I keep forgetting to write about games I'm playing, which is a shame because I know I'm going to forget some over the course of time.

I got to the credits in Wo Long, and it sure is a Nioh. I really liked Nioh, and have yet to get to Nioh 2/Stranger of Paradise. And I think Wo Long has just made me more excited to get around to them someday.


The technical performance was bad. A lot of crashes, and even post 1.03 patch there were areas that dragged the game down to single digit frame-rates in performance mode. I thought my computer is just too old (it probably is) but I played the RE4 demo and it ran smooth at standard settings, so who knows.

The story also left me kind of cold. I'm not really into Romance of the Three Kingdoms, and it REALLY wants you to be. The framework is really simple of "Evil Taoist is trying to wage war to get human sacrifices to make the ultimate elixir to become immortal, chase him down and stop him" but a lot of the plot ends up bending around Ro3K history to the point of it kind of feeling awkward. Most of it ends up as "Hey, isn't hanging out with Guan Yu cool? (it is)" and you really have to know the characters and their motivations because the game assumes you know. It really only two or three characters into the plot as having motivation and setting established in the game. But I think if you were into Ro3K you would probably be more into the story, it just didn't do anything for me.

Gameplay wise, this really is Nioh with more emphasis on parrying. I know people compared it to Sekiro, and this is like Sekiro in the way that Nioh is like Dark Souls. It shares some elements, but really has a lot more of its own thing going on. Sekiro was really about parrying attacks to build up a meter to land a killing blow, but Wo Long just has that as one of it's mechanics and is still focused on doing as much damage to take out all of their HP.

An important mechanic is really the 5 element sequence, and I keep wishing I had a reminder onscreen of what beats what. It is there in a tutorial file, but I always forget mid battle. But a lot of bosses and harder enemies use elements, and having the right element to cancel it out helps more than most other things.

There are a lot of QoL features I wish it had, actually. One is being able to access your storehouse from checkpoints instead of going to the hub village. You can purchase supplies from checkpoints, but you can't access your storehouse. And trying to do sub missions in sequence is annoying because the only menu options are "Go to village" or "Repeat quest" instead of just having "Select mission". I also get annoyed that after finishing a story mission it sends you directly to the next story mission when I often want to go to the village to use the blacksmith.

The village itself is kind of nice, but I mostly wish the things it offered were also available in checkpoint menus. Before some bosses I would want to respec, but that means leaving the battle, loading up the village, respeccing, then traveling back to the boss. Bosses always had checkpoints before them, and it loads you into the latest one when you travel, so it isn't punishing but it is time consuming.

Wo Long shares the same mission structure as Nioh. Big level, mostly linear, and when you beat a story mission sub missions using the map unlock. It also has the "Unlock weapon/armor sets as you progress and equippable bonus creatures". I think the Divine Beasts in Wo Long are a little better, as you progress they unlock more bonuses so they all fill a niche. The downside is that sets/weapons/divine beasts may not be available for a preferred playstyle until late in the game. It also still has the "Beat the game and unlock a harder difficulty with better rewards" that Nioh had. One weird consequence of this is that the 1st boss really feels balanced for hard mode when you have all of your tools and equipment, rather than the tutorial boss he actually is. No boss is really as hard as he is for quite awhile.

I think the combat is really nice though, and if Sekiro is trying to be a samurai/ninja movie; Wo Long is Wuxia. The combat flow is far more about trading blows back and forth: deflecting, counterattack, back off and use ranged or magic, wait for them to close in and deflect. Though I think guard was useless, and it having it's own button probably made me less likely to guard than if I could just hold the deflect button. I think the only real complaint I have about enemies is that some have really fast attack strings that are faster than you can deflect (I think). Just successions of 2-3 hits during your deflect window. But that is maybe 2 or 3 enemies, and I only found it to be a consistent problem for 1.

It also has a bit of the "Everything button" problem. RT will allow you to use magic. But it is also the context button for opening doors, and more importantly donating a healing pot to a deceased player to get more morale. So I had a lot of times when I was trying to cast a buff before going into a fight and suddenly one of my healing items is used.

I do like how easy it is overall, at least for a first playthrough. Most missions come with an NPC helper, that can be sent out to attack enemies without pulling others (Unless they accidentally hit them). Magic is used with your stamina bar, so you almost always have a secondary option. Enemies can drop health refills, and every checkpoint fully heals you and there are usually around 10 for every stage. Big checkpoints also refill all of your health items. And playing the missions + sub missions leaves you with enough Qi to stay ahead of the recommended level curve, so it doesn't expect you to grind. It also supplies you with plenty of upgrade material to keep your weapons upgraded. And most stages have a hard, straightforward path but also a side path that allows you to get behind encounters and approach them from an easier side. That being said, most of the bosses are challenging and even certain standard enemies put up a good fight.

The static pickups on hard mode seem to not be scaled for difficulty, so you keep picking up 100 Qi items when you need 90k+ by the time you get there. I can't remember if that was a problem in Nioh as well, but I wish that was different. Unique items seem to get scaled to rank 9 steel or leather though.

Wo Long has some problems, but it is still a really good game. It's Nioh, but with deflecting being a major mechanic instead of Ki pulsing. It shares some weird DNA issues from Nioh, but also shares most of the good things from it. I hope it gets technical polish to run better.


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