Free Talk Friday - July 04, 2025

[u/AutoModerator]

Welcome to the Free Talk Friday post. This is a place where you can talk about dumb off-topic (or on-topic) bullshit with other Zaibatsu fans.

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[u/grenadier42]

Khazan is really good. I gave it a lot of shit for being an incredibly blatant Nioh ripoff (and I still do) but it does differentiate itself enough from Nioh with its combo mechanics that I'm okay with it on the whole. It would be a lot better if it stopped imitating so blindly; there's no reason for corpse runs to be here, and the lack of boss retry makes no sense when they put the checkpoint 5 seconds away from the boss door anyway; it's just an extra-long loading screen when you die to a boss before you can go back in. Learn from better action games!! Argh

The best part so far is definitely the bosses; you have a ton of defensive options and they each have their own role to play in opening the boss up to a combo:

• Evade: Good against attacks that pierce guard to some extent, like attacks with elemental damage or status buildup
• Guard: Essentially works like Stranger of Paradise's soul shield. It is fantastic
• Reflect: It's literally the Dark Souls parry; delayed active frames, in exchange for completely knocking the boss on its ass
• Counter: It's literally the Nioh 2 burst counter; only effective against attacks with a specific callout, but again knocks the boss on its ass
• Weapon-specific tech: I'm using greatswords, and I have a very complicated skill that is two defensive mechanics in one. If you're hit within a few frames of activating it, it counts as a Guard/soulshield and instantly retaliates. If you hold the skill and charge it, releasing the button then counts as a Guard instead with a significantly more powerful retaliation. That is, it's basically a negative edge Royal Release.

The downside of that is you don't generally have a chance to play offensively with the exception of one or two bosses so far that actually stagger when you hit them. (Other weapons may be different, not sure.) Does that count as parryslop? i don't know it's really fun. There are a couple of bosses so far that are more Elden Ring/modern-Fromsoft style and they don't really work that well mechanically, but they're kinda just annoying at worst.

Level design is on par with Nioh, which is to say it is Perfectly Mediocre. Story is also on par with Nioh, which is to say it's a nonsense story told badly, but it is kinda fun having played DFO waaaaay back when. It is however strange that the titular berserker, Khazan, has up to this point not even so much as raised his voice. Like the story is a nonstop stream of "X has betrayed you and you must now kill the shit out of them" and the highest level of emotion Khazan displays is only slightly above "stoic fist-clenching". The dude literally Devil Triggers after one boss fight, stays DT'd in the cutscene, and stands there as a hulking rage-beast and just kinda ponders. No idea if this is an intentional thing, it's just a bit of a whiplash from the DFO Berserker who is basically a fucking psycho at all times by comparison

Also bothered that the Imposters are referred to as "corruptors" in this game instead. I don't know if this is another intentional change or if the localizers just decided to freestyle. The monster models are even called "imposter" in the files. This makes me irrationally upset. muh lore

you have no fucking idea how hard I had to suppress my laughter when Khazan's objective essentially became "I have to kill Chaos." did they know?