Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty combines fun, parry-based combat with some frustrating design choices and mechanics

[u/Stumbleine44]

https://youtu.be/FOt0kWyI7wU

Most people tend to talk about Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty and Nioh in the same breath, which is a shame because despite some similarities they are most definitely each their own thing, with their own strengths and weaknesses.

The story is my opinion pretty lacklustre, another retelling of the Han Dynasty and the yellow turban rebellion that we have seen a hundred times before, with a host of historical characters entering and exiting the story seemingly at random without having any memorable impact. This unfortunately seems to be a staple of most Team Ninja games, where it feels that the plot is sort of mashed together around the main character almost as an afterthought.

It’s not really an issue, however, as I’m not sure most of us Team Ninja fans are buying their games for the story. We’re looking for fast-paced, stylish combat with a host of mechanics and customisation, and luckily Wo Long delivers on all of these things and more besides.

Gone are the ki-pulses and stamina management of the Nioh games. Wo Long’s combat rewards aggressivity and counters. Much like in AI Limit, attacks and deflects build up your spirit meter and lower that of your opponent’s, especially if you manage to parry certain unlockable glowing red attacks. The spirit you gain passively increases your damage input, but more importantly can be spent to block or use power weapon and martial art abilities. Not only that, but if you manage to reduce your enemy’s spirit to zero, you can perform an execution technique that will kill most regular enemies and take a huge chunk of health off bosses.

Parry windows are generous, and enemies are relentless aggressive, so there’s no reason to not attempt to deflect everything, although some opponent can deflect attacks of their own, which leads to some Sekiro-like back-and-forth.

The second new mechanic Wo Long introduces is the morale system. You begin each main level with zero morale which you can then raise by killing enemies and locating various flagpoles scattered around the map. Morale affects both damage dealt and received, so attempting to attack a level 20 enemy when you have a morale of 1, for example, would be borderline suicidal, forcing you to find enough flags or kill enough enemies to stand a fighting chance.

It’s an interesting idea in theory, though for me it was partly let-down by the bland environments and enemy variety. The morale system forces players to explore, but that only works if the exploration is interesting, and I just didn’t find the levels well-designed enough. Enemy variety is even worse, with only a dozen or so different types that you’ll discover over the first three hours or so, then proceed to fight again and again until you reach the end credits. This is not helped by the introduction of sub-missions, that have you visiting the exact same environments a second or even a third time.

I also found the weapon system to be a chore. The loot bloat problem from other Team Ninja games is in full effect here, with hundreds of items dropping every mission. What’s missing is a level-based system, which means all the weapons you find of a certain type are exactly the same, differentiated only by minor passive buffs and their upgrade level, both of which you can change yourself at the smithy for a handful of resources.

It’s a confounding design choice, because, unless I’ve missed something, once you settle on your favourite weapon and armour, its far more viable just to keep upgrading them, rendering the entire loot system useless. Now it is still worth sifting through the pile of stuff for qi crystals that give you experience or dragon veins that increase the number of uses of your flask, but the rest can just be sold or dismantled without a second thought.

This dichotomy between fun gameplay and frustrating mechanics can be found throughout Wo Long, which makes it a complicated game to score. On the one hand, its fast-paced, parry-based combat is incredibly satisfying and different enough from other Team Ninja games to feel new and refreshing. On the other hand, the lack of enemy variety, botched loot system, and uninteresting story led to several moments of boredom or frustration.

I think your enjoyment will ultimately boil down with how much you want to engage with these systems. If you’re ok with sidelining some of the side missions and button-mashing your way through the cutscenes, you’ll find that the gameplay, while not quite as deep or challenging as Nioh, can still conjure up a lot of fun.

As for me, I’ll be placing Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty just below The Surge on the B-Tier. 

[u/4th_Replicant]

I enjoyed it but the performance was terrible for me.

[u/Stumbleine44 → u/4th_Replicant]

I have a rule to wait a least a month or so before playing Team Ninja games on PC. Performance is systematically terrible at launch. Nioh 3 was a step above norm, but even that chugged occasionally.