The first boss action in Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty is up there with the most difficult first bosses in the history of the video game. In this opening fight, you will face Zhang Liang of the Yellow Turbans as they face off in a two-phase kinetic battle to the expired . This is an intense ability test that will almost immediately put your Wo Long mechanics ability to the test. In many ways, this feels like a rite of passage for the rest of the game and a bold statement of intent from the Ninja development team. At first, I loved the way it forced me to adapt to the demands of the particular type of soul-like action in the game, but the more I progressed, the more this feeling dissipated when I realized that this introductory action was little more than an escape déséquilibrée.et a much more difficult test than the bosses who

For many, this sudden peak in difficulty will constitute a barrier to entry and will stop progress only 10 minutes after the start of the game. It’s a shame that Wo Long starts with such a powerful roadblock, not least because this initial venture does not suggest that the rest of the game will move ahead. In fact, apart from this first boss, Team Ninja has created one of the most accessible soul tastes in a traditionally difficult Genre.

I didn’t see another boss action comparable to Zhang Liang’s difficulty until about 15 hours after Wo Long’s campaign. Most of the patterns in in the middle were a relative breeze, to the point that I could cut each of them on my first attempt – usually in less than a Minute. I always had fun shipping each of them, but the ease with which I could do it makes them lose some of their brilliance and reinforces the idea that the first Boss is at odds with the rest of the game. actioning with Zhang Liang creates expectations that never come true, especially if you can enlist the help of AI or human teammates in other action.

Team Ninja, of course, has experience in developing difficult games with Ninja Gaiden and Nioh. Elements of these two games are present in Wo Long, but his action resembles a simplified offstrike of Sekiro from From Software: Shadows Die Twice, with an emphasis on distracting actions and breaking the opponent’s posture. I say it’s simplified, because although enemies often unleash powerful and non-blockable actions, you just need to distract them by timing a single catch press. There are no swipe or grab actions that require different techniques to counter and avoid, so it does not have the same depth. The time window for distraction is relatively generous, and these actions – called critical hits – are clearly telegraphed, so it’s not long before they deflect the blows to the left, right and center. The challenge is to identify the upcoming action and know when to time the distraction so as not to be too early or too late. You can block regular body actions and also avoid the harmful zone, but mastering the distraction mechanisms is the optimal way to achieve success. In addition, nothing smacks the satisfaction of parrying an incoming blow and seeing the sparks fly when the steel collides with the steel.

Wo Long does not use a traditional endurance system to slow you down. Instead, you have a shadow indicator that decreases or increases depending on your actions. You can build it by hitting enemies and distracting their actions, and then use this positive spirit to increase the power of your action. Actions such as Dodging, bad timing of distractions, performing special weapon-specific movements and casting spells will reduce your mind, as will the damage caused by an enemy action. If your mind is negative and you suffer a blow that pushes the gauge to the lower limit, you will become defenseless for a short time. This creates a balancing act where you want to build enough positive spirit to take full advantage of your repertoire without succumbing to this offsmack state.

Above all, each enemy you action also has its own spirit gauge, so skirmishes often focus on reducing your enemy’s defenses instead of focusing directly on damaging his health bars. You can lower the enemy’s spirit simply by actioning him, but special movements and distractions – especially parrying critical blows – will exhaust him significantly. Once your mental indicator reaches the lower limit, you are plunged into a state of numbness, which gives you ample opportunity to launch a devastating fatal blow that erases part of your health. The variety of different types of opponents you face does not make this easy, especially if you are dealing with several opponents at once, but where the learning curve of long is not particularly steep. Once everything clicks, the action falls into this exciting back-and-forth groove built around elegant distractions and quick explosions of exaggerated roughness, and Team Ninja has also implemented a number of other considerations to help players get started.

You have a double jump that gives the game a feeling of mobility reminiscent of the exploits of Ryu Hayabusa in Ninja Gaiden. The design of the levels has a high level of verticality to take this into account and encourages you to jump on the roofs and watchtowers to see the battlefield from above. From there, you can perform a punch to deal significant damage to an undoubtful enemy, while take actions serve a similar purpose when your feet are on the ground. Both techniques allow you to send a certain number of enemies before you even have a chance to action back, so you don’t always have to face each enemy man after man. This makes you pay attention to your surroundings, because there is usually a way to catch undoubtful actioners if you look hard enough.