In Wo Long: fallen dynasty the fun comes from the precise timing you must display in your sword fights. The story and visuals, on the other hand, fall far short of the exciting gameplay.
Team Ninja is one of the most renowned combat game makers in the gaming industry today. In 2004, the studio put itself on the map with the extremely difficult action-adventure game Ninja guide, and since then the creators have mainly focused on variations on that formula: action games that push the player’s reflexes to the limit. In recent years, Team Ninja has been very successful with the two parts of the Niohseries, for which they eagerly borrowed from the work of competitor From Software. Just like in them Dark soulsgames you have to enter into battles Nioh keeping your stamina up to par, death lurks around every corner and the game forces you to play methodically.
Met Wo Long: fallen dynasty Team Ninja takes another From Software game as an example, viz Axe: shadows die twice, the samurai game that was crowned Game Of The Year at the 2019 Game Awards. As with Sekiro, everything here is about timing: by parrying your enemies’ attacks at the right time, you unbalance them, after which you can deal a sensitive blow. For example, every fight requires supreme concentration and the adrenaline rushes through your body if you barely know how to deflect an attack.
Classic in pulp version
While the Niohgames were set in seventeenth-century Japan, Team Ninja opts in Wo Long for another classical setting: the China of the post-Han dynasty period (from AD 168). That era became famous through the fourteenth century Romance of the Three Kingdoms, which is pretty much the Chinese equivalent of the Iliad: an elaborate wartime epic that has had a huge impact on the country’s narrative culture. Unfortunately, Team Ninja isn’t known for its sophisticated storytelling techniques, and Wo Long is no exception: all the nuance of the original stories is lost in a pulp adaptation, in which a mysterious elixir of life provokes a veritable plague of zombies and demons. It’s almost touching how the classic heroes continue to talk about loyalty and honor while trying to stay out of the jaws of a monster alligator.
Snack
The visual design and game structure also lag far behind competing games. See graphically Wo Long looks like it was made five years ago, and in terms of design it’s straightforward: a succession of battlefields, bamboo forests and burning cities that don’t have a single striking feature. In addition, the game takes place in discrete levels, so you never get the feeling of a cohesive world – something that From Software’s games excel at.
The gameplay itself remains solid. Admittedly, it is only for experienced gamers – at the end of the first level you already encounter a final boss that is so difficult to fight that beginners will quickly give up (I had to try it twenty-five times myself). But once you get the hang of it, it’s a feast: balancing on the edge between life and death, surrounded by all manner of demonic enemies, each victory feels like a personal triumph. Wo Long is therefore a nice snack, which you quickly forget after the adrenaline has worn off.
