Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty Review (PS5)

In an ocean of soulslike games, Team NINJA’s titles have always stood out due to the complexity of the systems complementing the combat mechanics. Many consider Ninja Gaiden and Nioh series less approachable than any of the Dark Souls games, but that’s because Team Ninja’s game require deep understanding of the gameplay mechanics.

Despite being just as intimidating as its other titles at first glance, Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty is actually Team NINJA’s most approachable game to date. The combat does away with the very tight parry frames of Sekiro and the long flow of combos of Nioh. It also doesn’t require players to mix and match equipment to overcome some of the most powerful bosses in the game.

Fans of the Dynasty Warriors series will find the setting of Wo Long quite familiar. You play as a militia soldier during the Later Han Dynasty and try to fight for survival in the chaos of a Three Kingdoms plagued by demons. Those who have played any of Koei Tecmo’s previous not-quite-mainstream Musou genre games will recognize some of the iconic characters that appear in Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty, including Liu Bei and Cao Cao.

Unsurprisingly, you’re not going to play Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty for the story, which is quite generic to put it mildly. The good news is the story is serviceable enough not to break the immersion. Over the course of more than a few dozen hours, you’ll fight demons and famous heroes from the Romance of the Three Kingdoms augmented with a demonic elixir. Most of the time, other heroes will join you on your quest for the mastermind behind the demonic outburst, but only if you want companions. That’s probably all you need to know story-wise.

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Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty can be very intimidating at first glance, especially for those who didn’t play the demo. The game throws at you several gameplay mechanics that are new not just for a Team NINJA game, but also for the genre.

For starters, whenever you start a new mission, you’ll have morale and fortitude ranks that measure your performance throughout the level. Typically, you’ll start with a morale value of 0 and improve it by killing enemies, deflecting critical attacks and executing fatalities at the same time. Another way to increase your morale is to find the battle flags throughout the level. This will not only increase your morale, but also your fortitude.

Fortitude is another stat that you should be keeping your eyes on. Its value means that whenever you die, your morale won’t drop below the fortitude level. This is very important when you’re facing bosses and they have a high morale value. Having high morale is extremely beneficial because you’ll do more damage and take less in return.

Same goes for the enemy though, so whenever you’re fighting an enemy with a higher morale than you, you’ll do less damage and take more if hit. On the bright side, every time you kill an enemy with higher morale, your own morale will increase faster. It's an interesting concept that might be hard to understand at the beginning, but it’s easy to master later on.

The wizardry is truly a complex system though and requires some deep understanding of how the spirit mechanic works in the game. Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty lacks a stamina bar, so you’re free to keep attacking and defending for as long as you’re still standing. However, the game uses another system that puts spirit right and center.

Basically, the bar below your health can go in the orange (left) or blue (right) zones. When the bar is fully in the orange and you get hit, you are automatically staggered and can’t act for a few seconds. Spirit that fills the blue bar can be spent on martial arts and spells for devastating effects. All spells and martial arts have a spirit cost, but you can keep casting these even when you’re in the orange zone. Obviously, the effects will be much less impressive, so you’ll always want to spend your blue spirit just for that.

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But the complexity doesn’t stop here. There are five types of spells, each belonging to a phase: earth, fire, water, wood, and metal. Each phase has its own tree of spells, which you can learn regardless of your stats. Speaking of which, every time you have enough “souls” to level up, you can increase the value of one of the five phases mentioned. All phases increase stats like HP and attack, but each raises the value of a certain stat like stealth or weight.

You can learn one spell from each phase every five levels, but to actually be able to cast them, you must meet a lot of requirements. First off, you must have the required phase value. Secondly, you need a specific morale value to be able to cast it. Usually, the more powerful a spell, the higher morale is required to cast it.

It’s a bit complicated, but the good news is you’ll be working with no more than four spells at a time. One other thing to remember is that whenever you cast spells when your spirit is in the blue zone, you’ll get better results. There’s a particular spell called Absorb Vitality that works very well when you cast it right before executing a critical hit on a boss.

Combat in Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty is closer to Sekiro than Nioh. You can’t chain combos in this game like you can in Nioh. Also, the main pillar of Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty is the deflect move. It’s the only action that seriously pushes bosses’ spirit into the orange zone. When that’s completely filled, you can critically hit them for huge damage. Attacking normally does very little damage in Wo Long, so your best strategy is to wait for enemy’s critical attack and try to deflect it.

If you aren’t good at Sekiro, you don’t have to worry about the deflect mechanic. Frames are very generous in Wo Long, so you have plenty of time to correctly execute a deflect from the moment the enemy signals it by blinking red. It’s why the game is much easier than any other Team NINJA previous title.

Technically, Wo Long: Dynasty Fallen works flawlessly on PlayStation 5, but I had some issues with the PC version, especially in the second part of the game. Problems like white flickers and crashes happened quite often on PC, but I haven’t experienced anything of the sort on PlayStation.

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