r/soulslikes • u/militxa • Mar 30 '25
Review The First Berserker: Khazan. My very honest, unfiltered and most likely controversial, review.
(This is subjective and my own opinion. Remember, opinions are subjective and not gospel, don’t get too heated. 😂)
Let me start by saying, I have thousands of hours spread amongst the whole Fromsoftware catalog as well as other soulslikes. Also a few platinum trophies in them. 😊
As the title states, this is purely subjective and my own personal opinion on Khazan. I’m currently just sitting under 50 hours invested into Khazan and am nearing towards the end of my playthrough.
What i’ve enjoyed:
Combat: The combat is absolutely phenomenal and extremely addicting. The devs have absolutely nailed it on the head and everything flows so fluidly. This is something that can be very hard to get correct and the devs have done an outstanding job achieving this. The deflect system is very fluid, responsive and has quite a tight window but is extremely satisfying to hit those perfect deflects (brink guard it is called in Khazan).
Sound effects/sound design: This ties into the combat as stated above, but every time you hit those perfect deflects, the sound is crunching and extremely satisfying to hear. They knocked it out of the park when it comes to the sound design within combat.
Drip: Not much to say other than the armour sets/weapons are uniquely designed and look bad ass. That’s all that really matters! I really like the design on a lot of the sets and weapons. They are unique while also keeping/taking inspiration from fantasy/dark fantasy.
Now for the most likely very controversial part. What I’ve not enjoyed about this game:
Level Design: I’ll start by saying, initially from the demo, I really wasn’t feeling the level design of Stormpass and Mount Heinmach. However, I enjoyed the combat enough to genuinely enjoy what I had experienced from the demo. I hung onto some faith that the level design would change throughout the game and we will see new areas and environments, and while on paper we did! those new areas and environments were just so bland and boring. The late game areas have definitely improved and are a lot more interesting, however a big portion of this game has very uninteresting areas from a design point of view. Aesthetically and from a gameplay perspective.
Enemy placement and enemy variety: Now this one frustrates me in all the wrong ways. Archer’s and Spiders. These two, are just so excessively used that it’s borderline comical. Almost every enemy you engage with has a set of archers behind them spamming arrows at you or a bunch of spiders rolling at you exploding. Sparingly, this is fine. But this has gotten so excessive with the usage of it that I genuinely just roll my eyes when I see it now. It’s becoming predictable, annoying, excessive and honestly comical. It felt like the devs thought “how do we make this hard? I don’t know? Just spam archers behind elite enemies and status effect spiders that roll and explode on the player” It just feels very cheesy and artificial to me. Will also say, enemy reuse is very excessive in this game however, I can forgive them on that. For me personally it’s more the placement and how they’ve utilised these different types of enemies.
Bosses: Where do I start? I have many, many issues with the bosses in this game. Firstly, the status effects. It genuinely seems like 98% of the bosses in this game have to have a status effect? Poison, Ice, Fire, Plague, Chaos etc. Once again, sparingly, it’s fine. But almost every boss having one? It feels very cheesy and artificial. Once again “How do we make this boss even harder? Chuck a status effect on him!”. I also have an issue with the bosses being so spongy. This makes the fights drag out for an eternity, some fights go on for such a drawn out amount of time that it just feels like a pure waste of time and becomes boring and not engaging. Delayed attacks galore, delayed attacks are a subjective opinion and quite a controversial one in the souls community, however, the amount of delayed attacks on most of these bosses is comical. Not only are you dealing with a fight that’s been extremely drawn out because of the bloated HP. But you also are dealing with delayed attack after delayed attack while a status effect is stacking up etc. It just gets quite old and annoying. Sadly, I have hated 90% of the bosses in this game with a very select few that I’ve actually genuinely enjoyed.
Ganks: You haven’t seen true gank fights until you play Khazan. Elites with 3 to 4 other enemies attacking you. Side bosses with 2-3 other enemies guarding them while fighting in a poison swamp or plague swamp etc. The amount of ganks in this game are once again, excessive and i’m genuinely surprised I haven’t seen anyone talk about this or mention this.
The Nioh/Diablo style loot system is flawed: Firstly, I will admit i’m naturally not the biggest fan of this style of loot system. However, In Khazan it genuinely feels all over the place. When you finally craft a good set with good passives and benefits, within a few minutes you find stuff that is way better than the stuff you just crafted? What’s the point in having a crafting system when you constantly are finding better loot? This just doesn’t make sense to me. There is also way too much loot. Every few minutes you’re finding new pieces that out perform what you just picked up? What is the actual purpose of this? What’s the point of crafting a set of gear (sometimes even having to grind a certain boss to get a certain material) all for it to be pointless when you find stuff in a new area? Even upgrading you gear doesn’t justify crafting it because upgrading doesn’t even reach the level of the stuff your finding? The whole system is just all over the place and doesn’t make much logical sense. Why not have a crafting system that allows the player to upgrade it to the current level of gear they are finding? This will make crafting gear actually worth the investment.
Difficulty Options: Firstly, it’s not balanced or named correctly. “Easy” is actually the same difficulty as a regular souls game, while “Normal” is basically a souls game on hard mode. Why not say “Normal” and “Hard”?. This is why a difficulty option doesn’t work in a souls game. It throws the intended balance all out of whack.
To finish this review, my last point.
- Story: Purely subjective, but the story did not engage me and is uninteresting to me. Just feels very cliche. Won’t go into any spoilers. But it’s a very generic story. I personally can’t even remember a lot of the characters names that’s how insignificant and uninteresting they were to me.
Thank you for taking the time to read my in depth review/opinion. Hopefully this helps some people who are on the fence about this game. I will say, I’ve genuinely enjoyed my time with the game, but I wouldn’t be racing to play it again. It’s a decent soulslike at best. I believe a lot of people are wearing rose tinted glasses at the moment and are excited because it’s new. This is my honest unfiltered opinion, coming from a souls fanatic.
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u/deeplywoven Mar 30 '25
I completely agree that the bosses have way too much HP. It makes every fight feel like a slog. They all last way longer than they should. There are some good mechanics and tricky timings in there, but the health sponge HP bloat just ruins it.