Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty review - Epic in every conceivable way

Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty, the latest Soulslike action RPG from Team Ninja and Koei Tecmo, is almost exactly as I expected the game to be. As a fan of the Soulslike sub-genre of ARPGs as well as Team Ninja's previous titles, namely the Nioh series, I was more than excited to get my hands on their latest creation, which aims to deliver an entirely new setting, a massively overhauled combat system, and much more.

I would be lying if I said I didn't have any preconceptions of the game going into it. In fact, during the first few hours of my Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty playthrough, I was basically playing it as a Nioh title. However, as soon as I reached the first boss, I quickly realized that Wo Long isn't Nioh. It's not even close, as it's a whole other beast of its own. Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty is a game that uses Nioh's combat and world-building as foundations to deliver an entirely fresh experience.

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My initial thoughts regarding the game, from all of its marketing and trailers, was that it was going to be a hybrid between Team Ninja's Nioh and FromSoftware's Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice. While my preconception wasn't far from what Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty really felt like, especially in the early portions, once I made my way into the later chapters of the game, I was quickly made aware of its true identity.

Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty isn't a game that will hold your hand and guide you through everything the game has to offer. Instead, it will throw you against a brick wall as soon as you start getting comfortable and believe in you to overcome it with nothing more than sheer determination. Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty is easily one of the best video gaming experiences that I've had this entire year. However, the game is far from perfect.

The Chinese martial arts-inspired combat system of Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty is visceral, yet satisfying

Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty's combat system is the perfect mash-up of Team Ninja's recent action role-playing games, i.e., Nioh, Nioh 2, and Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin, with a subtle touch of FromSoftware's Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice. At times, the game genuinely felt like a continuation of the Nioh series, with the art style and RPG progression system being quite similar to the Nioh games.

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But once I started playing the game and understanding its combat system, it truly felt like an entirely new experience, one that was as visceral as it was satisfying. The main focus of Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty's combat system is parrying/ deflecting attacks, which can honestly be quite challenging to pull off, especially in the early hours of the game, but it does get easier to pull off perfectly-timed parries once you start getting a hang of the combat mechanics.

A fantastic Wizardry System that adds even more depth to an already excellent combat system

In addition to the deflect and parry mechanics, Team Ninja has also introduced a robust Wizardry System, which acts as the secondary offensive or defensive tool in your arsenal. The Wizardry System is based on the same elements that dictate your attributes, i.e., Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal, and Water. You unlock new Wizardry spells as you level up different elemental abilities. You can slot up to four different active spells that you can activate by pressing the right trigger and face buttons on your controller.

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I found the Wizardry System to be a really great addition to the combat system. Although I initially did feel it was a bit too intimidating with the sheer number of spells and elemental affinities, once I got to grips with the combat and began experimenting with different spells, it really clicked with me. Wizardry spells in Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty function pretty much like the scrolls and talismans from Nioh 2, but aren't limited in their usage.

While you have a limited supply of spells to use in Nioh 2, in Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty, you can use all of your spells as long as you meet the morale rank requirements and have enough spirit to cast these spells. The Spirit System is another nifty mechanic that's exclusive to Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty. On the surface, the Spirit System feels like the 'Posture System' in Sekiro, but has much more depth to it.

The Spirit System explained, and how it affects combat in Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty

You begin every encounter with your Spirit gauge set to neutral, but attacking enemies and perfectly deflecting incoming attacks shifts your spirit gauge towards the right (blue) side, which grants you the ability to perform special attacks and cast Wizardry spells. Conversely, taking damage, failing to parry incoming attacks, or casting too many spells simultaneously shifts the spirit gauge to the left (red) side, which, if it maxes out, breaks your posture, leaving you vulnerable to enemy attacks.

Depleting your enemy's Spirit allows you to perform a Spirit attack to deal massive damage (Image via Koei Tecmo)

The spirit gauge is what dictates most battle scenarios in Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty, where your ultimate goal is to deplete your enemy's Spirit enough to deal a Spirit attack, which does a massive amount of damage.

I really enjoyed the idea that every single enemy in the game is governed by the same systems as the players themselves. Most Soulslikes, in the pursuit of making enemy encounters challenging, usually end up creating enemies that don't play by the same rules as the players themselves.

As much as I like the Dark Souls Trilogy, there are more than a handful of boss and enemy encounters that feel cheap due to them either having infinite stamina or one-shot combos, making the task of going against them frustrating instead of challenging. Nioh, Nioh 2, Sekiro, and now Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty are amongst the few Soulslike games that I never found cheap in terms of combat encounters.

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Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty's combat system is vast, from all of the Wizardry skills to the weapons (which I'm yet to talk about), as there are tons of options for you to choose and tweak when it comes to optimizing your build in the game. Talking about weapons, there are a total of nine different weapon types, with some returning from the Nioh games, such as one-handed swords, dual blades, poleaxes, and staffs, and a few new ones, such as the glaives, spears, etc.

The excellent weapons and martial arts system, and the massive difficulty curve

Every weapon that you find in the game will feature two 'martial arts,' i.e., weapon skills, which you can activate by pressing the right shoulder button and face buttons on your controller. Weapon martial arts are essentially the easiest way to deplete an enemy's spirit gauge. However, you cannot spam these abilities as they consume a lot of spirit themselves.

It should be noted that Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty isn't as loot-driven as the Nioh games. You can basically finish the entire game with your initial loadout, granted that you upgrade your weapons and armor accordingly.

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The weapon and combat system in Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty is quite well-balanced, and has plenty of headroom for players to find their own weapon of choice and playstyle. However, there's a minor caveat to this, that being the difficulty spike, especially in the early portions of the game. Being a Soulslike, I did expect Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty to pose a considerable challenge, but it felt a bit too harsh.

For instance, the very first boss of the game, Zhang Liang, General of Man, despite being a relatively easy boss encounter, took me no less than five hours to beat. However, it wasn't because the boss was that difficult to defeat or was hard to read and learn. Instead, it took me that long because the game never communicated how I should tackle the boss fight in the first place. As I mentioned previously, Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty relies heavily on you deflecting attacks and using your weapon's martial arts.

Zhang Liang is one of the toughest early-game encounters in Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty (Image via Koei Tecmo)

Unfortunately, that was never communicated to me, at least in the first chapter of the game. My repeated losses at the hands of Zhang Liang was mostly because I was playing the game just like Nioh 2, which, in my defense, was fairly effective in the parts leading up to the first boss fight. Once I started playing the game the way it was intended to be played, I basically defeated Zhang Liang without taking a single hit, and that, in my opinion, is both a positive and a negative aspect of the game.

Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty's robust progression system has some drawbacks

Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty features a RPG progression system that's similar to Nioh, where you level up your character's core attributes via 'Genuine Qi' that you obtain by defeating enemies and bosses.

In the same vein as most Soulslikes, the cost of leveling up your character increases with each level. Fortunately, Genuine Qi in Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty is reserved exclusively for leveling-up your character, with a different currency being used to upgrade weapons, purchase consumables, etc.

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However, unlike Nioh or even the more traditional Soulslike games, Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty doesn't allow you to level up individual attributes. Instead, it ties attributes to different elements that you can level up. For instance, vigor (HP) and defensive stats are tied to the Wood element, whereas strength and dexterity is governed by the Fire element. By increasing the power of these elements, you essentially enhance your stats in the game.

Morale and fortitude rank systems add an entirely new layer of meta-progression to the game

Another major aspect of Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty's progression is 'morale rank' and 'fortitude rank.' Morale rank and fortitude levels are basically sub-levels that you gain within a chapter or a sub-chapter, which dictate your effectiveness against enemies and bosses. You gain morale rank by killing or assassinating enemies, but you can lose your morale rank if you take damage or get killed.

You can secure your morale rank by finding and capturing flagposts (Image via Koei Tecmo)

To safeguard your morale rank, you must find flagposts that are essentially chackpoints, where you can level up, buy/sell consumables, learn wizardry skills and even warp between different chapters or sub-chapters. Once you discover a flagpost, you gain the fortitude rank based on the average morale rank that's required for the area. Once you fortify your morale rank, it becomes your base level until you find another flagpost in the same chapter.

Why the addition of morale and fortitude rank can be a point of contention amongst players

Although the morale and fortitude rank system can be slightly overwhelming at first, it's fairly easy to understand once you start playing the game. One major issue that some players might face with the morale rank system is that it makes the leveling system somewhat redundant, since every time you complete a chapter and start a new one, your morale rank goes back to "0", meaning you cannot skip past enemy encounters to make your way directly to the boss, even if you want to.

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I understand why Team Ninja might've implemented such a system, i.e., to encourage exploration and make enemy encounters challenging regardless of players' base level and stats. However, it feels forced, and while I personally don't find it frustrating, given that I tend to explore chapters thoroughly for loot and secret encounters, some players might find it annoying to have to grind out morale rank on top of their base levels.

A fantastic historical setting, marred by dated graphical presentation

Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty's ancient Chinese setting is something that is rarely explored in modern gaming, despite it being one of the most story-rich and fascinating time periods to explore. I was initially skeptical whether Team Ninja (a Japanese development studio, with games under their belt that mostly feature ancient Japanese settings) would be able to do the ancient Chinese setting justice, but they did exactly that and even added their signature flair to it.

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Much like Nioh and Nioh 2, Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty's setting is loosely based on actual historical events, but leans heavily on the fantastical elements, with plenty of creatures and enemy designs inspired by Chinese mythology. I really liked the boss designs in particular, with each main story boss being unique and having their own moveset and abilities. Bosses like Lu Bu, Zhang Liang, Aoye, etc., are easily some of the best encounters in the game, being both challenging and visually spectacular in their own right.

Apart from the setting, Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty is rather colorful, much more so than Team Ninja's previous Soulslikes. I really liked the contrast of the hub world as opposed to some of the dark and drab main mission locations. Speaking of locations, Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty also has a story, which does get interesting at points. However, much like Nioh and Nioh 2, the story and characters aren't the main focus here. I did enjoy Team Ninja's creativity in tying actual historical events and characters to their whacky and over-the-top mythical storyline.

Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty, despite its dated graphical presentation, can look really stunning at times, thanks to stellar art direction (Image via Koei Tecmo)

However, one thing that I felt dragged down the game's presentation was its graphical fidelity. Don't get me wrong, I do appreciate the art style that Team Ninja's games have, but Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty's graphical presentation feels very lackluster in comparison to most modern Soulslikes and action RPGs.

I understand that graphical fidelity isn't the primary concern, nor should it be for a Soulslike title, but Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty can look really dated at times, which is made worse by the game's poor performance on PC.

A few technical issues that I faced while playing Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty

Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty's PC version is certainly not up to snuff. While it isn't as bad as Koei Tecmo's most recent monster hunter game, Wild Hearts, it's still not great, or in a state where I can wholeheartedly recommend the game in its current form, unless you have a top-of-the-line PC with the most up-to-date GPU and plenty of VRAM to spare. The PC that I used to play Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty, is equipped with an AMD Ryzen 5 5600, 16GB RAM, GTX 1660 Super, with the game being installed on an NVMe drive.

Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty can look absolutely breathtaking at times (Image via Koei Tecmo)

Although the first few chapters ran quite well on my machine, with an average of 60fps, at 1080p and medium settings, the last few chapters and select few boss fights, such as the one against Aoye and also Lu Bu, tanked my framerate to the low 30s and all the way down to the high teens in certain instances. Furthermore, the game suffered from an uneven frame pacing issue, which I had to rectify using a third-party application to stabilize my framerate.

Fortunately, there weren't any shader compilation stutters, which is very common in most modern AAA games that were built using DirectX 12 api. Another minor issue I faced with the game involved audio balancing, where some character dialogs were either too loud or too muffled by background noise. I did enjoy the game's soundtrack, which isn't surprising given that Team Ninja's games usually feature some truly amazing original soundtracks.

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As it stands, Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty's PC version isn't perfect, but it's not as bad as some of the most recent PC ports, such as Callisto Protocol, Forspoken, and Koei Tecmo's own Wild Hearts. I firmly believe that with a few patches and updates to the game's PC version, all of these underlying performance issues can easily be rectified. I genuinely hope that Team Ninja works to fix these issues as soon as possible, since underneath all the performance issues is a fantastic Soulslike experience.

In conclusion

Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty is an excellent Soulslike action role-playing game that stands on its own against Team Ninja's previous Soulslike projects. With a fascinating ancient Chinese setting and a robust combat system coupled with plenty of choice when it comes to customizing your own playstyle, Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty delivers an exceptionally great experience. While the PC version of the title suffers from a few performance-related issues, these will most likely be ironed out with future updates.

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Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty is not only a good Soulslike, but also a fantastic showcase of Team Ninja's creativity when it comes to merging real-world historical events with fantastical elements. Although the game's early-game difficulty spike can be a deal-breaker for some players, if you can power through that initial challenge that the game presents, you will be rewarded with a truly exceptional role-playing and an equally amazing Soulslike experience.