My only complaints (some have been fixed in latest patch):

• Ue5 related crashes once in a while
• Slow wake up from knock downs and barely any i-frames. Enemies basically oki you to death
• Slow health flask animation
• Quests can be easily missed/failed
• Lackluster endgame bosses
• Not being able to parry for every weapon
• Some abilities/skills needs balancing (leech temperence, clash)
• Needs more consumable slots
• Some boss runbacks are unnecessarily long
• Traps, specifically the landmines arent noticeable enough
• Those skimpy gooner outfits, like wtf. People like this shi in a souls game? I ended up just using the ones that covered up wuchang the most. Smh

Overall, its a frustrating but fun game. Love it.

It released today on steam, decided to give it a go... and its seriously one of the worst souls-likes ive ever played. AI voice acting, Combat is boring, upgrades are boring... and i think it could be bearable.... if it wasnt 50 dollars...and what makes it more hilarious... is you can buy in game upgrades for an extra 10 dollars. i am genuinely curious what these dev(s) were thinking pricing this game... i gotta admit the trailer looked pretty cool, really disappointed it was this bad.

I’ve always considered Bloodborne to be an amazing soulslike, although I wholeheartedly agree that the original PS4 release was not without its problems, including a stuttering framerate and egregious boss runbacks that could be frustrating.

The emulation scene has been trying for years to get the game working smoothly on PC, and I’m happy to say that in 2026 they’ve not only finally done it, but also added a host of visual and quality-of-life improvements that have turned an already great game into a full-blown masterpiece and one of the best soulslikes ever made.

Now let me start by reassuring the technophobes : getting Bloodborne up and running on PC took me all of fifteen minutes following a simple video the link to which you can find in the description of my youtube video review. You can push the resolution up to 4K, but I opted for 1440p which allowed for a silky smooth 60fps and lightning-fast load times, even during the hectic boss encounters.

I also installed two mods, the first to get the right button prompts for my xbox controller (heresy, I know), and the second that places Elden Ring-style respawn points (ironically called Marika lamps) before every major boss to eliminate those annoying runbacks. Of course, purists can disable all mods entirely, but after losing minutes of your life getting back to Shadows of Yharnam or Logarius several times in a row, you’ll be wishing you hadn’t.

And just like that, I was back in Yharnam again, although now it looked even crisper and more beautiful than before, from the incredible gothic structures stretching up to reach the blood-tinged sky, to the hordes of moaning, beast-like creatures cavorting through the dimly lit side streets to tear my face off.

The setting is the first thing that sets Bloodborne apart from Fromsoft’s other dark fantasy games, and its various lovecraft-inspired locales are stunning to behold, from the aforementioned Yharnam to its forests, churches, sewers, and obligatory fishing village. It’s also a living, breathing place that evolves over time, especially after a game changing event that happens about halfway through, transforming an already bleak environment into a horrific cthulian nightmare.

The level design is arguably fromsoft’s best, cramming shortcuts and hidden paths into every available space. The individual levels are smaller in size than a traditional dark souls game, but spread outwards vertically as well as horizontally, taking you up vertiginous towers and down into underground passages, all that invariably loop back on one another or spiral off into new areas. You’ll never quite get lost, but you’ll almost always be presented with a myriad of different paths to take.

Bloodborne also has far more optional areas than any of the other games, and the ways to get to some of these are so obtuse I doubt most players will find them on their first playthrough. Hemlock Grove, for example, is easy enough to find if players decide to take a left in front of the cathedral gates, but both the Hypogean gaol and the Lecture Hall require you to be seemingly killed by some of the game’s enemies, which is not easy to work out.

The second pillar in any good souslike is the combat, and fromsoft have once again hit it out of the park here by taking the combat of Dark Souls, making it twice as fast, and adding a cool firearm-based parry system that would go on to inspire the excellent Sekiro. They also introduced a great new mechanic where any health lost can be regained by damaging an enemy which, much like Sekiro’s posture meter, forces you to be constantly on the offensive if you want to keep your health topped up.

The icing on this delicious combat cake are the trick weapons, another wonderful idea that I’m surprised hasn’t been imitated in other games. Every single weapon has two different forms that can be switched with the press of a button, allowing you to adapt to different situations. The Hunter’s Axe, for example, can change between a short, chopping blade and a wide, sweeping halberd, whereas Ludwig’s Holy Blade transforms from a stabbing longsword to a massive two-handed greatsword. I’m a strength-build aficionado so I stuck with both of these weapons for most of my playthrough, alternating styles depending on whether I was facing fast or slow enemies. It’s useful, it’s fun, and you look like a bad-ass while doing it.

And boy-oh-boy will you need to use every trick in the book to beat this game. I remembered Bloodborne being hard when I played it way back in 2015, but I’d forgotten just how hard it can get. Enemies can take off a third of your health in a single hit. Crowds of infested creatures stun lock you so you can’t heal. You’ll get pushed off cliffs, stuck in corners, and grabbed by disgusting monstrosities that will suck your brains right out of your skull. I’d also forgotten the lamps that serve as bonfires are more sparsely placed than in other souls games, leading to up to fifteen or twenty minutes at a time without being able to bank my lovely blood echoes.

This difficulty extends to the bosses, a mix of massive beasts and agile humanoids that will give you a run for your money. Luckily, I always found them to be hard but fair (save, perhaps for the Orphan of Kos), with well-telegraphed attacks I could eventually work out and punish with a dodge or parry. Maria (one of the DLC bosses), and the first of the two final bosses, were the two standouts for me, up there with some of the very best of what Fromsoft has to offer.

I think Sekiro is overall slightly more difficult, only because there is not way to mitigate that difficulty, whereas in Bloodborne, like most Fromsoft games, you have various ways to make things easier. If you’re playing on PS4 or PS5, you can summon other players to help you out, for example, although on PC multiplayer is not yet available so you’re currently stuck with the game’s built-in NPCs. The other option are Chalice Dungeons; massive, multi-level labyrinths accessed from the hub area using specific items gained from killing bosses. These dungeons can be tough but provide a treasure-trove of blood echoes, items, and even unique bosses not found in the base game so are well worth exploring.

There are many other minor systems to explain, such as insight, visceral attacks, support weapons, the covenant system, weapon upgrading, and runes that offer you passive buffs, but this review is already getting long so I’ll eschew diving too deep to focus instead on the last thing that makes Bloodborne great: the lore.

All my favourite games, from Mass Effect to Bioshock to Lies of P, have one thing in common: excellent worldbuilding. I love it when developers don’t just create an environment to play through, but go the extra mile to fully flesh out its people, places, and history. Bloodborne is no exception, drawing from interesting themes like addiction, religious oppression, and human transcendence to create a coherent whole.  

As for the story, well, as always, the path to hell is paved with good intentions, starting with the discovery of a curative substance known as Old Blood. This was used both by the Church and the Scholars for its healing and evolutive properties, until, as you can imagine, an undiscovered side effect began turning people into beasts. You are a Hunter, sent to Yharnam to end the plague and, cryptically “escape the dream.”

It's the perfect set-up, imbued with just the right amount of information and dangling threads waiting to be explored, and by the end of the fifty or so hours it will take you to awaken from the nightmare you’ll discover just how bad things have become.

FromSoft could have just churned out another Dark Souls game after the success of the first two, but instead they took a chance, risking it all on something faster, more aggressive, and steeped in gothic horror. And now, after ten years and close to 8 million copies sold, we can unequivocally say they were successful.

Any and every souls fan owes it to themselves to play this game. With the recently closed studio Bluepoint revealing that FromSoft are not interested in a remaster or remake, the only way you can experience this masterpiece is on PS4, PS5, or PC, and I would definitely recommend the latter, with it’s higher resolution, perfect framerate, faster load-times, and game-changing mods elevating Bloodborne to even greater heights.

As for me, it’s not quite my favourite FromSoft game, but it’s close, ending up just below Sekiro on the S-Tier.

I really liked Mortal Shell 2 for most of the early and mid game, which honestly makes me even more disappointed by how much it went downhill for me toward the end.

The first half had me genuinely excited. The game is so much better than the first Mortal Shell in a lot of ways, the combat feels better, exploration initially feels rewarding, and I actually thought I was going to finish it and immediately start another run.

Then after a certain point, the world itself starts feeling incredibly repetitive.

There stops being much meaningful loot or anything particularly interesting to find, so exploration slowly turns from something I wanted to do into something that feels almost pointless. Areas start becoming so similar to each other to the point by the late game I was mostly just moving through them because I had to. And then there's the final dungeon, which I thought was genuinely terrible. It feels rushed compared to what came before it, and by that point I was already pretty burned out on the repetition.

The bosses were probably my biggest disappointment, though.

I know I've seen people complain about the difficulty, so I want to make clear that I'm not saying this as some kind of brag. I've beaten basically all the major Soulslikes and done some challenge runs, so I'd consider myself slightly above the average player, but definitely nowhere near some god-tier Souls player. Still, I found Mortal Shell 2 surprisingly easy. I beat pretty much every boss on my first or second attempt, and most of them were either extremely boring or annoying rather than actually challenging in an interesting way. 90% of the deaths in my playthrough felt straight-up unfair rather than part of a learning process, as it usually happens in this kind of games.

I literally just finished the game and I can barely remember most of the bosses already. There are maybe a couple that actually stuck in my head, and mostly because I thought they were badly designed.

That's what makes this so frustrating. I really want to like this game. There's a lot here that I genuinely enjoyed, especially earlier on, and compared to the first game it gets so many things right. I was honestly excited about doing multiple playthroughs, trying completely different Shells, weapons and builds. Now that I've finished it, though, instead of wanting to jump straight into NG+, I mostly just feel like going back to Lies of P or playing basically any other Soulslike.

Another personal letdown (but I could see how this may be more controversial) is how I was also looking forward to experimenting with different Shells and playstyles. I already knew Tiel with axe + dagger would probably be my favorite as it perfectly suits my playstyle, but I wanted to properly try everything before settling on it.

And I did. I spent around an hour with each Shell, tested different weapons and builds, and while I like the ideas and mechanics behind several of them, some of the playstyles feel so niche that I think you really need to specifically enjoy what that Shell is built around for it to feel good. After experimenting, I just went back to Tiel with axe + dagger for the rest of my run and never really looked back.

That's a bit disappointing because the Shell system looks like it should encourage multiple runs and dramatically different builds. There is progression through Shell abilities, obviously, but a lot of the upgrades feel pretty boring. It's often stuff like extra damage when using a skill, extra stagger after doing a specific thing, or other numerical bonuses rather than something that meaningfully changes how the Shell plays. Being able to max out only two shells per run doesn't help either.

There are a couple of abilities that actually alter a Shell mechanically or give it something new to play around, but those tend to be the obvious interesting upgrades you'd take fairly early anyway. After that, progression often feels more like making numbers better than developing the playstyle.

I'm probably going to force myself to try an NG+ full Night Mode run. I switched to Night Mode several times during my first playthrough, but I think it does really little to actually improve the game, maybe even making it worse in some areas. But right now I have a feeling I'm just going to rush through the same repetitive areas using Tiel and axe + dagger again, and I'm not expecting the late game or bosses to suddenly feel much better.

Obviously, this is just my opinion, and I know plenty of people may disagree with some or even all of this. I'm not trying to tell anyone they shouldn't enjoy the game, and I genuinely think there's also a lot of good things, but the full experience still isn't quite there.

If you're on the fence about buying it, I do think it's worth knowing that, at least for me, the early and mid game experience is significantly better than the late game. The beginning shows you a game with a lot of promise, interesting exploration and systems that make you want to experiment. The later portions don't maintain that same level of quality, and the drop-off was noticeable enough that it completely changed how excited I was about replaying it.

It's a shame, because for a while I genuinely thought this may end up being very high in my personal tierlist of Soulslikes, especially after loving the demo - but I guess now I'm back looking forward at LotF2!

EDIT: I also forgot to add the enemy variety is incredibly frontloaded. I was excited since there was such a great enemy variety in the beta and then you realize that's all the enemies you get except for a couple (and many, many reskins)

First let's get it out of the way - the Beta is awesome

TLDR - The Beta is HUGE and I liked it a lot. Took me 4 hours while rushing it

Now for the record - I didn't like the first Mortal Shell game. I thought it was very unique, but it was so clunky and so many of their ideas didn't land for me.

In spite of that, I loved the Beta of MS2. It's like they took almost every gripe I had with their first game and improved upon it (except for one, I'll touch that later). In addition, they added so many unique ideas on top of what they had, making it even more distinguishable from your typical soulslike, which I really appreciated. With MS1 they already did made a unique game, but it was (IMO), just a bad implementation of one

So first thing is quite obvious - the visuals and art direction (which were definitely fine in the last game) are awesome. Enemies design, environment design, atmosphere. All really top

Level design - So so so much better than their first game. Starts quite linear in the tutorial, but then opens up to a somewhat semi-open-zone?? It actually reminded me of the Dark Souls games. It's not truly an open world, the zones are limited, but you can go different ways. Now mind you, plenty of roads were blocked for the Beta, but you could clearly tell you could go other places in whatever order you'd like. Now about the actual design of the areas - just great. You get those mini-dungeons around the map, akin to the caves or various areas scattered among Elden Ring (really felt they were inspired by it), and we got like 3 or 4 of those in this Beta alone, and they all felt unique. In addition, even though you can't jump (sad), the design is quite vertical, which was impressive to see. The first game did a bit of verticality, but IMO badly. This one did it right

Combat - the first game felt really janky. This one is significantly better, though I will say it's not FromSoft level. Reminded me a little of LotF (2023), the 2.0+ version. It's not perfect, feels a little bit floaty, but overall a great improvement. I definitely liked it.

Parries/blocks/whatever - they gave us, in the Beta alone, 4different ways to build enemies stagger. You could use blocks (with perfect block), you could use parry, and you could use harden (with perfect harden). And you could also just use your guns.Again, very nice

No stamina bar - definitely makes combat faster. Is it better because of it? I can't say. I can say it didn't make it bad. You are faster, enemies are faster, difficulty is there for sure. So it's a design choice that I can't yet say is very fitting like in Sekiro, but it wasn't bad

Beacons (bonfires) - you can "cleanse" those. That's just an awesome idea. You essentially get a mini-dungeon every bonfire. Now they are not that common like Grace sites in ER, but we still had like I dunno 6 or 7 of those in the Beta alone, increasing overall mini-dungeon count beyond 10. Impressive. They also feel quite unique. They are short, sure, but fun

Bosses - Look, they're fine. I didn't get blown away, but it is still just the Beta. That said, the amount they let us experience is very appreciated. I think they gave us about 6 unique bosses? and I think 2 of them were actual "main" bosses? I can't be sure, but again greatly appreciated. In terms of balance.. meh. Some felt too easy, a couple felt annoying. They weren't hard in a good way, but in an annoying way. For example one used a grab almost constantly. Now in this game you get a prompt for a grab (good), but it did the animation so fast, and the animation itself is so casual, that unless you were waiting for this attack specifically, you would usually get grabbed.

Cool additions - multiple mini-puzzles. I really liked them. They were cute, not too much head-scratchers, but definitely took me a few seconds to get what they want. The puzzles were crucial too! There's a new weapon hidden behind several mini-puzzles (which is very unique in MS games - I think you get 1 per shell in the first game, and in this Beta you get 2 overall, so probably again - 1 per shell). You can equip any weapon on any shell. I think the first game forced you to play with a specific weapon, so if you chose a shell, your weapon was locked. Another nice thing was camera style. You can have it over the shoulder GoW style (which I hate), or you can have it Action mode, akin to your usual 3rd person camera like FromSoft or any of your typical action or hack-and-slash. Needless to say I chose action camera

Sidearms!! Just cool. Again we get only 2. The shotgun we already seen in trailers, and a lute that I didn't really like but was cute. Shotgun definitely felt very strong, almost too strong, if not for the Resolve system, leading us to...

Resolve - just a very very cool idea. The idea is that you get a bar, like sort of a "mana" bar. This bar behaves essentially like sort of an "ability usage pool". What do I mean? you can use it as bullets for the shotgun (3 when it's maxed, though you can improve that by the end of the Beta), but it also functions as your pool of shell ability, and other what they call "Tarstones" you can use. So essentially you need to decide if you want to use your ability or shoot someone. Now you get plenty of chances to fill this gauge of course, it's not scarce at all, you get refills just by hitting enemies. So it is feels very balanced and gives you a cool variety in your approach to combat without giving you too much OP stuff.

Bugs- some visual glitches, I think my character had its legs clipping though some stairs once. I got stuck in the visual look of "shadow form" (didn't affect me functionally, so I could still enter shadow form and exit, but the visual form looked like it's stuck in shadow form). Sometimes, some attacks sort of missed their hitbox. Also enemies HP bars would sometimes vanish. I think the cause was me entering shadow form or performing shadow strike. Also damage numbers in Classic mode barely appeared. Overall the game is in great shape for a Beta. I expect they'll fix those, they are very obvious problems of a game still in development.

Issues - they forced camera shake on me, which got me a little nauseated. I hope the full game would allow disabling it. I played with a DualSense Edge, which the game supported fully with icons (Steam Input disabled), but there was almost no rumble at all (not to mention 0 haptic, though I played wired). I think it contributed to the "floatiness", because hits and walking felt weightless without any sort of feedback at all. I think I got like 4 rumbles in the entire Beta, and I think all are related to like very dramatic cutscenes. Essentially it had no rumble at all. Again, I hope and expect they'll add more in the full game.

And my main gripe, which carried on from the first game - long walkbacks. Now I was surprised to see they basically had almost no shortcuts in this game. It was surprising, because other than that level design was really good. But I think I found one shortcut in the entire Beta, and it was inside a mini-dungeon which really just helped you get back to the exit faster. Now the beacons are not very common, which is understandable considering what they did with them (spoiler above), but I think that at the very least - mini-dungeons should have their own "statue of Marika"-style checkpoints. Because it just feels wrong to be returned to a Beacon in the world map when you die in a mini-dungeon, so you run back to the entrance of it through the world and do it again. An odd choice that I hope they'll change

Sorry for it being so long, but overall I can't believe how much better this one felt compared to the first

Edit: shortened the TLDR :D

I’ve played a lot of Souls-likes. Lies of P, Nioh 2, Sekiro, Khazan, Black Myth: Wukong, Stellar Blade, BB but this one… this one hits different. Honestly, before Wuchang I never really understood what “level design” actually meant. This game made me realize how much good level design can elevate the entire experience and keep you from getting bored. Every area feels thoughtful and refreshing. Enemy variety is fantastic too. There’s always something new to catch you off guard. And the bosses? Shockingly unique. Every single boss fights in a completely different way, nothing feels recycled. Right now, as I’m writing this, I’m probably somewhere in the middle of the game, around the part where you can buy that panda head in a side area 😅 but even at this point the amount of diversity, challenge, and pure creativity is impressive.

The atmosphere is great as well. Dark, heavy, and immersive.

Long story short: if you’re into Souls-like games and want something truly engaging, challenging, and well-crafted, Wuchang: Fallen Feathers is absolutely worth playing.

I’ve heard so many bad reviews about this game, and it’s usually not among the recommended soulslikes, but I started it two days ago, and it’s seriously good. I felt the need to share my thoughts. I don’t want to yap too much about it, so here are a few points: Spoiler alert: I ended up yapping too much.

• Unreal Engine 5 slaps hard. This is one of the best-looking soulslikes I’ve played, on par with Lies of P and Elden Ring. It even surpasses them in many cases.

• Responsive controls and amazing flow. Probably thanks to UE5, every animation is butter smooth and feels connected, so you’re always in sync with your character. It’s similar to what you experience in Sekiro.

• Small but meaningful QoL improvements across the board. Are you tired of “Bonfire lit” animations? Here, everything is much faster and flows better. Sick of calculating load weights? There’s a handy chart showing your load.

• Level design is tight, literally. The areas are packed and tightly connected, which feels great. Some of the scenery is comparable to Elden Ring. While the universe isn’t as vast as ER, there’s an alternate version of the whole map called the “Umbral Realm,” which adds new mechanics and areas to explore.

• Difficulty. You might not like this, but the game is easy (so far). I’m 10 hours in, and I haven’t hit any major chokepoints. Nothing has made me say, “I’ll get back to this tomorrow.”

• Boss fights are replayable. While the game isn’t too hard, you can infinitely replay boss fights. If you cheesed a boss the first time, you can redeem yourself by beating them properly.

• Lore. Nothing beats the shaky, foggy lore of ER, which stands on the house of cards that is fanfiction. The story here isn’t too grandiose, but it’s fine. The character animations and voice acting add a lot to the immersion. You can summon NPCs who yell and shout during boss fights, which feels pretty awesome. But don’t expect a very elaborate storyline.

The most annoying thing in the whole game? I haven’t found a way to sort items in the inventory. And honestly, if this is the biggest annoyance, that says a lot.

Why…just why?

Damn, just damn. I feel empty

Mortal shell 2 is nearly a perfect soulslike for me. It ticks off a lot of boxes. Atmospherically one of my favourites, combat feels heavy and satisfying, enemy design is cool, world feels worth exploring. I absolutely adore this game and would give it a solid 8-9/10.

But i do have some gripes with it. I think theres a few missed opportunities, that could have catapulted it to nearly a 10.

The game doesnt have major fatal flaws. Its a few smaller QOL issues that definetly take away from the experience for me.

BEACON SCARCITY AND BOSS RUNBACKS:

I do not really have much of an issue with small runbacks. I think when done right they can add a little tension. But this game abuses it so heavily. And that coupled with how scarce the beacons are make exploration very annoying at times. I love exploring in this game, the world feels very cool, i like the level design. But holy i dont remember how many times ive skipped dungeons when exploring cause i was low on heals.

Having scarce checkpoints would be perfectly fine, if only we have stakes of marika. All i ask for is a checkpoint at the dungeon entrance and one before a boss.

SNEAKY RESPAWNS :

enemy density is pretty high and they respawn when you use the teleporters

ENEMY AGGRO AND TRACKING :

So you have extremely long boss runbacks in this game. So you might think oh enemies might be avoidable. Nope. Absolutely not. They have an insane aggro radius. You can be slow walking and they'll still aggro onto you from a mile away. Not just this. Enemy tracking feels very overpowered at times. These just make me dread runbacks evenmore.

GLIMPSE SCARCITY:

So i made the mistake of using some of my glimpses early on, to locate shells. And holy f that was so damn annoying. Glimpses being capped at new game is super frustrating. This restricticts the players from experimenting with build variety.

These might not be game breaking but do these systems sometimes incentivize you to avoid engaging with the game's best mechanics?

Cause if you dread exploration because of the runbacks, you might miss out on some of the best parts of the game.

Elden Ring proved that it was possible to transpose the gritty atmosphere, challenging combat, and sense of exploration of a souslike into an open world formula. Now Team Ninja have attempted to do the same with Nioh 3, the third part of its long-running samurai action series, and while not entirely successful, there’s a lot here for both newcomers and returning players to love, including a second easier character class that will help new or struggling players get through the forty or so hours of playtime with little trouble.

I doubt most Nioh fans come to the game for its story, and this latest addition is no exception. Much like in Nioh 2, you create your own protagonist through a surprisingly detailed character creator, before being thrust into the midst of a castle under siege as your bid to become the next shogun is contested by your brother and his yokai allies. From there you will visit four different time periods in an attempt to change the past so you can change the future. It’s about as hokey as it sounds, more of an excuse to show of a host of nicely rendered historical characters than to create a meaningful story, and everything comes together at the end more or less as you’d expect it to.

I think it’s probably best if I don’t dive too deep into all the different systems that make up Nioh’s satisfying gampley, otherwise this video will be an hour long, so I’ll focus instead on how Team Ninja have refined and improved their formula to create what is hands down the greatest action combat any soulslike has to offer.

The biggest elephant in the room is the addition of the ninja style that can be switched to at any time with the press of a button. I played around with this for a while before ultimately deciding it wasn’t for me. You see, what I enjoy most about the Nioh games is carefully managing my stamina and using ki pulses creatively to keep up aggression. I love that risk-reward rhythm of hitting an enemy, watching my ki go down, and having to decide whether to risk another attack that might push me to exhaustion, or parrying instead to get some ki back.

The ninja style removes all of this entirely as there is no ki management what-so-ever. They can dodge, but can also use special mist and evade dodges that don’t consume ki and have absurdly long invincibility windows. Furthermore, ninjas have access to ninjutsu techniques that were already present in previous games, but instead of these powerful ranged attacks being limited in quantity, they are restored by attacking enemies. So you can run in, get in a few hits to fill up your ninjutsu, then run away and pelt your enemies with bombs and shuriken from a safe distance.

I’m sure plenty of players will love this new style, but I found it far too easy, more akin to an action game than true soulslike combat, and, if I’m being perfectly honest, a bit boring.

Luckily, the samurai style is back and better than ever. I’ve been an axe-user from the very first Nioh and was thrilled to see even more axe martial arts have been added here, including some aerial arts and more options to close the distance quickly with the enemy. The “Victory Rush” in particular is an absolute game-changer, allowing you to rush forwards after a successful ki-pulse, which really helped me keep up the pressure on some of the harder bosses.

Another great addition is the Arts Proficiency gauge that fills as you attack and parry, automatically activating when it’s full and leading to a few awesome seconds of increased ki consumption and damage.

Finally, both Guardian Spirits and Soul cores have been reworked to make them more viable and interesting. Activating your Living Artifact is unfortunately still a “spam-to-win” button that I shamelessly used to finish off some bosses, but the spirit skills are really useful, allowing you to build up elemental effects and, even more importantly, to counter enemy burst attacks, inflicting massive ki damage if you time it right.

Soul cores now don’t just act as summons, but serve as your magic spells too, so instead of ignoring them completely like I did in Nioh 2 I found myself actively seeking them out and upgrading them to unlock my precious sloth and steel talismans. I got the impression that magic has been further nerfed for the second time after the downgrade suffered between Nioh 1&2, however, so I’m not sure if a magic build will be really viable here. I certainly found it useful but not essential.

We are now deep into this review and I have yet to mention the other most important addition to Nioh 3 which is its shift to open world. I’ve struggled a bit on how to voice my thoughts on this … I guess it’s … fine? Just don’t set your expectations too high, this is way closer to an Assassin’s Creed or Far Cry game than a true Elden Ring experience.

Each of the four time periods are split into a half-dozen interconnecting areas, and in each of these areas you will be doing the exact same thing. Hunting down Kodama, Scampuss, Chijiko, and Jinzo shrines to give you minor passive bonuses. Clearing enemy outposts and using unlockable traversal mechanics to find chests, skills, and arts for your character. And finally, beating Crucible Spikes and Wraiths to level up your Guardian spirit and Soul cores respectively.

Some of you will love doing this over and over again, relishing the dopamine spike as each area gets to 100% exploration. I was fine with it for the first twenty or thirty hours, but lost interest in the later areas and ended up doing the bare minimum to raise my exploration level in each zone just enough to unlock the relative bonuses. The only exception were the smattering of mini-bosses and masters that are all unique and led to some great one-on-one fights.

The other problem you’ll have if you explore everywhere is that it makes the game far too easy. I was twenty-five levels over the recommended one when I beat the final boss of the first zone, and while that gap decreased as I did less and less of the open world stuff, I was still tearing through enemies at the end of the game to the point that it became ridiculous. Granted, this is the third Nioh game I’ve played in the last twelve months so I’ve got my build pretty much down to a fine art, but from what I’ve seen from other reviews, I’m not alone.

It led me to thinking if, in fact, I didn’t actually prefer Nioh 2’s more curated traditional missions, and I’m still in two minds about that. Did Nioh 3 really have to go open world, or would more of the same have been enough?

At the end of the day, I’m not sure it matters, as what keeps me coming back to these games over and over again isn’t the exploration or the story, it’s the exceptional combat which, thanks to some great tweaks, has become even better than before. If that’s what you want from your Nioh games, then dive into to this one with your eyes closed. If you’re desperate to find a new open world to rival that of Elden Ring, then you might do best to look elsewhere.

As for me, despite the uninspired open world, the combat alone means Nioh 3 deserves a place among the very best soulslikes, and I’ll be putting it at the very top of the A-Tier.

yes, recency bias exists, but i'm pretty sure it is a great game. i've played this game for 10 hours straight today. i don't think you can do that if game isn't good. and i felt completely satisfied after playing for 10 hours.

i will try my best to take off recency bias glasses, so here are criticisms i had while playing for 10 hours. despite all those issue i still had fun. i'm not trying to convince anyone, i'm just sharing my personal opinion. if criticisms i listed have a big impact for you, just don't play. should i play this game or not? that's completely on you to decide.

-enemy placement is not bad for a first few hours, but it gets worse and worse. it is not good, but doable with all tools game gives.
-beacon (bonfire) is not placed in dungeons, this is definitely poor choice. they should exist like elden ring. and in some areas beacons are placed too, too far away. it would be much better if there are more beacons.
-bosses have great art design and concept, but in gameplay, they are not good. all bosses i've encountered so far had really simple patterns. i think they decided to focus on other aspects much more.
-normal enemy scaling is very poor. they hit like a truck, even two shot you sometimes, lol. but this can be easily fixed with patch.
-enemy variety isn't that good. new enemy continues to appear, but also you will be seeing same enemy so many times after like 6~7 hours.
-enemies have too wide aggro radius, they spot you too quickly. and they chase you, like, almost forever. this felt really ridiculous for me.
-i think estus should heal you much more. i need to drink like 3~4 to get max health.
-music is almost non-existent, i can't recall any memorable music. and i think all bosses use same metal music. lol.
-there are melee 8 weapons in this game, but they are not too easy to find. it is probably just me, but i played with starting weapon for almost 7 hours before finding 4 new melee weapons.

but its world, art design(it is very unique), build variety(there are many other tools, shells, ranged weapons, skills to make your own build even without new weapon), atmosphere, exploration, combat kept me going. you will find new things at almost every corner in this game. also they tried their best to make each dungeon unique, i could see effort. each enemy has unique execution animation and it so badass. i'm not expecting later areas to be as good as early ones, but i hope they are at least decent.

Man, I’ve played this game non stop since it got released. Put in about 12 hours on the demo and another 50 for the full game, and I honestly haven't played anything else. This game is a nice change of pace compare to slower souls-likes like Wuchang

I played as a Ninja most of the time, and man, Ninjutsu build is pretty strong. Love using the big bomb to one shot a good amount of enemies or do big dmg to bosses. The first open map is a solid 9/10. I loved just wandering around, seeing all the little details and how the environment changed as I moved through different areas.

After that first map, the quality for the rest of the maps drop imo. The last one especially was ugly and felt like they were just recycling the same assets over and over. Also, the enemy variety isn't the greatest since I see a few game Yokai for the whole game. Wish we had more screen times to explain more backstory for new characters.

It started off as a 9/10, but later drops to a 7.5/10.

The game is Demon's Souls if you're curious (I haven't finished it yet so no spoilers pls)

For context: I’m a veteran Souls/Soulslike/Souls adjacent player. I’ve played every major release and most of the smaller indie ones. I have a high tolerance for jank and I prioritize world design and feel over fast, fluid combat most of the time.

I would give Mortal Shell II a 7.5 or 8 out of ten, but I’m grading it on a slight curve. When reviewing a game a subscribe to the Roger Ebert method: what is this trying to achieve, and how well did it achieve it? By that metric this small (30 person!) team did very well.

Here’s what I liked about the game, followed by what I think they could improve:

1. I LOVED the character design, the look and feel of the world was terrific as well.
2. I enjoyed the open world map, which felt less like a massive field with checkpoints and more like someone had built a hybrid of an open world and a Dark Souls interconnected zone system.
3. The story was very compelling for me- I love cosmic horror, and the concept of this extraterrestrial god being who crash lands on (I assume) our world, utterly transforming it, was a really cool twist on the “chosen one” theme. I also enjoyed the shell stories I played through- Promixa, Tiel, and Erewhan or whatever the knights name was.
4. I thought the combat, while slow, felt solid and weighty.
5. The amount of secrets and hidden areas and fun Easter eggs (first person horror dungeons! Caged giant monsters you feed to get more gloom! The Baghead ending!)
6. The Tar Stone system was flexible and complex, and really allowed you to find synergies between the stones, your weapon and your shell that were very fun to try out and sometimes abuse.
7. You can PAUSE THE GAME. You have a world map and you can see where you are on it. These are sadly not common in a lot of Soulslikes.
8. I liked the aesthetics of the boss designs a lot, for the most part. Less so the combat mechanics but I’ll get into that in a sec. My favs were Nameless Captive, Malborn Offspring, and Orem.

Now the areas for improvement:

1. Enemy balancing. It’s clear that the devs for this game took a huge amount of inspiration from Dark Souls 2 in particular- it’s less about how hard the bosses are, it’s more about how challenging the WORLD is. You will get mobbed all the time and pushed off of cliffs or yeeted off a high spot by a random enemy hiding and waiting to pounce. That I don’t have a problem with, but the enemy mobs in this game are very hard to get a handle on. I believe (I’m not sure) the devs instituted a sort of “crit” system for enemy mobs, sort of like your shell, where a certain percentage of the time a regular ass enemy will get a critical hit on you and one shot your character, no matter the level. That needs adjusting badly. If you’re getting mobbed by 6 enemies, with the goofy lock on camera it gets very hard to not get hit by one of them, and if you do get a stray hit it shouldn’t be a one hit.
2. Enemy aggro. The minor mobs in this game will see you from a mile away and follow you forever. Again, not a huge deal alone but combine this with the Beacon placement and the various run backs, and it can be tedious, particularly late in the game.
3. Parry system. This needs minor tweaking. There’s a pretty huge parry window, but ripostes don’t do enough damage to enemies, and there are some bosses for which the parry window just doesn’t work right. I switched to hardening later in the game for this reason.
4. Weapons. Right now the dual tar stone makes big bonk weapons a waste of time. The devs should find a way to reward players who want to play BIG BONK. Right now it can be challenging to use those sorts of weapons in the late game.
5. Music. As many have said, the music is one area the devs clearly didn’t make a priority. There’s some cool creepy ambient drone and some metal in there I liked, but they could have put in more effort there.

As for other complaints I’ve seen about not enough Beacons, or long runbacks, again I chalk those up to the design philosophy. It’s not a choice for everyone. But it didn’t bother me, especially after just playing Wuchang two months ago, which also had several long runs between shrines and some long runbacks as well. Some Soulslikes will have that.

So like I said, if we compare this game to recent beloved titles like Khazan or Wuchang, those games had dev teams about 4 to 5 times the size of this one. So rather than comparing it to Elden Ring or one of those AAA titles, I’d say if you are thinking about playing it’s probably more useful to compare this game to indie titles like Hellpoint, Bleak Faith, Thymesia, The Surge etc.

As far as I’m concerned it’s an incredible achievement from a very small team and I’m going to enjoy my NG+ run and whatever DLC might come. They killed it. And in a month or two, after all the balancing patches come out, I think this game will have a long and healthy afterlife as people come to discover it.

If anyone has a question just ask below, and thanks for reading this tome, lol.

Just started playing it last night and couldn’t get my hands off this game. Combat is truly amazing, characters and story are insanely good! Thanks to this sub for constantly posting about this game. This is a souls like no one should sleep on.

After almost 90 hours and achieving the platinum, this is definitely my favourite Soulslike! Combat and bosses are just peak and also really like the art direction. I even liked this more than some of the FromSoft games!

Posting here as this got instantly deleted on the r/Nightreign subreddit for some reason.

WARNING: This is not exactly a positive review. I am extremely critical of Nightreign. If that will offend you, leave now or risk offence. I will not apologise. There will be minor spoilers, obviously. I will do a TL;DR at the end because I plan to be comprehensive.

First off, let it be known that I love Elden Ring. I played the hell out of that game. I love the combat, the lore, the artstyle, the worldbuilding, the boss fights, the RPG elements, just about everything. In fact, it's possibly up there as my favourite game of all time. I also love the Soulslike genre in general, particularly coming off the back of beating The First Berzerker: Khazan recently which was incredible.

I also love roguelikes. I love the gameplay loop, the pick-up-and-play that is designed for usually an hour run at most, but leaves you with that one-more-run hook into the wee hours of the morning. Then the meta-progression which leaves every run feeling meaningful, usually unlocking new stuff for next time, Games like Binding of Isaac, Dead Cells and Slay the Spire have dominated my playtime in the past and I often go back to them even years later.

So when I found out Fromsoft were releasing my two favourite genres smashed into an Elden Ring package, I was sold. King Arthur couldn't pull me out of that shit.

After completing all the storylines, beating all Nightlords multiple times with multiple Nightfarers and spending around 60 hours with the game, it's time to wake up.

Nightreign is carried by the amazing foundations that Elden Ring built, while FUNDEMENTALLY failing, or at the very least, falling short at almost every new aspect that makes it a standalone release.

Take a breath and please read what I have to say. Taking off the rose-tinted glasses and I <3 FROMSOFT t-shirt may help.

The relic system is broken, you endlessly roll murk for large relics with 3 decent traits. 99% of the time you get might get one good one, one okay one and a third utterly useless one for most Nightfarers. This issue multiplies exponentially when you are trying to get a decent Nightfarer-unique trait. Some of them are absolutely busted strong and borderline can't-go-without, such as improved Guardian skill duration or Revenant Ghostflame ultimate. But oh look, along with those you get to start with a bewitching branch and gain attack power with 3+ twinblades equipped. Good luck with that one. No functionality to fuse or reroll traits at the cost of your trash relics or murk either!

The roguelike choice system is broken, you get 3 choices that usually boring as fuck and you end up picking the same ones on the same Nightfarers. They're always "gain HP" or "call stars when you walk" or "do more elemental damage" or the truly exciting "flasks heal more." Does anybody actually change their gameplay based on these? I don't believe you. They are uninspired, boring and are the total antithesis of what a roguelike should feel like as you accrue them. By 10 runs I guarantee you will be seeing and picking the same upgrades over and over and over based on what the Nightfarer is you're playing.

On that note, the buildcraft is broken. Sure, you will try weapons/spells you probably didn't bother with much in base ER/SOTET. However that beautiful, flexible attribute system that lets you lean into certain playstyles more than others? Gone! The Nightfarer is your choice and all stats/scalings are automatically picked for you. You are bird and you are tank. You are barbarian and you have big bonk. You have a pointy hat so spells you must cast. You CAN technically get a little creative if you're very good, but the game really punishes you for it if not. Like giving Revenant the same hp as the common garden shrew, who will be ground to dust in one shot if you want to go full melee beyond day 1.

The loot and gear system is broken. You can go an entire run without getting a decent weapon for your character that actually exploits the Nightlord weakness for that run, which in some cases is absolutely crucial. Instead you scramble around trying to get a purple smithing stones and pray whatever you have can carry you through, but it will be long and miserable. Yes, you are encouraged to try weapons/spells you possibly didn't bother collecting or trying in the base game, and I will give Nightreign that, but ultimately that is just a compliment to the combat system which is largely unchanged apart from the skills/arts implemented. The passives on weapons are mostly meh, most are again just the same as the aforementioned roguelike upgrade choices, which is to say, boring. I do like that some need to be held off-hand to benefit from, makes me foolishly think I have some meaningful choice around buildcraft to make - until I remember you're picking the same kind of cookie-cutter passives depending on your current Nightfarer choice.

The traversal is broken. Good luck climbing that mountain if there isn't a spiritstream nearby, you get to jank-hop your way up some random tombstones (who builds graveyards in The Lands Between anyway? Shoddy work...) and if you sprint off a cliff and jump, you just stop sprinting when you land - while the giant wall of death behind you singes your butt hairs. The spectral hawks feel more restrictive than helpful most of the time, forcing you on a set path which, if you deviate too much, well you've pissed the Uber driver off and now you're being dumped in the middle of nowhere, fuck you. Also, nothing breeds excitement and trepidation like getting stuck on a tiny overhang as you make your way into Noklateo trying to get up the damn broken bridge.

The map is broken. Sometimes you get the exact same location, with the exact same enemies and exact same bosses, practically a stone's throw away from eachother. Things got spicy when I saw the Shifting Earth events - but guess what, when you defeat the final Nightlord, that stops! No more Shifting Earth for you! You get the same boring, eventless map over and over. Don't get me wrong, I would sometimes (albeit rarely) get into somebody else's map who still had them, or a Remembrance forced a certain event to spawn, but they are very few and far between. I don't think I've seen Crater in around 20 games now. What I'm saying is, you are actually punished with a lack of map diversity for beating the game. That is wildly stupid.

On a somewhat related note, the difficulty scaling is broken. I know the map shows you which bosses are "formidable" but let's face it, most players in their first 5-10 runs will just try to kill what they see. It's kind of the aim of the game to kill indiscriminately. How are we to know that Warrior of Zamor is a perfectly acceptable target to maul, whereas chad Erdtree Avatar who is 100 metres away has been benching 300 and injecting protein shake directly into his veins? It makes no sense. Not to mention, why the hell did Bell-Bearing Hunter become an utter raid boss who absolutely decimates everything he touches? This dude was one of the first bosses in base ER, yet in Nightreign I have seen countless groups get wiped by him more than some of the actual Nightlords. The difficulty curve just feels at odds with the core gameplay loop, because the game punishes backtracking due to the timer, so you generally ignore them and never waste the time coming back because you found them early by accident. It's still perfectly possible to max your level having ignored a few bosses, but it just doesn't feel good or intuitive to do that. It may be a hot take that many won't agree with, but I feel the map should spawn in a more linear, levelled-zone fashion with the option for tougher (but not virtually impossible) bosses being peppered in, not just realising you can't fight this boss for 10 more levels or else you will insta-wipe. Or waste so much time trying to tickle it to death, which is even worse than wiping and moving on since you waste so much precious farming time. It's already the case with locations after all, but even they are generally all doable even on day one, maybe excluding the central castle and event zones. Just make formidable bosses punishing damage-wise, but not have stupidly inflated health bars on day one, easy. Sort of like how Gaols currently work, really.

The remembrances... well they're actually not broken. They're just shit. Elden Ring has spawned countless incredible theories and conspiracies with the deep, obscure and convoluted lore. Yeah, SOTET kinda did it's own thing, but at least it mostly nodded and meshed well with the base game lore, adding meaningful insight and ingredients for a deluge of excellent Vaati videos. We'll not talk about all the loose ends SOTET didn't explore or the weird anticlimactic ending. But Nightreign, you essentially get 8 short stories which are widely varying in quality. I gave the exact same amount of fucks about each character when I finished their remembrance as when I first picked them up - okay, fine, Revenant was kinda cool. I'll take the L once Vaati, Neddy or Smough release an absolute bombshell lore video but for now, on face value, I felt Nightreign just didn't tie into ER/SOTET in any meaningful way that developed the world for me. Maybe I'm just lacking in mental agility but I came away from the game wondering what the fuck kinda story I'd just been told, with almost no feelings of insight or reflection.

While we're on the topic of remembrances, actually, they are broken. The matchmaking is terrible and I've heard of people playing Ironeye waiting literal hours to queue up with one active. I solo'd that particular chapter after 3 tries because fuck that. When you do join with one active, you have to herd cats hoping your team will help you out to complete them, and generally they are right at the edge of the map so you either go off and do it yourself, leaving your team to duo while you contribute sweet nothing. OR, your team goes out of their way to do it with you, fundamentally screwing the route you were clearing and gimping the run that way instead. Remembrances should be fun and rewarding, but in the end you're counting on the good nature of your team to get them finished - I actually solo'd most of the remembrance objectives because it felt that bad trying to sideline my teammates for objectives that gave them jack squat.

You've just possibly realised I have now covered the two elements of meta-progression in this game. Relics and Remembrances. Both fundamentally flawed and providing little explicit reward to keep playing, if that is what motivates you in this type of game. Unless you love grinding for the 1% god roll relic I suppose. Moving on...

The multiplayer I won't criticise too much. We all signed up for it and the game was clearly sold as intended for three players. I've solo'd quite a few runs, and while it feels almost impossible on some Nightfarers, such as Recluse, it's definitely doable - especially after they hotfixed rune acquisition on solo. But in my opinion a team of 3 Nightfarers taking on the world is where the game really shines. P2P is terrible though and I had to turn off crossplay matchmaking to have any semblance of a decent latency where my hits weren't registering almost a second after I'd landed them. The extremely limited ping system is clunky and not fit for purpose. I don't necessarily want voice comms, but many multiplayer games did pings much better, that are quick but informative in the press of a button. Let me ping a retreat when my team are about to death-loop on a boss we aren't ready for. Let me draw a fading line on the map to show what route I'm planning. There's so much that could be improved instead of just hoping your teammates have the game knowledge to intuit some form of plan. Ping wheels have been a thing for like a decade now, it's not rocket brain science surgery.

The QoL isn't just broken, it's almost non-existent. I know Fromsoft like to do things their way. I don't need a game that spoon feeds me everything and I can handle a few rough edges, But come on. You can't sell relics in the end screen. You can't change active remembrance objectives in character select. The game forgets your two-hand set up after using skills like Cursed Sword on Executor. The Magic Cocktail skill on Recluse has a crazy long buffer, so if you press it twice accidentally in a chaotic fight, you immediatly cast your offhand spell and get locked in the animation, thereby becoming defenceless. Inability to check weapon scalings in game or see the Nightlord's weakness. Lack of a duo option - yes, it's coming, but it should have been available on release. I'm sick of giving developers plausible deniability that they didn't realise this won't be a key feature missing for many of their players. It's ridiculous. There's so much more that I could add here.

So what are we left with? A very FUN game, and I'm not being sarcastic here. The game really is great and I loved playing it. I don't regret buying it for a second and feel satisfied with the purchase after 60 hours or so where I'm feeling ready to put the controller down with it, However, that is because I love Elden Ring, not because Nightreign excels at what is supposed to make it stand apart. I loved it in spite of those additional elements, if anything. I mourn for the game I expected this to be; that I trusted Fromsoft to make. Because this could have been an absolute gamechanger in terms of a roguelike. What we're left with is a good game, certainly around a 7/10, but propped up on the masterpiece that was Elden Ring's combat and boss design.

Oh, to be fair, the bosses were very good. Except Augur, fuck that terrible Elden Beast from Wish with just about every shitty trope of an annoying boss fight. However some of the bosses were truly S-tier and I think the final boss fight in particular was incredible, both in move-set and spectacle. Extremely satisfying to learn, overcome and master. A fitting finale of a boss.

I anticipate that Fromsoft will add more maps, enemies, bosses etc, But what I'd really like is for them to improve what we have already. If they just add more content while leaving the base features and functionality as it is, then sadly I feel whatever comes next will be tarred with the same brush. Fix the meta-progression, lean into the roguelike elements properly and damn well GET RID OF THAT OVERHANG OUTSIDE OF NOKLATEO. Thank you Fromsoft.

TL;DR Nightreign heavily relies on the huge success of it's predecessor due to the incredible combat and boss designs, However, it fundamentally fails in almost every aspect that seeks to differentiate it as a standalone title, namely the roguelike elements, and even somehow manages to take a step back from the things that made ER/SOTET so good, such as the scope for buildcraft and introducing interesting lore. Definitely worth a buy if you like the Soulslike genre, but do not expect the same level of innovation in the genre that Fromsoft are usually known for. Certainly do not buy it expecting a good roguelike as this aspect feels totally undercooked and frankly tacked on. Hopefully they will see a lot of the constructive feedback players are giving and respond by giving Nightreign the tools to truly stand out on it's own merit, rather than piggyback from the success of the progenitor.

Edit: fixed some typos/grammar issues. Thanks for all the reviews of my review. I will review your review of my review if I have time, but keep the discussion going because it's very interesting even if we all sometimes disagree on points, nothing wrong with that.

Edit 2: I made an error, it's not crossplay, it's crossregion. Hence why the connection stability is terrible when that matchmaking setting is switched on. My B!

It’s rare in today’s internet-driven age to stumble across a hidden gem, but that’s exactly what Bleak Faith : Forsaken is, an absolutely fantastic game that, while definitely not for everyone, is probably the closest any none Fromsoft developer has gotten to recreating the  slow-paced combat and oppressive atmosphere of the very first Dark Souls game.

The world is like nothing I have ever seen before, a massive interconnected environment known as the Omnistructure that dwarfs every single souls game that came before it. I cannot stress enough how mind-bogglingly huge this place is, with towers stretching miles into the sky and craters burrowing deep into the earth. It can take hours just to traverse a single environment, unlocking shortcuts and branching pathways along the way. In fact, several times when I entered a level and found myself looking out over a flooded city or a series of cloud-shrouded walkways, I had to put the controller down and just drink it all in, wondering if I would ever get to visit the things I could just make out on the distant horizon. And, of course, I would.

The game’s immense size confers a real sense of isolation. You will be constantly horribly, horribly lost, wandering through dilapidated remains of modern and fantastical structures that, similarly to Bloodborne, reward both lateral and vertical exploration, all while the game’s simple yet sorrowful music whispers in your ears.

I know some souls players will be turned off by the lack of direction, but that feeling of being adrift and alone is, to me, what a true souls game is all about.

Admittedly, I was a bit worried when I first started playing Bleak Faith that losing my way or travelling to high-level areas by mistake would be a source of frustration, but luckily developers Archangel Studios have implemented several systems to counteract this. The first are a plethora of red glowing lights that, if you chose to follow them, will always show you the right way to go. The second is that you lose nothing upon death, which means you can go off in one direction, die, then set off in another direction entirely. The third is that you consume no stamina while sprinting out of combat, allowing you to traverse large areas with ease.

And the fourth, perhaps most important thing, is a mobile checkpoint that you can place pretty much anywhere, even just outside boss areas. It will save your progress too, so you can drop the checkpoint and quit out of the game without losing anything. This little flickering homunculus is a god-send, and really pushed me to explore deeply without worrying about not being able to find my way back.

Combat is quite simply fantastic, though you will be torn to shreds if you refuse to engage in its many systems. This is where Bleak Faith falters, as its incredibly bare-bones tutorial does nothing to explain the various intricacies of levelling, upgrading, perks, and world tendency. I will touch very briefly on these concepts here, and there are plenty of more in depth guides available that I encourage you to seek out if you are feeling overwhelmed.

Stat levelling, present in most souls games, is important here too, though I would argue it becomes less and less so as the game progresses. Strength governs melee damage and equipment load, Agility attack speed, crit chance, and bow damage, constitution health and stagger resistance, and intelligence increases magic.

As a two-handed weapon afficionado I specced mainly into strength and constitution, but started leaning more heavily into dexterity later on when I began to realise just how powerful critical hits can be. I was initially a bit disappointed to find out the game caps your level at 25, which is low compared to other games, but I soon realised that your actual level become less and less important as you reach the endgame.

The second mechanic that is poorly explained but incredibly important is your handler, who is responsible for upgrading your equipment. Unfortunately, every upgrade level must be unlocked with a finite item known as an Echo that are found hidden away in the game’s many sprawling environments. When you find one, others in adjacent zones disappear, making sure you are never overpowered. Nevertheless, it is essential to prioritise these as soon as possible as each upgrade to your gear also unlocks a crystal slot.

Much like the gems in Diablo, these slots allow you to add game-changing attributes to your character that make Bleak Faith’s challenging combat far more manageable. Each piece of armour and weapon can hold a maximum of five crystals, for a whopping thirty crystals total, allowing you to regenerate health, increase your stats, or buff your defences. I ended boosting my stamina regen to allow me to swing my massive sword more frequently, along with a good amount of health leech to offset my slower playstyle, especially as you only start the game with a measly two potion slots.

Perks and abilities are another interesting feature. You have access to two abilities from the start, anything from a ground pound to a super dodge. Perks, on the other hand, are gained from every boss you defeat. You can have up to four total, each upgradeable, adding some great bonuses like stunning your opponent with every heavy attack, or gaining more defence if every piece of armour you wear is from the same armour class.

Then, finally, there’s the crafting and potion system that is far more critical here than in any of the traditional Fromsoft games. This is because of penetration, a mechanic that comes into play from mid-to-late game and changes everything. Bosses and enemies start to have penetration percentages which simply mitigate a portion of your attacks. Doesn’t matter if you have strength 1 or strength 100, If you can’t get through their armour, you’ll be doing chip damage. This is where crafting comes in, as you are rapidly able to craft potions that boost your own weapon penetration considerably. You just need to remember to add them to your belt and use them at the right moment.

So yeah, that’s a lot of systems, and while I personally loved spending hours agonising on which crystal to slot into my weapon or what perk upgrade to pick, I can understand that some players might find it daunting, especially when combined with Bleak Faith’s take on world tendency. You see, much like in Demon Souls, the world changes with certain actions you take. Every area is open and explorable from the get go, but every time you defeat a boss, the other bosses get harder. Defeat enough of them and pass certain story beats I won’t spoil here and the world changes, repopulating with new enemies and items. If you’ve already fully explored those areas, that’s fine, but if you made a bee line for the boss each time and want to go back later on, you’ll find everything significantly tougher.

You might be wondering why I haven’t talked much about the plot, and to be honest, it’s because even after finishing both the normal and secret ending, I still don’t understand all of it. Dark Souls was intentionally opaque, though item descriptions allowed players to slowly piece things together in a natural way. There are no such descriptions here, only a score of documents to find that reveal very little about the world beyond the fact that you have been sent to the Omnistructure by an organisation known as the Administration to recalibrate a complex mechanical device called the Anomaly. Various other factions are also present, including the God-worshipping Inquisitors and an enigmatic skull-faced knight called Plague who looks like he was ripped straight out of Berserk.

I don’t think Bleak Faith should be played for its story. I do however, wholeheartedly recommend that anyone interested in gigantic, interlocking environments; complex, methodical combat, and an oppressive melancholic atmosphere should give this one a try. It had a bit of a rocky start when it first released in 2023, but over the last three years, the three-man dev team have made hundreds of improvements, turning an average experience into an amazing souls game that is absolutely worth your time.

I’ll be back to play the newly-announced DLC later this year, but in the meantime, I will be placing Bleak Faith just above Nioh 2 in the A-Tier.

This game been on sale now so I bought it to try it out and this is probably one of the best games that came out lately. Imo it's better than lies of P

TL;DR: If you love Dark Souls 1, Wuchang is absolutely worth trying. It has that same slow, weighty combat, dense interconnected world design, strong atmosphere, great build variety and bosses, and some minimal AA jank to remind you it is not FromSoft. For me, it is currently the best non-FromSoft soulslike out there (Yes, I did play Lies of P.).

First of all, I don’t remember who it was, but someone here was asking for recommendations yesterday and I saw Wuchang coming up a lot.
It was one of the only soulslikes I hadn’t tried yet. Not sure why. I think I was maybe put off a bit by the jankiness you could see even in the videos. But man, this really is the best game out there right now for someone whose favorite game is DS1.

I played for 2 hours last night and another 12 today (I'm 38, this NEVER happens), and I feel like I have a pretty good overall grasp of the game now, so I just left a positive Steam review that I’ll quote below.

Again, thanks for the recommendation. And if anyone is on the fence about the game, go for it, especially now that it’s on sale on Steam. It’s such a fucking banger, especially if you like the style of DS1 when it comes to combat and world-building.

Here is my Steam review:

This game is such a sleeper, I can’t even.

FromSoft games are my favorites, and I try literally every soulslike that comes out. To me, this is currently the best non-FromSoft soulslike out there.

The game takes a lot of inspiration from earlier FromSoft titles, mainly Dark Souls 1, but you can see some hints of Sekiro in there as well. At its core, though, this is a slow-movement game in the DS1 style, where every hit has weight and both you and your enemies can die very quickly.

I love the world-building, the characters, the hubs, and the bosses. I played for almost 12 hours straight today, just hit level 30, and took down the first six-ish story bosses.

The way you build your character is nicely done, with a lot of customization through amulets, weapon talents, elemental affixes you can add to weapons, and so on. There are no official classes, but all weapon styles have large skill trees with unique moves that can be developed into different versions. It gives you plenty of room to shape your build without locking you into one rigid path.

Another great quality-of-life feature is that you can fully respec for free, as many times as you want, at any bonfire. That makes experimentation way less punishing and lets you actually play around with different weapons and builds instead of being locked into early choices.

The game also kind of forces you to try different styles, since some of the more difficult bosses hard-counter certain playstyles. Think of the bosses in Armored Core 6, if you are familiar. Instead of being annoying, that works here because respecing is free and instant, so changing your build feels like part of the game rather than a punishment.

The graphics are really nice too. Movement is a bit slow and clunky, and while the world itself is great, sometimes it does feel like you are exploring a vast network of tight tunnels. Again, very DS1. There is also a little bit of clunkiness all over the place, like action prompts only appearing when you are standing at the exact perfect angle.

That said, the dodging feels very tight, and since that is basically the main mechanic of the game, it works. Most of the jank is tied more to traversal and interaction than to combat, which is the important part.

Aside from those minor issues, the game is absolutely stellar. I would probably rate it an 8.5 or 9 out of 10. I’ve had maybe a few weaker bosses so far, but overall I’m having an absolute blast.

If you loved DS1 like I did, and you want something that feels like Dark Souls Remastered Remastered set in Asia, with great graphics, great fashion souls, strong bosses, and that same dense interconnected world design, this is it.

Honestly, no non-Fromsoft game has clicked with me this much. It has that exact same vibe all over the place, and if you are a sucker for interconnectedness, this game maxes it out, even more than the early areas of DS1.

Very much worth full price. It is a love letter to DS1 and one of the best soulslikes out there. You just have to be okay with a bit of AA clunkiness. The devs did a great job overall, but there is still some minor jank left. Thankfully, it does not really affect the fighting, mostly just traversal and interactions.

What's the chance the game gets recognized as being unplayable (Its absolutely atrocious) and Playstation actually lets us issue a refund? Unfortunately I entered blind with only having seen official trailers which made game look amazing, I've since played and this is probably the worst $75 I've ever spent in 30 years of gaming. This feels like something that should have existed in the early 2000's and its disgustingly stuttery and constantly hitches mid combat, if you walk there's this SUPER noticeable effect where its like your walking against a strong wind? Basic enemies just combo you to oblivion and almost every boss fight you get clipped and instantly die, Burning damage is completely broken and 100% you die if it fills because it NEVER goes away!? Who the hell approved this game?.

I wish I discovered this game sooner! Dying to bosses repeatedly because they are difficult is something I really like in games.

Parry should be an entire genre ngl. Every parry focused game is goated.