The First Berserker: Khazan Review - Screenshot 1 of 5

The First Berserker: Khazan is a stylish action RPG that borrows equally from Souls-likes and looter shooters. Set in the world of Dungeon Fighter Online, this single-player spin-off delves into the past, 800 years before the events of the popular beat-'em-up, but you don't need to have played the original to enjoy this new journey.

Khazan's story is one of betrayal and vengeance. Framed as a traitor, the once-great General Khazan is tortured and imprisoned before being freed from his bondage by a magical entity made up of the ghosts of several strong warrior spirits. It only gets weirder from here.

Unlike a typical Souls-like's interconnected world, The First Berserker's story is told via a series of distinct levels. It's a choice that suits the game well, as each level offers up a chunk of the story for you to engage with, but it's not a particularly interesting tale. Khazan's quest for vengeance against those who wronged him is a compelling enough start, but the narrative takes a lot of predictable twists and turns and, because you have no real connection to his past, it's hard to feel invested.

The First Berserker: Khazan Review - Screenshot 2 of 5

One optional quest chain is particularly touching and tells an emotional story about the heavy cost of vengeance, but its reuse of bosses, a frequent problem with the side quests, makes it, and the rest of them, hard to enjoy. These shorter missions also expose a problem at the heart of Khazan. You can mostly turn your brain off and breeze through the levels once you've spent a few hours mastering the core mechanics. The painterly, cel-shaded art style makes it all pretty to look at, but it's more like a poster you glance at on your way somewhere else than a painting you can lose yourself in for hours.

The levels all follow the same formula. Although the environments range from snowy mountain peaks to hilly, rustic villages to deep, dark mines and caves, you always fight your way through a series of standard enemies that all drop randomised gear before facing off against the boss. You get so much loot you're practically drowning in it, but luckily the game only has three different types of weapon: a dual-wield sword and axe, a two-handed greatsword, and a spear.

Khazan was already a legendary warrior, and the ghost has only made him stronger. Each weapon type has its own dedicated skill tree that allows you to perform strong combos and engage with different combat mechanics. The dual-wield weapons can unleash a devastating attack that causes subsequent hits to deal even more damage, and the spear allows Khazan to enter an almost phantom state, where each of his blows has an afterimage that strikes the foe again. You can reset all of your learned skills so if you ever want to swap weapons, you can do so without any consequence. It's a great system that encourages and rewards experimentation. The spear was the best all-rounder due to its fast, wide ranging strikes, but all the weapons can be useful if you learn their movesets and invest into their skills. The combat system is flawed, though.

The First Berserker: Khazan Review - Screenshot 3 of 5

Like Sekiro, you and your enemies have a posture bar that can be broken to land a critical hit, but it doubles as a stamina bar, so you're limited in how much damage you can dish out in the early stages of the game before you've upgraded Khazan's stats. This feels antithetical to the heart of the combat, which encourages and rewards viciousness.

There are also multiple ways to block an attack, but they can be very inconsistent. There's your standard block which negates most damage, a perfect block which will deal stamina damage to your foe, a parry which can deflect certain unblockable attacks and deal damage, and a reflection which actually causes you to take some damage but deals huge stamina damage to the enemy in return. Learning the very precise timing for all of these, along with which attacks they're actually effective against, is the hardest part of the game, and the inconsistency makes it more frustrating than gratifying. It gives you the same itch for rhythmic combat that Sekiro or Nine Sols does but it never manages to scratch it.

The First Berserker: Khazan Review - Screenshot 4 of 5

The randomised loot also muddies the whole experience and means you'll spend a lot of time in menus that only serve to stall the more exciting elements of the game. Do you really care that this helmet gives you +25 stamina and that helmet gives you +1.2% frontal assault damage? You will when you see that wearing a matching set confers bonuses based on how many items in it you have equipped, but then you see a piece of armour with way better defence; is it worth breaking up the set and losing that bonus? Who cares, honestly? You're going to wear the armour that looks coolest at the end of the day.

This wouldn't be an issue if you were given loot sparingly, but at the end of every level or two you'll have dozens of new pieces of gear to analyse and it just becomes a chore. There's also a blacksmith who can craft gear and a witch who can change its attributes. There's far too much space given to the loot in a game where you just want to go fast. Fortunately, it's a chore that can be avoided for a while, as your increasing aptitude with the game and learning new skills make levels a cinch to get through until some bosses unexpectedly and completely wall your progress and force you to actually use better gear.

The First Berserker: Khazan Review - Screenshot 5 of 5

The fights themselves are exhilarating, which only makes all the systems that put them off all the more annoying. Any Souls-like is made or broken on the strengths of its boss fights, and Khazan's usually shine bright. From beastly yetis to tanky-yet-agile flamethrowing soldiers and even a snake-like dragon, there's a lot of variety in the main missions' big bads. When you get in the zone and everything clicks into place, the electrifying music builds and the tension ratchets up as you fight a war of attrition, desperately using every tool at your disposal to whittle the enemy's health down before your own is depleted. But then a deflection that's always worked up until now suddenly doesn't, and the illusion is shattered.

Conclusion

Ultimately, The First Berserker: Khazan is a good time. Its aesthetic differentiates it from the plethora of ARPG Souls-likes we've become used to, and its brilliant boss fights are engaging enough to entice you through levels that start to feel boring around the mid-way point of the game. But its lacklustre story and bloated, inconsistent mechanics hinder what could have been a better game if it were more refined.

Related Products

Please note that some external links on this page are affiliate links, which means if you click them and make a purchase we may receive a small percentage of the sale. Please read our FTC Disclosure for more information.