First play-through time: ~43 hours | Thoughts come from the PS5 Platform | Gameplay experience can be found on Twitch
Preface:
I'm definitely no pro at Nioh or 'Soulslikes' in general – Wo Long as well as Nioh, I hesitate to refer as a soulslike - they are both highly different experiences, but they certainly do have some base similarities at a core design level. What I speak on, I speak on as a mid-level player of Nioh(s), and souls. My experience very obviously may differ from other viewpoints! Now, with that out of the way – these are my thoughts after playing Wo Long to completion!
Character Creation -
The character creation in Wo Long is quite in depth. If you are familiar with Nioh's character creation system, you'll be happy to know (I think?) that Wo Long's is pretty similar and just as detailed. You can create a large variety of characters, and truly customize your character to your own. Functions have been added to truly make the character in your own, in multiple ways, while still maintaining the high degree of customization Team Ninja & Koei have put out in the past.
Characters - (I'd put an image here - but it might give away too much knowing a character's involvement story-wise!)
As a Dynasty Warriors player, I was pleasantly surprised with the characters in the story that matched the era. There was a wide breadth of characters from the Three Kingdoms era present, and I was both surprised and excited to see many characters that showed up over the course of the game. There are some twists as well - not everything is as it seems!
One thing that I wasn't a huge fan of, was the lack of female main character roles in this title, though - While I understand the lore implications of the warriors franchise, I think there could have stood to be far more powerful female figures prevalent in this saga, especially considering the era, and how many are present in the Dynasty Warriors franchise. Though, that is just a personal preference.
Gameplay / Combat -
The closest that I can compare Wo Long's combat to, is of course Nioh with a slice of Sekiro - but to say they are the same is a disservice I won't do. The combat in Wo Long has been a bit more simplified - there are no longer stances to pick from, but instead many different types of Martial Arts skills that weapons have a chance of dropping with. This means that you could have two weapons that are the same - but the abilities on them would be highly different. This has many pros and cons, but due to the strength of some of these abilities, it ends up working out. You can have up to two different skills for each weapon - for a total of four skills, and there are ways to quickly swap your weapons mid-deflection to unleash devastating combos. Incorporated with the weapon swapping, you also have access to a decent-size selection of elemental-influenced 'magic' - Earth, Fire, Water, Wood, Metal.
Along with the skills, there is a Stagger/Spirit bar much alike the one from Sekiro - As you attack the enemy, the gauge decreases up until the point you can do a Finishing Strike for a massive amount of damage. If you run out of stamina/spirit, you will be left wide open and stunned for a couple seconds. This leads to enemies being able to unleash powerful attacks on you while you are wide open. If you deflect (or flash-guard) the enemy's attack, you can reduce this gauge, and if you land a Martial Art skill, the gauge will increase as these use stamina, but at times are great lead-ins to continue the assault with normal attacks and lower the gauge. However - as the enemy hits you, the gauge increases, and goes into the 'Blue' right-side; this is basically an inversion of the above, allowing enemies to unleash powerful attacks on you instead and increase the difficulty to reduce the gauge as well.
Morale -
As you defeat enemies throughought the stages, you will gain Morale levels and points, and as you are attacked by enemy Martial Arts skills (Critical blows), you lose Morale. Morale serves as a sub-level separate from the player level. As you progress through stages, you are able to increase the minimum Morale that you are able to hit by discovering flags. These protect you from falling below a certain level. The difference of the morale level between you and the enemy, the more damage you will deal or take. If you take 'critical blows' from the enemy, this gauge goes down, encouraging you to deflect them more and more.
Morale adds an interesting element to stages, and highly encourages exploration and perfect deflections in order to keep the level high enough to surpass the enemy; unless, you prefer the added challenge and enjoy tacking enemies at an extreme disadvantage - in which case, you wouldn't want to defeat any enemies that are too low level. It's a nifty new feature that certainly has pros and cons depending on the playstyle.
There are a variety of spells to choose from - some buffs, some debuffs, and even some offensive magic as well. Health absorbing buffs, offensive reducing status effect debuffs, and offensive magic with a variety of effects based on elemental proficiencies - These came in handy for some of the harder bosses, and adds an extra way to help you with taking out those harder mobs - and they worked on bosses, usually too. Nioh players may be familiar with these type of spells - but they return in Wo Long as well.
Divine Beasts return as well - and they are integrated just as you would expect from Nioh. These provide many more ways to enhance and customize your character as needed, and even provide passive stat sticks.
Death and Levels -
Death is interesting in Wo Long. You will not lose all of your Qi - but usually just half. The Morale will go back to a morale level according the amount of flags gathered throughout the mission. If you re-enter the boss room, the Morale will come back on its own without recollection - but you'll be down some from being hit by Critical Blows as well, so at times you may want to re-farm the gauge back up. If you collect all the flags in the stage, you'll generally match the level of the boss and be able to keep an even playing field.
If you die outside of a boss room, you can go mete vengeance on the enemy that slayed you - and win back the morale as well; but only if you win. Leveling is standard in that you gather EXP in the form of Qi, and spend it on base flags discovered through the mission. You can choose to put these into any of the aforementioned elements, and each element influences different status effects described right along with the element.
PvP -
The last point I'll mention on the gameplay side - and it is kind of big - There are INVASIONS. You can invade into any online player's world and get some juicy PvP action. If, and I stress IF, the enemy is not playing from Pluto. Latency and perfectly-timed deflections is ... a very unfortunate combination. It's a fantastic implementation and I'm glad to see this return from Nioh 1, but connectivity issues were too 'invasive' (heh). When the PvP works, it's very fun though. I hope to see Arenas for more consensual PvP encounters added in the future. You get some exchangeable tokens and potentially some loot from the opponent, as well.
Story [No spoilers] -
The story of Wo Long was both familiar, and different from what I expected. It felt like other games of this era, but with a bit of its own flavor and ways to re-tell the story. There were tense moments, as well as very exciting moments. Honestly, the suspense for some of the scenes surprised me. Overall, it was reminiscent of an older movie from this era - but, it wasn't the absolute best since it did feel a bit tied down to its historical roots which limited it a bit. Regardless, this is a series about action combat. The story served its purpose - and I'm still excited to see what else is coming. I expect some crazy twists.
If you are familiar with the era, you will notice a large historical influence of the story's passing, but things tend to unfold differently then anticipated, which gives way to a refreshing new experience of historical events. I enjoyed the twists that Wo Long had, and for some reason even felt nostalgic seeing some familiar areas with a completely different way of handling these ideas and areas in mind.
Environments -
Yeah. I'll save the really cool ones for you to experience yourself. The views can be breathtaking.
Improvements I'd like to see -
This is probably a hot take, but... seriously - I would have liked to see more powerful females in this story. There felt like a lot of opportunities for it, but the patriarchal domination of powerful warriors beat it out. I truly hope this is re-visited in the future, and it may be due to the timeline of events historically that may have inhibited this. It was great to play as a female warrior, but there could have been more women.
The gear system felt watered down compared to Nioh - and perhaps this was an intentional design choice, as a lot of Nioh felt highly influenced by gear. Wo Long certainly felt like it had more skill-checks to get past hurdles of bosses, but a large portion of it was effectively just learning to deflect. If you can deflect a spear, you can deflect a fireball. If you can deflect a fireball, you can deflect a... well, I won't say that. Might be too close to the spoiler line. You'll see for yourself.
There are a couple quality of life features that I expected, but assume they would be added in the future. There is no gear comparison window that I was able to find in the menu (Am I blind?) on equipping gear; this means, that when you're equipping gear, you don't really know what abilities you are swapping things out for without going up and down through the menu comparing them manually. That seemed like a massive lost opportunity that shouldn't be too bad to add.
Another quality of life feature I would hope to see in the future is the ability to change out the skills available on the weapon. Perhaps this defeats the opportunity to farm weapons for skills, but at least by NG+, I'd like to see this being possible - albeit, with some sacrifices, and not super readily accessible, because otherwise, it would defeat the point of farming gear at all. Due to the way the system is, I ended up using gear from very early on in the game - for basically the entire game. Not once on my first playthrough did I find another Bo-Staff with good enough skills to suit my playstyle.
The Morale system is an interesting choice that I am not entirely sold on yet. From my playthrough, it seems that the purpose is to allow players that may not be professional level souls players to still be able to complete bosses and the game in general. You can level past the Morale level of most bosses on a first playthrough, and you'll take far less stamina and damage, while subsequently dealing more damage. On the flip-side of this though, sometimes I felt rather forced to go grind monsters just to raise the morale level to be able to face a boss on more fair levels. If you are dramatically under-morale leveled for some encounters, you will generally get oneshot. Overall, and especially towards the middle half of the game, this wasn't a huge deal - but early on, it certainly was a bit annoying. Sometimes, you just want to keep progressing on the boss without having to break to farm for Morale. It's situational.
What I hope for in the DLCs -
Truthfully, I expect a lot of what we got in the core game - I wasn't left unsatisfied. I hope for some quality of life improvements, maybe some UI adjustments, and some really awesome fights. Maybe some more cuties? I look forward to the new environments and potential for even more difficult fights. I want more!
Final Thoughts
If you are on the fence for Wo Long, there is a demo still available for a couple more weeks of this posting.
Wo Long was a fun new experience to enjoy. It is refreshing and fulfilling, and had plenty of skill-checks that felt well-placed. Deflecting is your best friend in this game - and oh my, it felt incredible. The dopamine rush from deflecting enemy attacks in this game was so addicting, I'm tempted to replay it again just to get the feeling again.
There are ways to make encounters easier if they are too difficult without it feeling bad, many weapons to use, and many different playstyles to utilize. Wo Long is a great entry point for Soulslikes overall, and is a fun new way to get back into this type of adventure. Perhaps I'll see you on the front lines!
Thanks for taking the time to read this, and I hope you enjoyed these impressions of Wo Long.
Thoughts or comments? Leave a post & let me know below!
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