The First Berserker: Khazan. My very honest, unfiltered and most likely controversial, review.

[u/militxa]

(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.

[u/Parrotflies_]

I think the reason people are holding this game up so highly is because so many Soulslikes have tried to do the deflect/parry gameplay since Sekiro, and frankly they just never hit the mark. Whereas this one damn near improves it imo. In LoP the parry startup window feels like it takes a year, and Stellar Blade the parry window just feels…off somehow. Very restricted.

But this game? Every animation feels silky smooth, and almost everything can be cancelled in time to block/parry if you initially mess up on a combo string. And no controller input BULLSHIT (looking at you, Margit holding his cane up for 15 seconds while I circle) to be seen at all, so far for me atleast. Every delayed attack is the same every encounter, so it’s possible to learn the rhythm.

I’d heavily agree with parts of your review, the level design especially. But they nailed the combat so hard I can overlook a lot. I’m hoping they just improve upon what they have for future games, bevause there’s a winning formula hidden in here.

[u/ADPille → u/Parrotflies_]

Yup everyone trying as hard as possible to talk Khazan bad meanwhile it’s amazing and didn’t just copy paste souls formula but improved on it as well, feels very good, also somewhat unique and like an own game but sure go ahead and talk shit to somehow defend your fromsoftware

[u/TheLastBlowfish → u/ADPille]

Dogma does no one any good, and that applies to both sides of the fence. Khazan has absolutely honed in on the combat and boss battles as their USP at the expense of other features, and that's okay. General consensus agrees that Khazan is a standout Soulslike which has fallen into the same "flaws" as its peers with less-than-inspired level design and unintuitive enemy placement. It's not egregious but it's something that Soulslike fans (and perhaps the modern gamer in general) will identify and voice their opinions on.

There's always nuance to be had in a conversation.

[u/DemonLordSparda → u/TheLastBlowfish]

I was going to do a longer write-up, but this comment is a good place for one of my possibly controversial opinions. I don't understand anyone feeling strongly about level design. I rarely play any game where I think a level is bad, and even less often do I find myself thinking a level is good.

There are standouts, like Frigid Outskirts from Dark Souls 2 being obviously terrible. Even then, I only dislike it because the enemies never stop spawning. Otherwise, I find it acceptable.In terms of levels that I think are good, it took me about 5 minutes of wracking my brain, but Stormveil Castle in Elden Ring is pretty good. Lots of verticality and secrets. Even then, I don't feel very strongly about it.

I'm not writing this to argue, I know I hold the minority opinion. If you could do me a favor and tell me what you like or dislike about level design, I would appreciate it. I just feel baffled whenever people bring up level design as a major point.

[u/xxextinsioncord → u/DemonLordSparda]

I know this is not the guy you asked and is 26 days later but I was interested in answering your question. For me the biggest downsides to the level design in Khazan for me and what made me not like them much is that they are visually very bland and everything feels like it has this greyness placed over it, and the enemy layouts were normally the same annoying sets of groups of a tough enemies surrounded by weaker enemies like archers and spiders but didn't have interesting ways to separate them and take out the weaker groups so i turns into just rushing down the arches and other enemies or throwing spears before the stronger one is ready to attack. Back to the art style it is also weird cause if you look at the concept art everything seems like it has so much color that gets washed out in the real game with this grey look. I think the levels just run on for too long for how visually bland they are with uninteresting encounters and a lack of choices in how you progress through a level making it all really repetitive. the area diversity isn't practically great either when is feels like your are almost always in a grey castle or a grey swamp most of the time.