Some familiar faces from the Three Kingdoms emerge throughout Wo Long as enemies. Perhaps the most distinctive is its morale system - something that's a bit fuzzy in that having had it explained to me and fiddled around with in the demo I've still not entirely grasped, although as there are similarities to Demon's Souls world tendency, a system I also never fully understood, that's might be unsurprising. It's similar to Sekiro in that it puts an emphasis on the timing in combat, but Wo Long has plenty of its own quirks too. There is breadth there, though, and a moveset that's extended outwards in other ways there's a deflect in your arsenal that lets you soak up attacks, while that spirit gauge encourages a certain toing and froing in combat. ![]() It'll be interesting to see how Wo Long's pronounced flavour impacts on build variety and viability, as while the starting class I went with tended towards stealth it seemed the only way through enemies is relentless attack, suggesting there'll be a more defined path ahead of you. In the hand it feels fantastic, the fast-flowing fluidity of your moveset making for a distinct take on the action RPG. What you actually do when you're controlling your character makes the game a lot more instinctual." "What we're going for here is free flowing action, free flowing combat, and we've added in a jump to give you a lot more options. In Wo Long, the stamina bar is effectively flipped on its head and instead there's a spirit gauge that fills up as you attack, but that's also drawn upon when dodging or performing specials, putting an emphasis on attack. And because of that we had the stamina bar, and each specific attack had a lot of weight," explains Yasuda. "With Nioh we were going for samurai action, that was our big focus. There was a complexity to the combat of both Nioh games that's been funnelled down into something more immediate in Wo Long, with systems in place that reward a more aggressive style of play. That's what's impressed the most after an evening with Wo Long, and is certainly what sets it apart from the likes of Nioh. "We were thinking what are we going to do for this new action RPG, and we really wanted to make a title with the core themes and setting of the Three Kingdoms - that Chinese setting brings in a new country to explore, and the main focus for the combat and the game itself is Chinese martial arts, so it's about bringing that to life." "We wanted a new flavour for the next Team Ninja game," Wo Long's producer Fumihiko Yasuda tells me earlier in the week as the studio were making its final preparations before the Tokyo Game Show. Multiplayer returns, so co-op's also on the cards should you need some help. The end result is something that feels surprisingly novel. It's not quite a musou - that brand of crowd-clearing action that Koei Tecmo has made a craft of over the past 20 years - but it weaves in some ideas with its morale system that sees you conquering the map to earn more power. ![]() Wo Long, on the other hand, flows like water and invites you to lose yourself in its combat, pulling you through its stages with a momentum quite unlike that which you'd associate with your typical Soulslike. Nioh was a game of studied composure, and one that rewarded consideration in your attacks. It's more than that, though, with an all-new approach to combat and an entirely different feel to it all. Because, in the simplest terms possible, Wo Long is Nioh transposed to the mythology and legends of third century China. There's plenty that's familiar in Wo Long, though, both from the Nioh games it builds upon - themselves a pair of hard-edged, deeply enjoyable spins on the action RPG template laid out by FromSoft's Souls games - and Koei Tecmo's broader history with the Three Kingdoms periods. Availability: Out 2023 on PC, PS5, PS4, Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S.And all this before I've even had the chance to finish the team's take on Final Fantasy, Strangers of Paradise, or even managed to fully get my head around what exactly Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty is. No sooner had I wrapped up an evening with the demo of Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty - a demo that's just gone live to all on PlayStation 5 - than the news broke of another in its long line of action games with Rise of the Ronin. There's prolific, and then there's Team Ninja.
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