Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty Review (Sek-Raktaa)
TLDR: Good Game but Inferior to Nioh in every way.
I am enjoying my time with Wo Long, its a good game that had a lot of hard work put into it but I can't recommend the game because it feels inferior to Team Ninja's previous games, the Nioh games.
this is in relation to the core gameplay, the combat
Wo Long is heavily inspired by Sekiro Shadows Die Twice: there is no stamina but a meter that needs to be filled in order to break your enemies posture and render them vulnerable to devastating critical strikes. in order to fill that meter, the player has to deflect enemy attacks and counter attacks.
although this sounds fine on paper, it brings with it the same issues that plague Sekiro Shadows Die Twice. enemies have often extreme tracking with their attacks, rendering dodging much less effective and forcing the player to deflect the enemy attacks.
the problem with this approach to combat is that combat becomes much more static. there is much less focus on positioning and maneuvering to outflank the enemy in favor of deflecting/parrying the enemies attacks. Sekiro Shadows Die Twice did somewhat mitigate that with attacks that you had to jump over, so maneuvering was somewhat important although not quite as much as in Dark Souls or Elden Ring.
Wo Long on the other hand does not have something like that.
most of the combat can be played without moving your character at all since all you have to do is deflect, counter attack, deflect, counter attack, till your enemy is dead.
although this is a fine enough approach to combat, i am definitely enjoying my time with the game, it can get old and stale very quickly.
most of the combat feels the same because the area where you fight doesn't matter, all that matters is timing your deflects right.
it is a lot less engaging when compared to the previous two Nioh games that required players to move around during combat to outflank enemies, dodging their attacks while striking them in vulnerable spots. Terrain and area is a lot more important in Nioh, which keeps combat fresh and exciting over a long period of playtime.
I've played both Nioh games in sessions sometimes 8 hours straight and the games kept fresh and exciting the whole time.
I couldn't do the same with Wo Long because after a while, I just get bored of how static the combat is.
Another key difference that makes Wo Long's combat inferior to Nioh's:
the weapons in Wo Long offer different skills AKA special movesets. its kind of like the Ashes of War in Elden Ring, except in Wo Long, weapons can have two of these skills/ashes of war on them. the downside is that these skills are randomized so if there is a particular skill you're looking for, you'll have to hope for RNG and an enemy to drop the weapon.
in Nioh on the other hand... Nioh has a stance system in which every weapon type has 3 stances, light, medium and heavy, with every stance offering a variety of combat moves, that can be changed on the fly once they are unlocked and the player can likewise change between the 3 stances at any time, even in the middle of combat.
which likewise helps a lot to keep combat in Nioh fresh and exciting because there are a lot of way to keep things interesting.
Wo Long does not have that.
while the combat in Wo Long is solid, its just plain inferior to Nioh
Nioh is just better
Wo Long has a jump button and there is verticality to the maps where the jump is useful to explore the maps... but that doesn't make the combat any more interesting, sadly.
also the ancient/feudal China setting of Wo Long is not as interesting as the feudal japan setting of Nioh with its striking Samurai aesthetic, though this last bit is obviously personal preference.
so yeah
Wo Long is a good game and a quality product... but I'm coming fresh of Nioh and Nioh is just so much better so... yeah, buy and play Nioh instead. or Sekiro Shadows Die Twice if you prefer a deflect/parry based combat system.