![]() ![]() But my previous attempts at breaking into the genre - rolling credits on Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, spending a dozen hours within Wo Long’s inspiration Sekiro - never resulted in this a-ha moment. My revelations might seem basic, banal even, for those familiar with Soulslike games. Rushing headfirst without a handle on the mechanics, surviving for more than a few minutes felt like a Sisyphean task. ![]() Zhang Liang runs at you with ferocity, his big attacks making mincemeat of your health bar. Spiritually, the experience was akin to Einstein’s definition of madness or the film Groundhog’s Day: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Of the bosses I faced racing through Wo Long for this review, he remains the most difficult not because of a sporadic nature, unfairly damaging attacks, or sheer deviousness: it’s because he teaches you how to play the game. None of this mattered for Zhang Liang, though, because players will not know any of it. I’ve barely scratched the surface of the many, many systems working synergistically within the game: you can also perform ranged attacks - like shooting a bow - with L2, get help from historically-relevant AI companions, fight with various weapon types that all feel wildly different, cast the aforementioned magic for both offense and defense, plant flags to raise your morale rank to deal more damage while taking less, and use summon a massively helpful Divine Beast for helpful buffs or to take a chunk of an enemy’s health. Their core concepts, however, could not be more directly opposed, as Sekiro rewards stealth, patience, and planned offense, while Wo Long prompts players into full-frontal aggression while improvising a reactionary defense. ![]() Both games: take place during a time of political upheaval for their respective countries (the fall of the Later Han Dynasty in China and the end of the Sengoku period in Japan) mix historical figures and settings with fantastical beasts and demons are designed with semi-open linear levels with a focus on verticality and rely on precise and perfectly timed parries to master their combat. Let’s get the comparisons out of the way quickly. However, spending even a few moments with Wo Long makes it clear that Team Ninja aimed to ape a different game from FromSoft’s stable this time around: 2019’s Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice. Their previous attempts - Ni-Oh and Ni-Oh 2 - are loving tributes to the Dark Souls series, albeit ones that never reached the same acclaim as their inspirations due to their (rightfully) perceived brutal unfairness. This statistic shouldn’t be particularly shocking - Team Ninja has always been upfront with their admiration for FromSoftware’s highly successful and punishing game design philosophies. It took me a little under three hours to defeat Zhang Liang, the first boss in Team Ninja’s newest Soulslike, Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty. ![]()
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