izigame.me

VERY LONG REVIEW. CONTINUED IN COMMENTS. Steam has too many errors, so I can't add mor
Wo Long is a bad game; made by amateurs using the skin of previously good games related to it, to disguise it's significant shortcomings.
I've 100%'d it and beyond. I have everything, I've done everything. I've experimented extensively with everything. Every spell and skill, all weapons and armors and bonuses, in every mode. I'm the only one I know of who has no-hit the bosses on NG+ legit no cheese and have the final title that comes with that accomplishment. I probably played the game much more than the devs have.
This game is a lesson in paying attention to the credits to discover who was working on the game and who was not. Since it was made by Team Ninja with significant visual Nioh influence, I figured it would be good. I was significantly disappointed. It seems most of the Nioh team did not work on this game. This feels like the C or D team made Wo Long. This is the director's first title and it massively shows. I feel lied to and taken advantage of. This game is a hollow shell of a real game. It is without substance. The core components are there but this feels like a rushed demo than a real game. Perhaps this was a tech demo game in the same vein as Chaos Legion was for Devil May Cry on the PS2.
But they did release an actual demo and that is to be commended as demos are a lost action in the games' industry and so incredibly important. I'm very appreciative to the company for that integrity move.

But I digress, Wo Long is a watered down, aka "streamlined", action game in the vein of Nioh/Ninja Gaiden/Sekiro/and maybe a little Metal Gear Rising Revengeance set in the Three Kingdoms period of ancient China.
However, the characters and events are there in name only. They are tangential, cursory, barely recognizable and hardly significant. It's a poor excuse of a backdrop to rehash the template of Nioh. Amrita is now Elixir, the MacGuffin of this nonsense. Kelly is now Yu Ji and the protagonist is chasing him for what was stolen just like William did. There are one or two good twists I'll give them that, but one important character relationship is a near direct copy of Otakamaru and Suzuka from Nioh 2. Yuan Shao honestly complains about bonds and laments the power of friendship. It's enough to make you puke with how trite and stupid it is.
If a computer AI spat out this "story", I would not be surprised at all. Nothing has any impact despite the attempts to. The last stage is a revisit to the first stage, but the character you are supposed to have a bond with only appeared in those two stages and the game acts like it's an epic encounter. No, because obviously we spent zero time with the character we were supposed to care about. It has all the trappings of emotional build up and investment (the music, the stage revisit after time passed, the atmosphere) but falls embarrassingly flat and for obvious reasons that I can't believe they actually tried to pass off. Again, if a computer was programmed to spit this out, I would not be surprised. Beep Boop. Input emotion here. Are you invested? I'm playing the music! Remember this!? Please clap. Hell, they even did something like this in Nioh 2 and it was fairly decent, so AGAIN, with so much taken from Nioh, how did they mess up so bad?
It's a stolen template without any soul.
The English voices are terrible but since characters talk while fighting, I kept it in English so I could hear them because gameplay is too intense to read text while in combat, which is always a dumb thing to do in any game. I'm engaged with the combat, why are you having characters talk in the very instance I physically can't pay attention to it. However, the Chinese and Japanese voices seem fine.
The non-player character designs are not good. Unlike Nioh, it was not gratifying to see famous figures from this legendary setting. Almost no one stood out and I was not excited to see them. This is a great shame because one of the best things about Nioh which took place in Sengoku Japan was wondering whom would surprise you around the corner. And then actually having cool encounters! It was exciting and satisfying. Not so here.
Even the music is rather bad. Maybe one or two good tracks in the game and I think one or two were taken from Nioh. But the main problem is how much is reused. Too many main levels reuse the same track (snow level and rainy level for example). It makes the game feel cheap and shallow.
But I will say the game looks good. The effects look good, the sounds are good (when they aren't glitchy -- I had dialogue vanish from a cutscene, return for the next, and vanish again for the following one, except for the nameless grunt soldiers for some inexplicable reason) but it's all in service of bland level design. The game gives you distant vistas in some levels and they look like they are from the PS2 or 3 era. The levels are so boring and uncreative. And the last main level is basically a vastly inferior copy to the last main levels in Nioh 1 and 2. It's not fun to explore or even causally go through the stages. A handful of nice item placements though, but that's not significant enough.
Okay now to the meat of the game. Consistency is the key word and this game lacks it.
There are an absurd amount of big and small issues as well as baffling, almost stupid, decisions ranging from gameplay to camera to UI to even automatic text scroll speed. I cannot fathom what they were thinking, especially since so much was copied from Nioh which didn't have most of these issues. Did they only take some parts and not all? Why? How?
It's a very simple action game with skills and spells, centered around light combos and a heavy strike while deflecting enemy attacks to build meter for stronger hits. However, most the spells suck, most the skills suck and honestly the player is far better off, more effective, stronger, more accurate, safer and faster if they don't use those bells and whistles. Sticking to the basic formula of using light short combos and deflecting to built meter and then use the heavy strike is far more effective. That's three buttons. Don't even have to move the character. You could play this game with one hand. But I am somewhat simplifying it. The game can be difficult but I'll get to that later.
While the core is sound and mostly satisfying (sounds good, looks good), the issues come from everything else.
It's extremely unpolished to the point of feeling underdeveloped like I mentioned earlier. The game is designed for 1v1 combat and when it gives you scenarios involving anything beyond that, it's atrocious and completely falls apart. You feel you fight the mechanics and features more than the enemies at times.
The bells and whistles are meaningless. Buffs don't last long enough to be meaningful. Even with stacking those attributes on armor and weapons make hardly a difference. Most things can barely be boosted above 10%. A few can go as high as 25%. You still won't notice. Nearly all Buff and Debuff effects hardly seem to be noticeable anyway. The true benefit of inflicting element statuses is the stun that comes when they proc and not much else.
Most spells suck or are ineffective. Same with Skills. Although skills can be cool like some spells, they are a worse choice in combat than the basics. They provide minimal utility, damage, and speed in comparison to the basic attacks. And completely unviable in PVP. They'll just get you countered and killed. And skills are tied to weapon drops. You can only use a mere 4 spells at a time and a paltry 2 skills per weapon. You can equip two weapons. You CANNOT change weapon skills. So maybe you got a rare drop that has good stats or a grace you needed for a set bonus, but it lacks any fun skills, or vice versa. Sorry player, you're out of luck, screw you for trying to have fun your way. There is currently no way to change them and this was an extremely stupid choice.