Speed-Runs ramblings: Wo Long

Howdy y'all!

This week... Well mostly last week, we played through Wo Long Fallen Dynasty. Readers with big memory's might remember that I did a write up for it back when it released a few years ago, but at that time I hadn't beaten the game and never did until now (I made it to 2 missions from the end then a power outage killed all my save data). Anyways, the reason I went back is because a week or so ago I had a discussion on the sub regarding the inventory system of this game and how it was a big downgrade from Nioh 2. During that discussion I realized I hadnt played it since the week of release so maybe I was misremembering or wrong. So after going back... Dear Princess Celestia, I didn't learn anything. I was right all along.


But we'll save that topic for later. For now let's talk about the game itself. If I had to sum Wo Long up in a consice way, and I say this without any shade, I would say it's the Dark Souls 2 of the Nioh Likes. Yes you could call it a sekiro like, but I don't think that really nails down what it feels like to play this game. It's just so different feeling than it's siblings right down to the core while keeping a similar format, and a lot of that different feeling I would attribute to the fact that at it's core, it's clearly taking tons of inspiration and influence from Wuxia and it's flow compared to the more rigid/grounded(?) style in Nioh and you can feel the difference in how your character moves and attacks.

Now you can still compare it to Sekiro of course due to the deflect mechanic, which like the Sekiro Parry, the game is mostly designed around. That said there are a lot of differences between the two, and most of that comes from the risk reward of the two mechanics. The deflect for example works off a chi guage, which gains charge when you attack, or successfully deflect attacks. The chi guage functions similar to stamina except its only tied to your, heavy attack, martial arts skills, and magic. Like Sekiro you also have a break meter that you can fill up in order to do a big plunge attack on the boss, but unlike Sekiro it's not an instant kill (mostly). The risk with deflecting however is that deflects cost chi (if you miss) and while the timing is in general a lot more forgiving than Sekiro, messing up is way easier in my oppinion.

Now that said this game (the base game at least) in general is really easy if you utilize the mechanics it gives you. And this isn't like me saying Sekiro was easy (which, for me it was due to my superior Azuma ninja skills) but instead because the game essentially gives you tons of handicaps if you take them. For one the game is basically balanced around solo play, but you can someone in up to 2 NPCs for almost every mission and sometimes they even just give you them for free. That and if you level earth magic you can basically walk around in heavy armor with and still move like your in light armor essentially making you unkillable to most non lighting users. In fact, between the 4th chapter and the end of the game, I did not die a single time. Enemies did no damage through my armor, my magic let me tank hits for free, and I could always have 2 people jump what ever I'm fighting and take aggro off me leaving me free to blast them with magic or just blast them with my big spear unopposed. Also the aggro range on enemies is super low so you can easily 1v1 most encounter's. Can you ignore these mechanics and make the game harder? Absolutely, but I'm not one to shy away from using mechanics the game provides.

Now to move away from gameplay for a bit (we'll return later) the story itself is... Well it exists. Personally I think the game itself doesn't have the charm that it's siblings have as even though it's a story about relying on the bonds you forge (in the 3 kingdoms era no less) it takes itself too seriously and never really gives itself a second to breathe. Like it leans to hard into the dark part of the dark fantasy genre even though the second to last boss literally looks you in the eye and basically goes "damn power of friendship got hands". Like I don't need it to do things ironically or to wink at the camera but just a little levity would've gone a long way or at least giving the main character some kind of identifiable mannerisms. Now that said the last few bosses definitely had sauce tho. The Dynasty Warriors player in me would never glaze Yuan Shao but I admit his boss fight was rad. Having a giant Turtle shell shield that's also a cannon that he uses like rocket thrusters was sick. I will  also give them big props in having Hong Jing aka Diao chan Be your main party member and side kick throughout most of the game. As a big DW fan, it's a super interesting take on that character and not one I was expecting at all. She's really cool to being the only magic casting party member. That said I also take away points because holy shit this game is a huge sausage fest. Outside of Hong Jing there are no other female party members at all. Which is a huge bummer because with this being alt history they definitely could pulled in a couple. Like at least give me Sun Shangxiang or something.


Now that all that's out of the way it's time to talk about the gear system. You can definitely skip this section because it's mostly me rambling and ranting because it's by far the thing I hate most about this game and I will be mean to it because it took something I liked and gentrified it. It's basically a weird fusion of Nioh and a fromsoft souls game where every weapon will have have different raritys and passives, but there are no individual levels. So every single duplicate weapon you pick up will have the exact same base stats unless it's upgraded which works the same way as dark souls (using materials to upgrade gear). The issue with this is that it makes picking up new items super boring as once you find a 4 star rarity weapon (cause rarity determines how many weapon skills and passives a weapon has) you only have to keep upgrading it and you can essentially carry that weapon or armor with you all game with only occasionally going to the blacksmith to upgrade as you pick up upgrade mats. this sucks ass especially since the weapons  and the combat are much much more simplified compared to Nioh. I ended up using the same 2 weapons a spear and fists the entire game and just upgraded as I went because there's never any reason to switch. I never needed to adapt to what I picked because I would never find anything so substantially better than what I had that I was compelled to change. Which would work in a game that doesn't drop loot a lot, but this one does so you end up with a lot of gear but none of the excitement. Also they replaced the rainbow loot explosion with a single ball of light that slowly fades in like a souls game and it's sucks absolute ass because they found a way to make the already unexciting loot even more unexciting. To say something controversial on this sub, there was absolutely nothing wrong with Nioh 2s loot systems as far as a base game run goes (Higher difficulty levels are a different story) and removing it would actively make the game worse. someone on this sub once asked me if it wouldn't be better to remove it so that more people can enjoy the game? and my answer is a resounding no. I like it, and if you got folded by it that's a skill issue.

Ok that was a lot. I didn't initially intend to write this much but it's been a long long time since I did a quote on quote full review of something. So anyways I said a lot and a lot of it was kind of negative sounding. Which might cause you to be surprised that overall, I had a great time with Wo Long, I really liked it. Even with all my gripes, I had fun, I started playing NG+ as well as the dlc and gotta say whips in this game are radical. Easily the coolest whips this side of Castlevania. Now objectively speaking I would say that Sekiro is definitely a better game... However personally speaking I enjoyed Wo Long Infinitely more (granted I didn't like Sekiro all that much but that's a different tale for a different time). It's unfortunately hard to reccomend it over it's contemporaries but its not one I regret going through.