy that seemed much more powerful than it should be. given my level and its surrounding context. We won’t reveal which ones proved to be formidable opponents, but let’s just say that I wasn’t entirely prepared for the alarming damage that even one of their attacks could inflict. It’s not the problem, certainly not in Soulslike, that the game gets harder, but the colossal jump from easily stomping through almost every boss to hitting a brick wall.

Like Team Ninja’s Nioh series, Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty is a stylish game with fluid animations and wacky monster designs. The fluid combat nicely complements the visual style with a character creation tool that allows you to match the quality of the specially designed NPCs. However, I couldn’t appreciate the sound design. The voice acting is quite woodsy in places, the weapons are sometimes lacking in power, and there are very few standout set pieces. When the boss music loops in this RPG, since comparable modern games and even older ones can offer unique boss-themed tracks, it’s hard not to see it looking a little tired.

Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty is a worthy addition to the Soulslike genre, offering fresh ideas focused on controlling territory and waging war with your new friends. Those looking for an action game that will last until the Elden Ring DLC ​​is released could do a lot worse than pick this up, but the lackluster audio and abrupt spikes in difficulty are worth knowing.