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Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty seems to have struck a chord with fans of tough action titles. The latest game from prolific Japanese developer Team Ninja, it's a bit of mix between Nioh (the loot, the combat pacing), Sekiro (the parries), and Dynasty Warriors (the battlefield morale system), and it's all based on epic Chinese novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms. What more could you want?
Not much, apparently, because we gave the game an 'excellent' 9/10 in our Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty PS5 review. We heaped praise on the title's action, concluding: "It's fast, frenetic, and hits like a truck, with one of the most mesmeric combat systems we've ever had the pleasure to master."
But what review score would you give Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty? Vote in our poll, and then remember to time your parry correctly in the comments section below.
Comments 49
Good game, well worth playing at least once!
Its fantastic. As much as I loved Elden Ring, massive open worlds can get exhausting. Sometimes I just want a more linear experience where I can focus on combat and like Nioh and Nioh 2 before it Wo Long strongly delivers in that regard.
A punishing soulslike and an interesting spiritual successor to the Nioh series. I am loving it so far even if it's probably going to cause me some hair-loss by the time I reach the credits lol
9/10 from me. Its one of the "easier" soulslike despite parrying being my weak point but its still a good challenge with some tough fights like Lu Bu. Combat is excellent and every weapon feels unique and fun to use. Also the character creator like Nioh 2 is fantastic.
Removed - trolling/baiting
Demo put me off on purchasing on release just as the recent res evil 4 demo has. These are now both firmly in the wait for sale column unless res evil 4 drastically improves somehow.
Based on what the demos represent which is absolutely the final product I'd say wo long is still firmly a 6 or 7 based on my tastes. However it's a six or seven for a game the looks and is designed like a generation or two old game. For me that's a discount buy.
@trev666 You don't have to keep saying this. We get it, you like Game pass. Nobody even brought it up
I'd give it a 7.
It's good, not great. On the technical side it could run better, it doesn't look that great. Looks like a bad last gen game.
On all aspects it's really just a ***** Nioh.
I'm in part 4 currently and it's way easier than the Nioh games. Wish the magic stuff was fleshed out more.
Debating whether I want to complete it or not.
@TeapotBuddha what does absolute nails mean? Don't think I heard that one before
@trev666 gamepass has really shown to be such a huge value. AS some of the day one releases have been perfect for a SUB SERVICE (wo long/atomic heart, hifi rush, pentiment, tunic, plague tale:requiem, etc) .
I genuinely hope that once this lame Activision fiasco settles, that it forces Sony to step up and compete with an actually comparable experience or lose dedicated player base.
For the idea that it somehow hurts game quality has been proven absurd time and time again. It's truly Just that Sony doesn't want to invest in something that creates long term value to to their fan base, thus taking aeay large profits for their shareholders.
I waited to see what the ps plus revamp was going to be, which turned out to be primarily a lazy way to extract more revenue. Thus, I will likely be getting a series x sometime in the next 6 months for the gamepass value proposition and titles I am interested in under the Bethesda umbrella alone.
i gave it 8, could have been a7, its so outdated and bland.
Its definitely a 9.its another good games by team ninja.and oh yes nioh games are amazing.word up son
There are votes for a 1 for abysmal in every single one of these Push Square polls. Come on guys, very few games deserve a one, if any, and certainly not Wo Long.
@KundaliniRising333 I mean the reason MS gets away with 1st party day one releases is because they release so little of them, spend far less then Sony does on them and can afford to take the loss. Right now Gamepass and Plus are around equal and if the 1st party stuff like Halo and Forza isn't your thing or you don't like Bethesda's games then Plus has a clear edge.
I'd give it maybe a 7.5 or 8. It's pretty good but I wish they added just a little more of nioh's mechanical depth. I appreciate it being easier tho. However I'm getting burned out on these souls games from Team ninja. They've done 4 of these now and it's getting very tiring. They're still enjoyable but it's tiring. I'm glad they're finally doing something new with Rise of the ronin next year
For me so far, like 5 levels in, a 9. The parry being the dodge button is brilliant. I am loving the boss designs and fast paced combat. Also so far I feel like it's not that hard which is perfect for me
@WallyWest wait what?! nearly every example I listed though was third party day one releases, and that's not even all the bangers from last year. Games that are 60 or 70 on ps side and just a sub on the other. They aren't even comparable. Not to Mention the day one release aspect of first party titles non existent for the most part on ps plus. Not that I have any interest in any of the Xbox first party stuff.
I get that you love Sony so did I. I've never owned any other console beyond a few Nintendo rigs. However, It's beyond a stretch to suggest that the two subscription models are equals...
Nor am I so devout a follower to acknowledge Sony has become increasingly anti consumer. It's this pivot toward little fan service that makes other options interesting.
@The_Pixel_King probably people who got their ass handed to them and can't understand deflect I'd imagine, cause there is zero reason for a 1 rating even some.of the worst games this year so far and last year don't even deserve 1
@KundaliniRising333 I have a Series S and i sub to Gamepass and i feel games wise Plus is better, Gamepass relies heavily on 1st party stuff, EA's output and Bethesda's output to bulk up the list. Yes they do great Day 1 releases but comparing Plus and Gamepass's libraries i feel Plus is better and more diverse.
@WallyWest I hear ya. I mean you have both subs so you would have a better bit of experience to compare and contrast.
I enjoyed the Nioh games more than From's games because they were not Soulslike games. To me they were clearly something else. A hybrid of Ninja Gaiden and Souls games, too different to be simply labeled a different flavour of Soulsborne. I'm hoping this game is also like that.
Idk I find this game difficult for me to grasp. That tiger mini boss at the beginning keeps killing me. I just can’t grasp the dodge parry thing. I deleted it off game pass . Great that ppl are enjoying it though.
I'd think a 9 is a little high. It's good, but doesn't really do too much to differentiate it from previous entries (Nioh, I mean). A solid 8, which is in no way a bad score, but not fresh enough (in my eyes) for a 9.
@Cherip-the-Ripper "hard/ tough as nails", I.e. difficult
I'd like to see the people who gave it a 1 their written review justifying why they gave it that score.
@KundaliniRising333 i own both too GP is good, issues around DLC on it, meaning if base Game leaves you have to buy it. good to try stuff you may not usually. MS rewards too.
negative, MS seems to be going more MTX, games can be more buggy too. personally standard controller worse than dualsense.
owning both has pushed up value of PS extra for me, as i end up buying less, i claim more from plus. For me while they may add 'older' titles, they are usually quality ones.
Gamepass cannot compete with ps plus rn sorry. HFW is better than everything on gp put together
@Enigk probably those who couldn’t beat the first demo boss, who’s the tiger for them)
This is hilarious seeing people trying to compare the 2 services when it depends on your taste in games… and what you have or haven’t played yet already. Xbox offering Day 1 release is great and if Playstation started doing it i’m sure it would be enjoyed by people here. Also no need to bring Xbox’s profits or whatever into it when gamers can enjoy it at the moment so who cares? That’s up to Xbox and doesn’t make the service any worse. Literally just a dumb argument.
As for Wo Long; I have it downloaded on my Series X at the moment but haven’t had a chance to check it out yet. I’m not so great at Soulslike games so not sure how far I would even get in this. I love Romance of the Three Kingdoms though so hell yea can’t wait to try it at least.
Really enjoyed the second demo, played to completion, enough to finally buy the full game last night. The final boss fight of the demo was a blast. I love the relative simplicity of the combat; Nioh always felt over complicated and closer to a fighting game, despite my love for it. Magic feels much better here too. Character creator is awesome too. Really looking forward to playing the full game. Solid 8 so far.
@trev666 🤷♂️🤷♂️🤷♂️
I like this better than Nioh 2, and I loved Nioh 2.
It's a lot easier than Nioh 2, and you can take that as you will (I personally thought Nioh 2 was a little too hard), but the combat and mechanics are more refined and streamlined for the better. The gear system in Nioh 2 was REALLY cluttered and you got too much of it, and most of it was useless.
I think the story is also better in Wo Long than Nioh 2.
I just really loved this game.
@Enigk the world is full of haters, they think it’s fashionable to be offended or hate filled. Absolute ***** show of a world we live in.
@Faraz27 just a tip for you if you decide to play again, ignore that tiger he's about 10 morale levels ahead of you at this point in the mission which means he's basically doing 80-100% more damage per hit, really hard PLUS those tigers at least for me are literally the hardest in the game at any level almost impossible to fully deflect, super fast, overall just a general nuisance. Plant some more flags and come back, also walk past his right side around the building and come from above take about 50% of his health right off
I didn’t give a review Score because I didn’t play it. But from the PlayStation Access preview stream I watched a little back, it really looked generic and bland to me. My guess is Rosie just didn’t pick the most interesting places because of either spoilers, she wasn’t allowed to or by mistake.
I’m sure it’s much better than what I saw though. But, that stream made me want to wait on buying it.
@KundaliniRising333 To be clear i only sub to the basic Plus package as i own most of the games the service offers. I use Gamepass more as an extended demo to try games i'm unsure off or play indies i might have missed normally, if i like the game i usually just buy it on PS5 soon after. All that said if i owned zero games and had to pick between the two i would pick Plus as again i find it more diverse, both have great selections though and GP does have that advantage of stuff like Starfield and Redfall coming Day 1 this year.
@Soulless666 Probably didn't even play the game and gave it a one just because they can and that in itself it gets them a little excited. I have yet to play the game so will not pass judgment but looking at a trailer I can already see that it is above a 1 and I am terrible at these Soulslikes.
Great game its a 9 for me since it is impossible to not compare to other soulslborne that are 10 (Bloodborne, Elden Ring etc). I support Team Ninja games since the first NIOH. No TN game disappointed me to this date.
Great game...and I am finding it suprisingly easy in comparison to other souls games ...got me interested to play nioh after I have finished
I defo prefer games like this when they have a deflect option...sekiro was the only other one I had finished
@KundaliniRising333 I think you are not taking proper perspectives into consideration with your opinion.
First, value is subjective. As the first comment to reply to your main one, GP or ‘plus’ won’t get the Elden Ring’s, Hogwarts, DeadSpace, Final Fantasy, Red Dead, Witcher games. Their production costs are too high. The only way you’ll see a GOTY on GP day one is if their first party hits it of the park. The vast of the third party GP day ones are high 70s, low 80s on user metacritic for a reason. So if you play several games a year only, at the moment GP is a waste because it doesn’t have the biggest games people want to play. (Hence - paying ridiculously for Activision). We don’t know how much MS is eating dev costs for XB either to allow Bethesda and 343 to take half a decade or more to make their games.
Game quality. I think you’ve misunderstood the argument. It centres around if all games were on a subscription, dev cycles and production costs would need to be drastically reduced. Unlike ike a TV series but more akin to Netflix movies, they get one shot to make a game. Explain to me how Naughty Dog makes a TLoU3 in same
sphere of quality with half of the money?
Ask yourself, how would Outsiders, Wo Long and Atomic studios make a profit without the subsidized funding through PlayStation players? It seems GP players are more and more refusing to pay for devs work in earnest so they take whatever they can get. Now imagine 2 fold as if it had to be put on PS+ day one.
Ask yourself, as a third party publisher, how confident are you in your game that you write off sales on day one for a flat fee from MS?
It’s not proven because it hasn’t truly happened yet. I don’t understand why people don’t get the crux of this….
It's easily my favourite game released so far this year. I have not finished it yet, so can't give it a final score
@ReadySlayerOne, I hear your point, I do. I think what you're not understanding is that the reality of what is/has taken place thus far has not supported your theory that somehow this flat fee and lower development times is going to equal lower quality games there's been big budget high value third party titles that have released day one on game pass. That is happened along with a bunch of dope Indies and even titles like wo long that actually had a short dev cycle and it shows, along with reused assets, and carrying over all the things from nioh that could have been bettered... Lol. Not to also mention the games that Did have long dev cycles and still chose gamepass releases.
This argument or this theory is just a theory. nobody's asking for All AAA games., God of War horizon or all of these triple a generic big-budget games to release day one on a subscription service first party or not. no one is saying that I never even said the first party games was what I was talking about but when you look at third party there's already been like two or three big budget games or at least major releases that have release day one on Game Pass and also without knowing the exact fee that Microsoft is shelling out to get those games on Game Pass day one can't really even suggest that you know that it somehow lesser than the potentiality of sales not even guaranteed just potential of sales which could ultimately be lackluster. Let's not forget that eventually they drop off of the service.
Feels like this allegiance and excuse making for Sony is the unjustified idea here. it's this All or Nothing black or white mentality that that's just not been the reality but seems to be necessary for your this idea to have merit when time has thus far proven this to be wrong.
Now I'm not saying that your idea or argument or the many other people that agree with this don't have some sort of
good reason to think this way and I also agree that maybe some titles you don't release day one on the sub service but if you had something set in stone where people that want the game day one can have a day one and then people that want to pay the subscription service fee and get the game fairly near release could maybe have it a month or maybe two months later; I guarantee it would be the best of both worlds. There's always those fomo buyers that adopt DAY ONE no matter what and then you're going to have the people that are going to pay the subscription service for that bonus of getting the game so near release now that would be a dope compromise. One could even Implement some sort of like donation portal for a game that you just really liked that was released a One on Game Pass and donate you know 20 bucks or something if you feel like you want to say that extra thank you to Deb's. Or you could Implement some sort of like pre-order scheme where if you do pay for a little bit extra even though you get it on a lot of subscription service that you could get some sort of incentivized bonus for doing that I mean they do stuff like that anyways as it stands. There are certainly options to make it more equitable.
If we just look at like three of the games that I have mentioned in my original post on this. Take a look at a plague tale, atomic heart, and wo long. For me I wanted to get those games but they DIDN'T ultimately seem to be right up my alley or of the quality where I want to Shell out full retail 60 or $70 for those.
on Game Pass I could have played all of those got the enjoyment out of them and not felt like it was a purchase that I really didn't need to make or was fully satisfying. Just those games alone that's you know 180 plus us dollars minimum that I just saved by paying a subscription service that is way less....
On top of that we need games that have lesser development Cycles because this weird contrast we're all we have right now is generic iterative copy and paste big budget Triple A titles, many of which are basically watching a movie with limited gameplay variety, gotcha monetization live service gambling schemes and then we have a bunch of metroidvania, and retro Indies there's no wide scale double a development anymore. Those games that are good but not as polished,... there's hardly any of them because they can't survive with the way this industry has become.
I think like I was saying from the beginning I know this is kind of a long-winded thing but that's just how I am, you just got to look at the games that have allowed their games to release day one on game pass. Some of these games were major releases, sequels to games that were highly successful and therefore were anticipated to be successful again and perhaps more financially lucrative and yet they still chose to take whatever that flat fee is we are assuming is all they get so there's got to be something to it man like it's not just all doom and gloom or black and white or All or Nothing.
@J2theEzzo thank you! Because it was shortened I thought he might've meant something else.
Haven't played it yet so no vote, but based on a few hours of watching it I would give it an 8 based on that.
@KundaliniRising333 I don’t think you get what I’m saying. Those third party titles are subsidized by other platforms, you can’t say that I have a theory and you are proven right when in actuality you didn’t refute anything and just talked around it.
More people want AAA games than AA. That’s why CoD, Elden Ring, Hogwarts will sell tens of millions. No way A Plague Tale would ever come close. Again, it’s the reason MS wants CoD. People want that. There are more players now than ever before with less time and more money, AAA big budget will vastly be more in demand than AA arcade or indie games.
You have your opinion, but not a rebuttal at all.
Se-iggght it sates my appetite. For these type of games not quite a sekiro in terms of art and world, and graphics always dated but I feel the compulsion to come back for more parry action. Sometimes you've just bn there/ played that one too many times but knew this'd be a title to hold my attention regardless
I see the M$trolls have managed to derail this articlecomments into a Plus vs gamepass drama once again. People, don't take the bait ffs.
On topic; I gave it 10/10. Just got the platinum on my PS5 and started once again on NG+ and anyone who played Nioh 1 or 2 knows that this is there the game really starts. 🦾😉
For new to the series you play it once to beat all missions and try to collect and upgrade your gear to max. After that you play the game again on NG+ and get even better gear. First boss is a joke with new gear so second playthrough will go much faster overall.
If you bought seasonpass a third difficulty comes with first dlc (think it's scheduled for may) together with new zone(s), weapons and gear. For each dlc they add more of that and you get really powerful the longer you play. That's the real endgame to be honest. Happy gaming everyone 🦾🍻✌️
I'm really enjoying it, just not as much as I did Nioh 2 so it gets a solid 8/10 from me. Overall it feels shallower than Nioh 2 and what we gain with the deflection mechanics isn't worth the loss of stances and deep weapon specific skill trees, same with the gear being so dull... I need to get into NG+ though before passing a final verdict on gear and build crafting.
Visually it feels like a downgrade and performance is a bit all over the place (on PC), all three dubs feel like they're lacking as well.
All-in-all it feels like a B-team effort, but despite my complaints I'm still having a good time.
I love the nioh games and I do like this but I actually don't think it's much better than Nioh 2. It's good but not great and that's all I can say about it really.
N/A, I haven't even bought the game yet. I'm waiting for a $20 sale in a few years.
@Volsung_Fjorgynnson agree with you. awesome game that got me into souls-like genre which i was avoiding for a long time because of being afraid of difficulty. Linear approach is great as I am a bit tired of open world. You can hop into it for an hour or two to beat main battleground or a few sub battlegrounds.
Extremely recommended to beginners at this genre. Don’t be afraid of the first boss, If I beat him, you can too. It doesn’t take hours to finish him as everybody claims in their review
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