Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty - Team Ninja's take on Romance of the Three Kingdoms

[Curtis]

4 minutes ago, pledge said:

Can we avoid saying this is "easy mode soulslike" that I've heard in numerous reviews. I just want to pretend I got a little bit better at playing.

I’ve not read any reviews (because I simply don’t care) but if that’s what they’re saying then they’re clearly showing off for click bait and reactions.
 

You all know me and my Souls history. This game is NOT easy-mode Souls, if anything it’s more difficult because of the level of skill, knowledge, and understanding that Team Ninja expects from you. It’s been fucking me up, but that’s because it takes me out my comfort zone.

 

That is not a great marketing strategy because most players say “fuck this, I’m out” within a few hours. Only difference this time is there are so many more fresh fish because of Gamepass. Some might stick with it, but most will delete at the tutorial boss. And that’s the kicker. I can’t see Team Ninja getting away with this sort of niche product again.

[NecroMorrius]

This is a really strange game on first impressions. It's an awful PC port, refusing to display in the native resolution or refresh rate of my monitor, defaulting to Playstation inputs (ON GAME PASS!) and looking like an upscaled PS2 game with low poly everything and shaders and post processing from two generations ago. The presentation is incredibly offputting, somehow it looks much worse than Nioh and even Ninja Gaiden.

 

The combat seems very easy, breezed the first boss on my first attempt by parrying everything, the windows seem massive. And I've had two strong ciders and been up 20 hours at this point. But I did level up at the first opportunity without it explicitly telling me too. The morale system seems quite clever though and it's quite satisfying to play, almost as if they read all the debate about Sekiro needing an easy mode and thought hey, we can do that.

 

There is a theory floating around that the game does something strange with framerates which affect the combat speed when the actual framerate differs from the maximum framerate (kind of like the durability bug in Dark Souls 2). So maybe I was playing it too fast or too slow and that made it easier/harder. The speed seemed OK to me.

 

The people downvoting it on Steam after trying to play it on a keyboard and mouse need to give themselves a stern talking to.

[Kayin Amoh]

Those people are an eternal mystery.

 

'Doing Zangief's 720 super with a keyboard is too hard, this game sucks DON'T BUY'

[shirubagan]

First boss down (took me about 40 attempts). I like this game. 

[BadgerFarmer]

Video of fight against one of my favourite bosses (around mission 7). Quite Sekiro like in terms of learning the timings of his various attacks and combos. In the end, I parried just about everything, although still only just about made it.

Spoiler

 

[Timmo]

12 hours ago, HarryBizzle said:

Right, boss down, thanks to a bit of practice and Timmo’s advice. No idea how you’re supposed to figure out the button combination though. It’s on a those spirit attacks that are RB + X/Y but it’s not RB + B, despite the icon looking like it would be. 
 

More questions: 

 

-How should I spend my souls? Spread ‘em around or sink them all into one or two categories?

 

-How do I get more spells? I only seem to have one spell in each category. 
 

-There’s a level 15 dog in the first level. How would I go back and fight him? Can I get to that morale level on that level or do I just have to suck it up and fight him at a lower level?

 

 

The game’s parry isn’t as forgiving as Sekiro’s, oddly enough, but I’m sure I’ll settle into it. 

Missed this yesterday. 
 

- Don’t worry, you can respec for free quite early on. At the moment I’ve been piling into 2 categories (plus 4 into green for the health absorb spell) but it’s really not obvious on the best way. I do think Earth is a good one because it lets you get your armour weight percentage down. The lower the better as it increases your parry window. I’ve not used spells much at all yet. Need to change that. 

 

- At any flag menu go to the spell menu. You can unlock more as you level up. 
 

- You can either take him on underleveled (he’s not that bad and it’s a short run back) or collect that levels flags then go back to him. 

[jonamok]

1 hour ago, BadgerFarmer said:

Video of fight against one of my favourite bosses (around mission 7). Quite Sekiro like in terms of learning the timings of his various attacks and combos. In the end, I parried just about everything, although still only just about made it.

  Reveal hidden contents

 

 

 

Wow that’s a slog of a fight. Can see myself summoning for that, lol.

[HarryBizzle]

I think one of my companions died because I didn’t bother to heal him, assuming that he would stand back up one I beat the big baddie. Now I can’t summon him back. If they die in a level are they gone for the duration of that level? It’s the chonkyboi who tries to kill you but is then on your side. 

[Timmo]

8 minutes ago, HarryBizzle said:

I think one of my companions died because I didn’t bother to heal him, assuming that he would stand back up one I beat the big baddie. Now I can’t summon him back. If they die in a level are they gone for the duration of that level? It’s the chonkyboi who tries to kill you but is then on your side. 

You can get them back but costs you a token. Any flag, reinforcements menu. 

[HarryBizzle]

6 minutes ago, Timmo said:

You can get them back but costs you a token. Any flag, reinforcements menu. 

He seems to be frayed out. I can call another guy. Will take a screenshot later. 
 

You’re doing amazing stuff in this thread, btw. Need to set up a Patreon for this shit. 

[HarryBizzle]

I do get what Moz is saying - it has Big PS2-Graphics Energy at times, but it can look quite nice in places:

 

 

This also felt great:

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Timmo]

58 minutes ago, HarryBizzle said:

He seems to be frayed out. I can call another guy. Will take a screenshot later. 
 

You’re doing amazing stuff in this thread, btw. Need to set up a Patreon for this shit. 

All part of my plan to get more people playing and talking about NioH 2!

 

Team Ninja create these amazing games that deserve a bigger audience, but they’re really bad with tutorials. Once people get into them, though… The NioH subreddit is still extremely active, along with a very popular discord. 

[JPR]

 

A good video to cover some of the basics.

 

Really enjoying this, so far my main gripes would be menu related, made all the more baffling by the fact they weren't issues in Nioh.

 

Not being able to compare items directly makes things tricky, also the blacksmith putting all weapons/armour into a single list instead of by type makes selecting what I want to salvage a bit more of a chore. They also really need a manual scroll for text in the character directory, scrolls far too fast to easily read.

[HarryBizzle]

So far my build is 7/5/5/1/1. That seems like a thin enough spread as it is but the spirit generation of Fire is good and Earth seems to scale my current weapon so I’m sticking with it. 
 

I don’t really understand the magic system but the Earth level 1 spell that boosts your armour stops normal attacks from staggering you which is really handy. 
 

Also what’s the deal with weapons having different levels of stars? I have three Pommels of the whatever which all look roughly the same but they’re *, ** and ***. 
 

Bit annoyed; I upgraded the ** and then switched back to the *** and upgraded that as well. 

[BadgerFarmer]

1 hour ago, HarryBizzle said:

I think one of my companions died because I didn’t bother to heal him, assuming that he would stand back up one I beat the big baddie. Now I can’t summon him back. If they die in a level are they gone for the duration of that level? It’s the chonkyboi who tries to kill you but is then on your side. 

If it's one of the ones that accompanies you by default, they'll respawn once you rest at a flag. If it's one you summoned yourself, you need to summon them again each time they (or you) die.

[BadgerFarmer]

1 minute ago, HarryBizzle said:

So far my build is 7/5/5/1/1. That seems like a thin enough spread as it is but the spirit generation of Fire is good and Earth seems to scale my current weapon so I’m sticking with it. 
 

I don’t really understand the magic system but the Earth level 1 spell that boosts your armour stops normal attacks from staggering you which is really handy. 
 

Also what’s the deal with weapons having different levels of stars? I have three Pommels of the whatever which all look roughly the same but they’re *, ** and ***. 
 

Bit annoyed; I upgraded the ** and then switched back to the *** and upgraded that as well. 

Stars give weapons mini-perks and bonuses, so the more stars the more of those. You can tailor the bonuses to your liking later as well, but it's not really worth bothering with unless you get deep into it. Generally, just use the one with more stars if you've got two of the same weapons, but don't worry too much about switching if you've already upgraded one.

[deerokus]

The combat is slightly mashier than Nioh, which is fine by me tbh.

[HarryBizzle]

I beat the fire sorcerer boss - guy with a bell or something, and am now on the next level. Seem to be having trouble finding two marking flags. One is up on a rooftop which I can’t get to. There’s a ladder down to it from a cave but I can’t find the entrance to that. 
 

No idea where the other one is. 
 

I feel like I’m getting pretty good at some of the bosses and the loop of taking out warlocks with ranged combat or stealth and then going to town on the enemies they’re buffing is a lot of fun. 
 

If I had to pick a criticism, there can be a lot going on at once and sometimes once you deflect a red attack, the camera goes haywire and the enemies’ are sometimes quite messy looking so you have no idea what’s happening and you just start mashing Y. Sekiro is much better at keeping all the combat very legible. 

[Kromeo]

Will I like this if I adored Sekiro, liked Nioh, but never really got on with Onimusha or Ninja Gaiden?

[Popo]

The first boss slapped me about silly. I finally beat him - until, inevitably, I hadn’t done. 
 

This is Dark Souls hard mode. 

[BadgerFarmer]

8 hours ago, Kromeo said:

Will I like this if I adored Sekiro, liked Nioh, but never really got on with Onimusha or Ninja Gaiden?

It's pretty much a blend of Nioh and Sekiro, so probably, yes.

[HarryBizzle]

7 hours ago, Popo said:

The first boss slapped me about silly. I finally beat him - until, inevitably, I hadn’t done. 
 

This is Dark Souls hard mode. 

 

The next few bosses are much easier. I thought it was wonky boss ordering, and it sort of is, but I think you could probably squeak through loads of the next ones without knowing what the hell you're doing, which you can't with him.

 

I don't know why he needed to be a 2 phase fight, though. They've made a much, much easier game than Souls/Sekiro (and clearly Nioh, though I've not played that) but gated it behind a really difficult boss.

 

Just taken down the third Zhang and am now pottering about a little village for some down time. 

 

What audio language has everyone chosen? I went for English which is hilariously terrible and enhances the cheap, Dynasty Warriors feel of everything, but I can't be bothered to try both Japanese and Chinese so someone just tell me which is best. Though I do like being able to understand companion's hints without having to divert my attention to the subtitles.

[Timmo]

I switched to English because it reminds me of Dynasty Warriors! I love the cheesy atmosphere, which is a nice contrast to NioH’s relentless darkness. 

[Popo]

I chose Chinese, to match the setting! I have no idea if the voice acting is any good, I’ll ask my Chinese husband what he thinks. 

[pinholestar]

Chinese, because it's set in China. 💁‍♂️

 

Also means that I have to actively read what's being said and take in the story somewhat, rather than just zoning out entirely at all the melodrama.

[HarryBizzle]

Anyone got any weapon recommendations? I've stuck with the Pommel +2 and have just upgraded a couple of dual swords to try something a bit faster. Slightly worried that the Pommel has something like 60% deflect difficulty and may be easy mode in terms of deflecting.

[Timmo]

2 minutes ago, HarryBizzle said:

Anyone got any weapon recommendations? I've stuck with the Pommel +2 and have just upgraded a couple of dual swords to try something a bit faster. Slightly worried that the Pommel has something like 60% deflect difficulty and may be easy mode in terms of deflecting.

It’s actually the opposite - the lower the percentage the more spirit it costs to attempt a deflect. That’s the only effect that stat has, confusingly, as the deflect itself isn’t affected by weapon. 

[HarryBizzle]

 

Oh, that’s a relief. I assumed it meant there was a wider window. 
 

I really like the single level format, running after flags, etc. I’ve not played Dynasty Warriors since PS2 era but it has that feel of zipping about the place and just being much less laborious than a From Software game to get through. 
 

I have an annoyingly busy weekend and just want to play this all day. 

[BadgerFarmer]

I like dual halberds a lot for quick attacks and sustained pressure. Then some sort of spear or javelin as the second option, for range or sweeping attacks.

[MardiganX]

So this is as much fun and satisfaction as I’ve got from a game since I first played Sekiro last year  it doesn’t feel quite as smooth as Sekiro in how it handles the hugely important ‘defence is really your attack’ mechanics but it has so much great stuff going on in other areas to make up for it.

 

Does everyone get the Bauchi armour set from the start? Feels a bit cheap sliding straight into a full set of 4 star armour so might just leave it unless it’s largely a visual upgrade but I can’t tell right now.