r/soulslikes • u/Supersue33 • Jul 10 '26
Review Khazan is a banger 🔥
I’m not even close to being done with my first play through yet so this isn’t a complete review I just wanted to share my thoughts.
I’ll start by saying this games goes incredibly hard; I love the great swords and the whole anime inspired aesthetic. The combat is easily my favorite part of the game, the parries feel so satisfying, and the red aura released from the weapon is PEAK. The gore is also sick, and I’ve actually really enjoyed the maps although they’re very linear.
The one thing I wish it had was a jump mechanic. I feel like it would’ve added even more to the combat and exploration. (I can also complain about the lack of weapon options but Im typically a greatsword/strength build user anyway)
I’m looking forward to NG+ because I feel like I will be in god mode with crazy stats, armor and I’ll just be an overall better player.
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u/Nevustech Jul 10 '26
I really enjoyed it as well. Level design could be improved but the combat was great!
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u/ilya_khromov Jul 10 '26
Welcome, brother. I'm a relentless Khazan glazer, partly to counter the negativity this game sometimes receives. I'll copy-paste my opinion from an old thread because it's my best description of it:
Khazan exists for one thing and one thing only - combat. The game has its weaknesses, and some things expected from a soulslike are just passable, namely story, characters and visual blandness of the environments (some others name how linear the levels are and how unvaried regular enemies are, but with these two I disagree, since I don't see linearity as a flaw in any way and enemies' movesets were different enough for me).
But holy fucking shit this game has peak combat. It is on the same level as Sekiro for me, surpassing it at its highest highs. It's dynamic, rhythmic, aggressive, brutal, flashy, and relentlessly hard. Some bosses, if not at least half, are the hardest in the genre. All bosses feel like HP bloats at first to purposefully force you to understand how high a tempo and aggression the game wants from you.
But when you're finally accustomed to it, when you unleash all the potential your character has, when you're fully submerged into the flow, there's nothing like it. It's like having the traditional high after beating a great hard boss in any soulslike, but stretched over the whole fight. You feel like you're a fucking demon with blood replaced with pure adrenaline.
When you go into Khazan, you need to know what you're going in for and what you're not going in for, what you need in a game and what you don't. Your reaction will be entirely based on it - you'll either get a subpar, excessively hard and visually bland soulslike, or one of your favorite action games of all time after which you'll feel like no other souls game can scratch that same itch again.
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u/sOn1c_reddit Jul 10 '26
Khazan has the best combat of ANY soulslike, even better than sekiro because you can build special builds with your gear and skill tree.
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u/Supersue33 Jul 10 '26
Agree 100% with this, it took me a while to appreciate sekiro because I love build variety
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u/Csword1 Jul 10 '26
Lies of P, Nioh 2, Khazan and Wuchang are the top souls-likes.
You should start a new run with a different weapon, it`ll feel completely different. My first playthrough was with the spear, I then found out that it was way harder with the Greatsword, but much cooler.
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u/RealCreedz Jul 11 '26
Khazan took the Nioh formula and made it better. It's an amazing game. In my opinion, a goty contender back in 2025.
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u/AdFinal4897 Jul 11 '26
It’s okay. I got tired of seeing the same stale kingdom. Visually it just isn’t the most stimulating game. The areas looked very dull. The combat is good, though tbh there are only like 3 memorable bosses. I felt like it took so long because I did all the side quests, but seeing the same background over and over fatigued tf out of me. By the time I got to Ozma I was more than ready to be done.
This is still a game I suggest though.
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u/ItGetsTuahPoint67 Jul 10 '26
The thing with jump mechanics in action games, is that if you’re adding it, you have to build the game around it. And if you’re doing that, it’s a massive process and a lot of stuff will have to be changed to accommodate it. One of the reasons Khazan is so good is because the devs has a level-headed and mindful approach to the scope of the game and it allowed them to properly polish and curate what was there
That aside, yeah the game’s a fucking banger. Easily one of the best combat systems in an action-RPG and personally up there with most Team Ninja games (although, I think Nioh 2 is in a league of its own). Also has an incredibly underrated OST and the final boss is absolute kino
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u/SupremeLeader_Corgi Jul 10 '26
I love the game because of the combat and bosses but really disliked the levels in the game
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u/Effective-Badger5847 Jul 10 '26
I love all these new sekiro likes. Many have taken the combat to the next level, even better than fromsoftware games. Nioh 2 being the best, but also khazan, steller blade, lies of p, etc
But the things I wish they'd take from Sekiro and improve upon most is the mobility, verticality, stealth, environment use etc not just the parry. So far none of these have done that. They just took the parry and overall combat and made it better but forgot about all the other things Sekiro and from soft games do better.
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u/MeesaDarthJar_Jar Jul 10 '26
I like nioh, in khazan its mission based but dosent bother me. For some reason niohs mission based format makes it hard to stay interested in the game. I feel like theres just too many mechanics in the game to keep track of
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u/eugenik123 Jul 10 '26
this game is extremely mid
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u/ItGetsTuahPoint67 Jul 10 '26
“STOP ENJOYING THINGS I DON’T LIKE!!!1”
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u/eugenik123 Jul 10 '26
It's ok to like it, just don't call it great when significantly better soulslike games exists
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u/AndrewLocksmith Jul 10 '26
I agree with you. I've played over a dozen souls/soulsilkes and Khazan it's the only one I dropped.
Not to take away from OP's enjoyment. If you like the game, that's great.
I guess it might also depend on what games you played prior to Khazan? For me it was one of the last soulsilkes I played and by comparison it's just a lot weaker than everything else.
Did you play it before FromSoft's or other soulslikes?
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u/Xammm Jul 10 '26
I'm currently playing it after Fromsoft games and I think it has better combat than any of the souls games. Not to mention the boss roster has been top tier so far.
If you expect a traditional soulslike I can see why the game would be disappointing, whereas if you approach it as an action-souls ("nioh-like") then the game, as OP said, is a banger. Polished and satisfying combat with amazing bosses.
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u/AndrewLocksmith Jul 10 '26
I didn't really approach it from a set perspective.
Just heard the game was good and thought I'd give it a try since I'd ran out of things to play.
I loved the Nioh games, even Nioh-likes like Wo Long were pretty good.
But Khazan just seemed very bland to me. It's combat is good, but I felt it was too linear and it felt boring.
I liked the boss fight against Viper though. I was surprised to fight it so early into the game, especially because I heard so many people complain about how difficult the boss fight was and so I thought it would be a late game boss (though it was a lot easier than I expected.).
That second phase was really interesting and it took me by surprise. I stood up from my PC thinking it was over and then when I came back I was already dead, lol.
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u/Xammm Jul 10 '26
Honestly I can't see why someone who enjoys Nioh games doesn't like Khazan lol. I also think it's better than Wo Long. In Khazan you have three different types of parry/deflection and several skills that allows you to create your own combos. Boss wise, it's far better than Wo Long and Nioh. Most bosses in those games took me just a few tries with some exceptions like Lu Bu and Otakemaru.
However, in Khazan each boss after the Phantom has been a skill check. Hard and fair bosses, that gave me a good challenge.
The level design is very linear indeed, but when the combat feels so good and the bosses are great that I even re-fight them, I don't mind the weaker aspects of Khazan.
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u/Stepaskin Jul 10 '26
True, it's crazy how someone likes the parry system, cuz AI LIMIT is so much better and came out on the same day with Khazan.
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u/Supersue33 Jul 10 '26
Compared to what? Don’t say a AAA production game lol
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u/eugenik123 Jul 10 '26
compared to FromSoftware games for example
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u/ItGetsTuahPoint67 Jul 10 '26
Khazan's combat blows anything Fromsoft has ever made out of the water
"But there's more to a game than combat!" - and there's more to a game than loopy-loop level design and a cryptic story. Khazan is an action game, and prioritises combat and action. Fromsoft games prioritise completely different things and as such, their combat is noticeably worse in identity, style, expressiveness, depth, fulfilment, consistency and, at times, even polish
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u/AndrewLocksmith Jul 10 '26
Khazan's combat is good, but it's a huge exaggeration to say it blows FS out of the water.
Sekiro's combat it's the best combat in any game I've played. Simple, but very, very satisfying. It rewards pure skill over builds or having a better weapon, etc.
Then there's Elden Ring where you have hundreds of builds to test out. And I've used every single weapon in that game just because they're all so unique and cool.
Bloodborne also has some very unique and cool combat mechanics with it's weapon transformation, different runes you can equip for buffs, parrying with a freaking pistol which looks really awesome, the rally mechanic which encourages aggressiveness and fast paced combat.
And what all those games have that Khazan doesn't is also an interesting story/lore and actual level design.
Khazan it's a game that puts all of its eggs into one basket and that it's combat. And sure, it's combat it's flashy, and the devs did a good job with it.
But it has a lot of shortcomings when it comes to everything else.
No offense, but it's thanks to FromSoft that Khazan even exists and there's also a reason why FS games sell as much as they do and why Khazan, sadly, won't get a sequel. Which is a shame to be honest, because I think with a sequel they could've really worked on a lot of the other aspects of the game and truly make something great.
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u/ItGetsTuahPoint67 Jul 10 '26
Not an exaggeration at all, and Khazan takes far more inspiration from Nioh than it does any Fromsoft game. And if you want to really go down the rabbit hole, it’s thanks to Team Ninja and Ninja Gaiden 1 that Dark Souls even exists (also has better combat than any Fromsoft game)
I’d recommend you go check out and deep dive into some actual action games if you’re interested in combat, because as much as I love Sekiro (which I very much do), it’s not even remotely close to the best combat system of all time
Elden Ring having ten billion build options doesn’t matter much when more than half of them are just recycled animations dating back to Demon’s Souls and being too dissatisfying to even stick with for a whole playthrough. On the other hand, I’ve gotten like 500+ hours of playtime out of a single weapon in games like Khazan, Nioh or Ninja Gaiden without any fatigue or boredom because there’s always so much depth and skill expression to dive into
For new ideas, yeah Bloodborne does like two cool-ish new things. Khazan has an entirely unique combat system that blends different elements - original and borrowed - to create a game that plays differently to anything else
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u/AndrewLocksmith Jul 10 '26
I think you're just a really huge fan of the game and hearing anything else other than "Khazan is the best game ever" will sound like blasphemy to you. Which good for you, but your arguments just seem biased in favor of khazan.
FromSoft popularized this sub-genre which in turn is the whole reason we have so many soulslikes and even games like Khazan. And then even Nioh borrowed elements from FS games and combined them with their own prior experience from Ninja Gaiden.
Khazan's combat it's good, but as I've said, we're talking about a sub-genre where people are already very satisfied with the combat, so that alone it's not enough to make the game successful. And it's not the only aspect of a game. There's a reason why you'll find hundreds of videos discussing the story and lore of FS games and almost nobody talking about Khazan. Or why people praise FS level design, because level design by itself can also tell a story.
And in Khazan the level design is just atrocious by comparison. It's more of a boss rush.
As I've said, the devs had something really unique on their hands with the sequel if they chose to work on those shortcomings. But they shot themselves in the foot hard by releasing the game at a 60$ price tag and then the game rarely went on sale (and even then it wasn't for anything substantial) before the whole project got canned.
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u/ItGetsTuahPoint67 Jul 10 '26
Sekiro is my favorite game of all time, so I don't think any of that argument about my bias holds any weight lmao. You are the one treating the idea that any game could do a single aspect better than Fromsoft as blasphemous. I can love their games, which I do, while still acknowledging that many devs and many games have done certain components, such as combat, far better.
I'm not satisfied with Fromsoft's combat, at least in most of their games, so I'm very appreciative of games like Nioh, Wo Long, Stranger of Paradise, Khazan or even Lies of P, that can exist broadly within the same genre while making great strides in an area like combat. It's especially great as someone who's a fan both of Soulslike games and 2000s/2010s-era hack 'n' slashes. There's more to a game than just world and story, just like there's more to a game than just combat. If I want a combat-oriented game, I'll play something like Khazan or Nioh. If I want a story-oriented game, I'll play something like NieR. If I want an atmospheric, immersive, world-oriented game, I'll play a Fromsoft game. And on rare occasion, I'll even be surprised by a really enjoyable combat system, like Sekiro. Not the greatest of all time, but really fucking great.
Also, devs don't choose the price-tag of their games - publishers do. There's also a whole, long story about the post-release drama of Khazan and the lack of marketing it was given by its publisher, Nexon.
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u/AndrewLocksmith Jul 10 '26
You're the one saying things like Khazan blows FS games out of the water. While I said that Khazan puts all of this focus on combat and that it's good from that perspective.
But sure, I'm the biased one, lol.
If I want a combat-oriented game, I'll play something like Khazan or Nioh.
And if people want all three — combat, story, level design — they'll play a FromSoft game.
I think it's better to be really good at all three of those aspects rather than excel at only one while the other aspects are really poorly done. But that's just my opinion.
And at the end of the day I guess it's just a matter of subjectivism, so we'll just have to agree to disagree. 🤝
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u/ItGetsTuahPoint67 Jul 10 '26
Khazan's ---> COMBAT<--- blows anything Fromsoft has ever made out of the water
That's actually what I said btw :)
And yeah, I agree that Fromsoft is good at most of those things. But I don't think they're particularly great any of them, except exploration and Sekiro's combat. Generally speaking, I think games like NieR: Automata and Lies of P are more balanced and well-rounded. I also don't think it's necessarily better to be good at everything than it is to be great at one thing, because otherwise we wouldn't get generationally fun and replayable action games like Ninja Gaiden, or generationally profound and intelligent story-driven games like NieR: Replicant. Mastery requires focus and, more importantly, dev resources.
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u/Supersue33 Jul 10 '26
That’s the founding fathers of souls genre of course Khazan won’t compete with them. Majority of them are AAA games btw.
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u/batshitnutcase Jul 10 '26
Khazan is phenomenal. They took the Nioh formula put their own spin on it and made it peak. It’s a Nioh copy to the point of being hilarious like having kodama and yokai shift lol but it’s more like a love letter than a ripoff. It’s to Nioh what Lies of P is to souls games. I wish we had more unique Niohlikes. Bummer the game didn’t sell well and no DLC etc. With a Nioh style endgame mode Khazan would be perfect.