There is a low chance I check out New Game+, optional content and higher difficulties, but right now my desire to do so is quite faint because the game runs so poorly. I'll probably just get back to Nioh 2 since I was in the middle of that when I received this game. Because of that, it's possible I just haven't reached a point in Wo Long where loot is success-defining and the overall difficulty kicks up. What I know for sure though is Nioh hates your soul right from the very beginning and will do whatever it takes to make you hate your life from the moment you Press Any Button on that there main menu. Even if Wo Long eventually gets _way_ harder, it's still going to be a night and day difference. ^_^
I've had an interest in this game for a while now as I tend to really enjoy Team Ninja's games even if they are typically flawed. Thank you for this, I'm definitely gonna check it out now!
I really wish this game had better basic enemy variety. You really start to feel it quickly, even with the DLC. For comparison, Nioh 2's DLC added the following (excluding bosses and ''retools'' of existing enemies): #1 added 2 new enemy types; Bakegani and Nuppeppo. #2 added 4 (!) new enemy types; Yasha, Oboroguruma, Underworld Soldier and Hellish Hag. #3 added 2 new enemy types: Konaki-Jiji and Itsumade (Suiki, Fuki, Kinki and Ongyoki are retools, but unique enough that you could count those too) Wo Long's DLC added the following unique enemies: #1 added 2 new enemy types; Bingcan and Huodou. #2 added 1 new enemy type; Shrimp Soldier. #3 added 1 new enemy type... is what I'd say, if the enemy they added wasn't just Shuyao, the first boss of the DLC, but smaller and weaker. The issue shows pretty much immediately here. The game already had bad enemy variety, but the DLC added basically half as many new enemies as Nioh 2's DLC did on top of that. Semi-related, but I also just really miss the Nioh 1/2 model viewer. It was so cool being able to see enemy models up close. For some reason, they replaced that in Wo Long and just made them static pictures for every enemy/character. It's one of several small things (like not being able to preview transmogs....) that feel like a completely unnecessary regression from Nioh.
The overall scope of the game is just pared down in basically every way, yeah. The upside is improved focus, the downside is that lack of diversity in situations becomes apparent before long. In a game like this where player moveset is pretty limited, usually variety is kept by providing a lot of different enemies and having _their_ movesets be the different things we react to. In Wo Long you definitely learn most enemies super fast and it's what contributes to that crazy power fantasy where you feel relaxed and unstoppable, but it's also part of why many players will likely put the game down without entering NG+.
I've had this game on my Steam Wishlist for a long time now but haven't gotten to buy and play it. Thank you for covering it on your channel because now I have more interest in buying and playing it. Your reviews are some of my favorites due to their level of detail and focus on the things the player wants to know, which isn't always something nailed well in other reviews that I've seen.
Thanks so much Jose. I'll keep trying to focus on those qualities in new videos I make, I mostly just talk about things I found interesting and it tends to work out that way. ^_^
finally someone who reminds us of Ronins greatness I would also wanna mark, Ronin has all the good elements from all the Games they did, the stance switch, the parrying, endless combo variation with no pauses... just peak
Yes! Rise of the Ronin is one of my favorite games I've ever played. This is the video I made on it a short while after release. I love that game to an inexplicable degree. ruclips.net/video/U-ttbfWD0nY/видео.html
Honestly I was quite saddened on launch day when the PC Version of this game didn't even WORK at the lowest settings. Sad to hear from the pinned comment that it moved up to "runs poorly" Addendum: I have heard frequently that its quite good when it runs well! I just cannot stand temporal scaling and the the dithering it introduces to the image quality
I'm with you. The difference between this game and Nioh 2 is astounding in how smooth and performant Nioh 2 is no matter what's happening on screen. I'm not really sure what happened to Wo Long but it was a big reason behind the way the game landed for people. Even for me, though I enjoyed this game, I don't even want to play NG+ or pursue any extra build-sharpening because I know if the difficulty gets just a small bit higher than the relaxed tuning it had on the first playthrough, the performance will just make it feel really frustrating, so I'm done with it.
Thank you. It's pretty difficult (like, even on a technical level, wording everything and including what's most relevant) to be properly fair to the game _and_ the games it's often compared to so I'm pleased most people have been enjoying the video.
Since you mentioned Wuxia,i just wanna say that genre is tailor suited for video games alongside Xinxia and i really hopped this game could deliver at least a lil bit, but it fumbled so hard..Just imagine ARPG like A Record of Mortal's Journey to Immortality type game..Alchemy, flying on swords, making insane formation to trap enemies , just imagine how much fun we could have farming stuff or flying on a dragon instead of riding a horse..We'll see how Phantom Blade Zero fairs or Where Winds Meet..But yeah Wo Long is underrated as relaxing diet type Nioh game..
Exactly! I've been looking for games that can give that fantasy to the player for such a long time, but very few even approach the subject. Looking forward to Where Winds Meet and Phantom Blade Zero a lot, I think even things like The Perceiver have some potential.
I would agree with the notion that the game is a chill time. But that is due to how the combat is designed. The parry is simply too powerful, and you can get away with spamming, ignoring the majority of enemy movesets a lot of the time. This aspect massively changes in the DLCs, with Team Ninja basically trying to challenge the player by elemental chip damage, super high spirit damage, enemies making distance and shooting projectiles, forcing you to parry towards them to get openings. There is also light positioning to ignore attacks. The hardest boss in the game has a lot of these aspects built into his kit. Base game wolong is a good action game, but it feels like junk food, just mindless arcady slop that is very fun in the moment. However the DLCs tell me a different story. Of a game so close to greatness, but fumbles right at the doorstep.
That's very interesting, sounds like two different games almost. I noticed the DLCs are all reviewed Overwhelmingly Negative on Steam, while the game is Mixed - that's very different indeed. I wonder if it was a good idea to make the experience so much more arduous when nothing in the base game hinted that should be expected. I say "I wonder" because of course, I don't know. As I'm sure I mentioned, I haven't played the DLCs since the friends who gifted me the game just got me the game itself without them.
@@LeoKRogue the DLCs are mixed bags, with great and mediocre content mixed together. Its a quality downgrade from Nioh 2, which had DLCs being mostly good to incredible content. Also the difficulty jump had the symptom of people thinking its BS, combined with the performance issues makes it hardly surprising to get nuked on steam
@@LeoKRogue in particular I can think of a few bosses in the DLC which are underatandably considered bs design. For example there is one boss that never stops attacking outside of certain combo enders and has like 4 different variations with different timings for a sibgular attack, that also spaces you out and spams hugh spirit damage arrows with chip damage for blocking. Another basically runs away from you and then nukes you with projectiles from the other side of the arena. These are very simply natural progression of how the combat system is built, specifixally to counter how powerful the parry is and punish you for dodging by spamming. However to the average player it might come across as BS. I for the record found the bosses people complain about to be incredibly peak
That makes a lot of sense. Soulslike and Soulslike-adjacent games do _tend_ to have DLCs that are more challenging than the base game (I fully expect the Lies of P DLC coming this year to be quite a bit tougher than anything in the city of Krat). Since deflects are so universally strong, finding ways to make getting them less comfortable was probably one of the few things Team Ninja could think of. If you were already someone who really enjoyed the base game but just wished it could push you harder, I could see that kind of player really appreciating that the DLC actually tried to construct something harder. What are your personal favorite bosses in Wo Long, in case I want to look them up (or if I get the DLC sometime later, to look out for them)?
@@LeoKRogue 1. Lu Bu: good fight, strangely hard for early game 2. Dong Zhuo: tricky fight, rewarding to get good at 3. Blindfolded boy:great movement fight, however visuals are weird and obstructed For DLC: 1. Dian Wei: best beast fight in the game, nice and easy spectacle fight, super spammy 2. Taishi Ci: hardest human fight in the game, lots of combo variation and aggression 3. Taishi Ci demon form: hardest fight in the game, super rewarding to get good at and go on the offense 4. Guan Yu:considered the best fight in the game, basically Lu Bu on crack
I just enjoy how every game team ninja makes, they try something interesting with one of your gauges like xp or stamina. In nioh it was the Ki pulse, in ninja gaiden it was with the orbs absorption, in wo long your gauge is your stamina, you posture and your mana pool at the same time and replenishes with hits and parries, and moral system just makes the leveling progression tied to the mission itself, so every mission you start at basic moral and level through out the same mission. Great game, just wish the they get rid of the loot system for their future games.
That's something I also find really admirable about them. You really get this sense that Team Ninja themselves get easily bored, so they're always trying new, wacky, fun things in every new title they drop on players. As for getting rid of loot, I feel like since that's the one constant that's _stayed_ in all of their modern titles, that means it's probably not going anywhere.. 😅 That said, maybe we get a new 3D Ninja Gaiden sometime, and there's probably no way loot is a part of that game, given its nature.
@LeoKRogue you make a good point about the loot. oh boy, i just imagined Ninja gaiden with color coded loot, and the tought is terrifying 😂. Ryu Hayabusa stopping his rampage to sort his collection of color coded trousers. Regardless I always find myself buying their games, they just have an unmatched consistency, including stranger of paradise.
I feel like Ryu Hayabusa would look at a pile of blue, yellow and white drops, hit the Compare button and realize literally ALL of it is just worse than the Dragon Sword and go on with his day.
@@LeoKRogue would be funny, if they made a fake out at the start of the game, the first boss you kill showers you with loot and as you think oh no another one of those games, Ryu goes : not this time.
Honestly leave it to LeoK to make a well spoken review about Wo Long I swear you are to good, and I agree with your takes 100% percent on this game, happy New Year.
Yeah, I've heard that if someone can get into it properly it's really quite something. I'm not there yet myself but I keep hoping I can fully enjoy it some day.
hey Leo, just wanted to let you know Ubisoft just came out with a huge parkour mechanics reveal in their official discord for AC shadows, and without spoiling anything it seems to blow the previous 4 games out of the water. I would love to see a video of your analysis
@LeoKRogue I agree. if they're continuing with the current engine and thus samey-feeling parkour with the annoying pauses before jumps, adding fluid stylish animations and more gameplay options that make use of the parkour is pretty much the best thing they could do. if only they started doing this with origins
Definitely the type of review I needed, thanks for your input as always. Now that the game is on sale, ima check it out. Also hoping ninja gaiden ragebound does well, so we can hopefully get Ninja gaiden 4🙏😭
That's my hope exactly. Ragebound looks like my kind of game already, so I'm sure I'll have a good time with it - but it's not THE Ninja Gaiden people have been waiting for so hopefully that gets some motion.
@ Facts, Ragebound looks fun, especially the pixal art being gorgeous like blasphemous, but it never reach the pure insanity and beauty of the bloody pure action of the 3D ninja gaiden games. Btw, what would your ideal ninja gaiden game be?
I think basically anything is fine as long as we get a new game in the style of the Black/Sigma Trilogy. Crazy futuristic stuff, Ryu taking everything way too seriously as he runs around the world killing hundreds of dudes, Flying Swallow, Izuna Drop, the usual stuff. A prequel set further back than NG3 would be fine too. I just want it to be a good game is all.
Bro you should make a video on the Ac Shadow news, they delayed it again to polish further and apparently there are back ejects and parkour improvements. Some of the footage looks more fluid than Unity even. Imo the game will be the best since Origins, despite all the controversy.
Played this on PS5 and it’s definitely my favourite of their games. Love the energy, the art style, the whole vibe really. It’s tough but crucially you can summon help if a boss gets too much. 👍🏻
I was wondering if some would hold Wo Long as their favorite, and it makes sense. It does so much to separate and distinguish itself from _any_ of their other titles (it genuinely doesn't play that much like Nioh, or Stranger, or Ronin really) that if you love the things it's doing differently, you probably _really_ love them. I just enjoy the crazy flow-state you can put yourself in. It's kind of nice not having Stamina and basically just being concerned with momentum. The back-and-forth of fighting something that does actually push you -- which was admittedly rare for me -- can be exhilarating in a way none of their other games have really given me.
Could make a lot of really cool improvements if they ever decided to revisit it, yeah. I would love to see expansions to how we engage with battlefields, controlling flags being even more meaningful in some way, and enhancements to the Reinforcements/party-system that go beyond buffing one or both of your dudes and benefiting from their passives.
While I think Wo Long doesn't quite reach Nioh 2 level of good it is quite high bar to meet after all, however in terms of boss fight Wo Long have some of the best special mention goes to Lu Bu, his fight is amazing and surpassing most of Nioh Boss fight
I really like it. I think people praise (new) Lords of the Fallen for how it handles Magic and Ammo, but Wo Long for _spellcasting specifically_ is on a totally higher level compared to that. Everything is part of the intuitive combat flow-state where how much you can do depends on how much momentum you have on the enemy, or how much the enemy has on you. If your spirit is super high you can press your advantage, and it can tempt you into casting at the wrong moment and "biting off more than you can chew" so when a big hit comes in you're suddenly very Orange. It also makes spell-costs feel genuinely quite heavy from neutral which kind of "paces" and slots them into being ideally-used _during_ combat. Popping the Wood Lifesteal spell turns you like 80% Orange instantly, so yes you and your squad can heal from attacks but blocking or eating any hits yourself now has a massive consequence. And the coolest part about all of it is that there's no need for mana-potions or any such mechanics that would slow down the experience. Just fight more and have good momentum.
My biggest issue (outside dlc, havent got to that yet, beat the base game though) was the exhausting use of Large Boss enemy #678. The fights with enemies your size are AMAZING. Im getting very tired of the majority of my boss fights are just big enemy swing hard. Elden Rings best fights were medium-large to small enemies. Bale excluded, that was tight. Too many Souls likes have far too many large enemies, that doesnt make use of the cool fighting combat. Hated it in Ninja Gaiden too, tower biss fights felt horrible, while the normal size enemies were sooo much fun.
I also tend to like it when there's a pretty good mix or when a game leans toward player-sized foes more often. Oh, but with this in mind, you would probably really like Rise of the Ronin. Made with some of the lessons learned from Wo Long, and since it's not set in a fantasy universe like their previous games, but mostly adheres to history, _all_ the enemies are either human, so our size, or normal animals that actually exist.
@LeoKRogue Yeah, I'm a good mix kinda souls player as well. I had heard good things about Ronin, haven't played it myself however. I might just give it a try considering the wait for Nightreign, or Crimson Desert(fingers crossed on this one)
There is no need to play at full Low to play in good condition, you have to set the FPS option to 60, that's what slows down the game severely. When you freeze you can't do anything about it but in Low or in Ultra it's the same thing, it doesn't change anything.
I recently found Wo Long just sitting around in my hard drive and wondered why i don't play the game. I launched it and after 2 hours of inconsistent frame rates, i remembered...
Great video Leo. Tbh I probably won't play a melee action game like this for a while since I have a lot of games to play already my backlog is so full, but who knows 😅 The new Ninja Gaiden game looks sick I loved The Messenger and it looks like the same style as that, but I wonder what the gameplay will be like. As always thanks for the subtitles!
I really enjoyed the Messenger too, this'll probably be more of a linear game with less backtracking but it's hard to tell right now, they could totally go Metroidvania since that's what The Game Kitchen have experience making.
Cool video man. Now that I know wo long and Rise of ronin are team ninja games they have my interest. I always like their games flaws and all. The one thing I dislike about the Nioh games is that there was a bit too much loot. I just got so tired picking all that stuff up and looking at numbers when I just wanted to hurry up and get back into the combat. So less loot in Wo long sounds great to me. And it sounds like parrying in this game is pretty good like in sekiro. And not the crap you see in the Dark Souls game. What I will miss in this game is the Stance changes. That aspect feels great to me. So thanks for the review im gonna go pick up both wo long and Rise of ronin soon because of it.
Everything you said makes me think you'd probably really enjoy this game, yeah. Less loot-focus, lots of rhythmic parries and a general fast pace of play. Rise of the Ronin meanwhile is a _little_ closer to Nioh, with some stance-play involved. Just know there's only human enemies (and animals) since it's not a Fantasy setting.
I'm not sure if the first boss has since been nerfed or anything like that but I basically never struggled against any boss in the game except for both of Lu Bu's fights, a few of the optional sparring battles against party members, and some of the duo-bosses especially. I also had a lot of fun with it and don't regret playing it at all. It was just a nice "play it once" experience that didn't change my life or anything but it was enjoyable all the way through.
That explains a lot. It also affirms some lingering thoughts I had that TN probably decided to aim this game at a different audience than Nioh, since I don't think those games would ever consider restraining their cruelty in that kind of way.. 😅
I love the simplicity in this game. And loot serves its purpose rather than just taking space. My only issue is the enemy variety and and the unimaginative map design but i think fromsoft spoilt me in those regards. I infinitly prefer this fast and furiois gameplay to the spam roll mechanic in DS. It helps that im just better at these kinda games. Sekiro and Lies of P are great too.
Lies of P was my Game of the Year for its release year. To this day I haven't played something that was exactly what I wanted so much, except maybe the closed beta for Khazan which was amazing in similar ways. Looking forward to the PC demo Jan 16.
I appreciate the faith. I don't think I go into too much detail this time, just putting into general context why this game isn't super beloved, but why I found it pretty fun and chill anyway.
WARNING! This video is an opinion, not fact. I agree. Nioh>>>>Souls on difficulty and it’s only on NG+ Max that you will create a build that makes the game play itself. Like Nioh 2 stacking spirits that create a combo that leaves enemies stunned forever or 1’s Living weapon build/Paralysis R1+ ⭕️. Wo long is even more souls than Nioh, true. However it’s still Nioh. By the time you reach high NG+ you’ll create that new insane build. The uploader is late to the party and hasn’t even finished the journey. Wo Long is a game with a lot of “lost history” of those who waited for the DLC. Killing that damn Monkey in 30 seconds with a pure Water build for a 0.00001% drop rate for the first “divine rarity” weapons. Thankfully Veterans know that the game is destined to evolve with each DLC, by raising the level cap and all of that.
Of course. All discussion videos are opinions. ^_^ If people wanted facts they'd hit up Wikipedia. This is just based on the experience I had with the game. Hopefully it encourages more people to pick it up, play it themselves, and have their own experiences since I never see anyone bring this game up but it's actually pretty fun.
Hated Sekiro, loved Wo Long. Loved Nioh 2, SOP and the like but for some reason Wo Long just comes back to me, not even I to it. I hate rhythm games, but love Wo Long. Wo Long is an enigma, it's a modern day game that plays like a PS2 game: it's just flashy fun that you can pick up and put down whenever you want. That's what makes a good game to me, so Wo Long is a good game. Thumbs up, though I play on the PS5 so am not plagued with poor optimization. Any TN fan just expect a PC port to be poor, it's not what they are good at (Like more developers).
It's a very unique game for sure. Rise of the Ronin definitely took inspiration from how quickly and satisfyingly you can run and jump through environments here. I think it would be enjoyed by many more players if they did work a little harder on fixing up more of the performance, since like I said Nioh 2 and Stranger of Paradise both run much better and Wo Long deserves that same care IMO.
I think Wo Long leaning too much into souls games where it shouldn't. It feels like they tried to mash up souls loot with Nioh loot and it was more like oil and water. Every piece of loot upgraded the same so it didn't matter what start tier it was other than how many embedments you could slot in it. One of the games biggest mistakes was making marital arts hard tied to weapons like dark souls 3 weapon arts instead of elden rings ash of war system. Made having a good martial art combat setup really difficult. They fixed in the higher difficulties in a roundabout way, but it would have been better to just do it freely. My biggest gripe with the game was with morale. Even though it can prevent one shots as you said it was tedious in higher difficulties, It felt like it was testing the waters for something else that maybe never got used. Ronin's version of morale worked better. I do hope Team Ninja gets' another crack at Wo Long with a Wo Long 2. If not I'd like to see someone pick up where Wo Long Left off and make souls like that riffs on the things they tried,
Another Wo Long game with the good stuff they learned from Rise of the Ronin could be an incredible experience, especially since part of why Ronin was so good was them taking some of the smart things from Wo Long in the first place.
Weirdly enough i had no technical issues when trying it out back when it came out the game however really didn't click with me. I had a weird journey through the souls like genre (though i dont like putting nioh games in the genre for some reasons you mentioned here) After mastering Nioh 2 and 1 and then mastering the Fromsoft catalogue of ER Sekiro and DS3 Wo long did feel a tad too easy , the areas were also nothing special, the parry mechanic being able to parry everything from huge swings to random barrels rolling down a hill was just the best iteration of the system i've ever seen, and it added a bit more flare to the gameplay than simply parrying specifics which is what annoyed me with souls titles and is why i almost exclusively avoid any sort of parry build or playstyle in those games. NIoh 2 has the amount of depth that really takes you hundreds of hours to fully grasp and understand but once you do the ceiling feels like it just keeps getting higher and higher , once you've made your build learnt the moveset of your weapon and learnt the moveset of your enemies the main goal you have is how do i make this fight look cooler and more anime than the last time, in Sekiro the game is already designed to be flashy and cool at a base with paired and locked in animations of certain counter moves so once you hit a certain level the peak is already kidna there you can't go much futher and in other souls titles the main thing is can i beat this boss with the least amount of power (since the games make you OP as all hell, which is why the issue of any sort of balancing in fromtitles is just negated by how broken everything is you the boss the regular dude with a torch) and the lack of build expression you mention here in Wo Long just leads me to believe the game would be even less for me than i initially thought. I do hope you end up liking Nioh 2,but even if you don't im glad you adore Team Ninja so much and i cannot wait to join you in loving Rise of the Ronin once it comes to PC. Love how you approach discussing and analysing things you like and not like and how you still find good things about Nioh when it hasn't clicked with you or you find it unenjoyable as a whole. It's rare to see this amount of a measured approach.
TL;DR absolute banger of a video i am super glad i checked it out (for some reason i havent had a video of yours pop up on my timeline in ages and i had to manually check to see if you've been uploading )
Thanks. ^_^ I'm not giving up on Nioh (yet) either, there's way too much cool stuff in it to let how annoying it is stop me until my patience is truly spent. I still got a bit more in me.
@@LeoKRogue This makes me really happy to hear ! I've always thought you'd love Nioh 2 and wanted you to try it so hopefully it eventually becomes your new fave hahaha
I played this a month ago on gamepass but on second map (when MC first met with Guan Yu), the fps really dips and I uninstalled later on. The fps have been all over the place but that map in particular was so terrible in that regard. I was having 50-60 fps in previous map but suddenly dips to 19-20s. Overall tho, it's a much more simpler Nioh and the parry is good but the technical side of it turned me off
Yeah, on PC especially the performance is all over the place. I even took notes on which maps and levels ran better than others so some of my longer footage segments could be recorded from there.. 😅
@@LeoKRogue i also think the gamepass version is a lot worse than steam version because I compared my performance to other people on steam with similar spec and the gamepass is a bit worse. Or I'm just unlucky, idk.. It really sucks that it is a fun game from the time I've played but the performance needs a lot of work, even to this day
5:38 Not technically correct since From also makes Armored Core, lol. Have you ever played Armored Core and if not, how can i drag you into one of the best games ever made in the form of Armored Core 6? Seriously, Armored Core 6 is beyond amazing
It's not relevant to the conversation since it's not a Soulslike and bringing it up in a video about Wo Long would be pointless -- so it's not part of the script on purpose. I didn't bring up Otogi or Shadow Tower either. ^_^ But yeah I've played a good amount of the series and AC6 is my favorite. I have a lot of very positive things to say about it. (Soon, possibly!)
@@LeoKRogue Personally Master of Arena, Last Raven and For Answer are in the general area of where my favorite AC game is. I hope 6 receives an expansion like prior games received, because that'll probably result in the best game in the series. 6 is almost the best but there's a few flaws that hold it back for me when compared to what the entries I mentioned have to offer.
I've said it before and will say it again, after Nioh 2, the quality of team ninja games has dropped. Both gameplay-wise and graphics/performance-wise the games after Nioh 2 are downgrades in those departments. And if those 2 are basic, mediocre or terrible, that right there is a disappointment and a cause for concern.
Performance aside (which was and is still pretty bad) I think Wo Long is just very different, it's a game that focuses on different things. It's not really serving or catering to players who enjoyed Nioh so it's understandably not appreciated by them. With that said after making two bangers in Nioh 1 and Nioh 2 I could see Team Ninja wanting a break from that series. Also Rise of the Ronin is legendary and no RotR slander is allowed on this channel, on pain of death. 😤
I played the demo and the game stuttered every single time you were supposed to parry making it impossible to time properly... I was actually looking forward to the game but after the demo it went straight into my ignore list
You're not saying any of the stuff that makes the game interesting. The party system is not just npcs that heal you: it's a gang you control in real time; you can notify them to attack to create gang combos, like you would in a turn based tactics' game but real-time. You're not supposed to fight pressing 1 input to attack and 1 to defend, but control your party in the fight in realtime alongside your main character. /// The platforming is simple but very refreshing. The fact that you can jump to a ladder and enable the interaction with it in air and transition seamlessly, without losing momentum, feels like miles ahead of anything fromsoft ever did. /// The tug of war system to control action/reaction as a different way to stamina's "wait your turn" is what makes this game truly unique. It's not that it makes the game easier, but that turns the game into something different. The fact that you need to deflect not to break posture but to build the stat in order to use spells, or special moves, or give commands to your units... The game is rewarding you with special currency for being good at the game, rather than just rewarding you with damage. You would be deflecting to heal your party, or buff it, or debuff the enemies, rather than doing it for damage; you would be taking advantage of the situation rather than doing it because the game wants you to. You can play full support if you want to, and never directly attack enemies, but rather use your units to deal the damage. /// People just don't understand how to play this game as it's meant to, they keep playing it like a soulslike because it's wrongly advertised: this is an ARTS (action realtime strategy), not a soulslike. Just cuz you have to enable checkpoints to level up doesn't mean you have to wait your turn during combat and have to do everything yourself.
For perspective I have a background in RTS games (Red Alert 3 and Brood War mainly) so I'm no stranger to those concepts, but your comment surprised me and I don't think advertising has anything to do with that. ^_^ I'll check out the game again with a fresh perspective the next time I play it again and give those things a try. I didn't look up anything about this game until I played it, I just played it and all my thoughts came about from what the game gave me. You clearly love Wo Long a lot, and I wish I could have experienced any of those things when I played it myself, but none of that was ever surfaced to me or made to feel very meaningful on this first playthrough I had. I'm actually kind of sad about that because it sounds really cool and unique. I also do mention how nice and fast paced exploration is, and cover that different party members have different effects that become part of customization. Thanks for watching and your effort making this comment.
@@LeoKRogue advertising the game as soulslike makes players approach it as a soulslike, which is going to be the worst way to approach this game or any other soulslike. Fromsoft doesn't make action rpgs, they make Realtime-Turnbased adventures. Action rpg implies hack and slash, but Realtime-Turnbased implies tactics and methodism: the opposite of hack and slash. The way games are advertised shapes the players' perception of the game, in a way it can lead them or mislead them. If people knew "soulslikes" are turn based they would find them the easiest games, as they're basically pokemon.
@@LeoKRogue next time you play wolong imagine you're micromanaging your units like you would in starcraft, or that you have all your pokemons available at all times.
The lack of stances or more appropriately; different movesets in weapons in the same way Souls have is what kills a lot of the game's potential. It's like going back to "everyone's a clone" in DW terms. Not to mention that there was a game that launched just before Wo Long called Xuan-Yuan Sword VII that had a "sword" attack aka the light attacks and "martial arts" attacks that were the heavy attacks and despite the player havng only a sword, he had three martial arts stances, a similar parry. Xuan-Yuan copied Nioh a lot for that title so when Wo Long comes out and is lesser on that front along with having the absolute worst HUD ever, you can see why people are just turned off. In comparisson, while SoP doesn't have stances or ki pulses etc and arguably doesn't have as cool a parry as Wo Long's, the way you have a very satisfying small combo with good light-heavy interractions and the fact that the HUD isn't an absolute disaster helps quite a lot. Wo Long is one of those titles that need a second game to improve. Nioh didn't need one yet Nioh 2 was welcome for what it did. WL is in dire need. It doesn't need to change much either beyond those two things I mentioned. They would need to include one or two weapon types more though. Finally, the fact that you can't really mitigate or turn off the "qi circulation" particle effects on your body or the enemy's is just bad at times, the screen becomes way too busy. SoP kinda has that problem at times but it's a different thing having 90% of the visual noise coming from you and the one enemy compared to the three people of your party and the enemies combined.
@@LeoKRogue It's very chinese(comes from china after all) and is very jank(made on gamebryo, the same engine Skyrim and Oblivion has IIRC?) but if you like xanxia it's worth it.
It's the difficulty setting you can tweak in realtime. If you want to play hard mode ignore it; if you want to adjust difficulty then interact with the system. If you feel it's a chore then you're just bad at the game, cuz you wouldn't need to do it if you were good enough.
I was excited to try this game 2022 but after seeing it had a stamina bar it took away all my enjoyment I’m not much of a soulslike type of gameplay it’s a turn off for me it just how I am I stay clear from any game with a stamina bar
Since you said yourself you were excited, that's reason enough to check it out if you can get it cheap sometime. You're exactly the player who should give it a try, since it _doesn't really_ have a Stamina bar. Not the way you think of it. It basically has a guard-break meter where if you block too much you'll be stunned, but you get it all back as soon as you attack someone a few times, it doesn't limit any of your actions. You can attack as much as you want for free, jump as much as you want for free, sprint around as much as you want for free, those don't cost anything. It's really approachable and chill for players who don't want to deal with managing that kind of resource. I could basically ignore it for my entire playthrough and it never became a problem. With that said, don't cut yourself off from games that do have one either, man. You may be surprised how much you like them.
I'm feeling similarly myself with both Nioh 1 and 2, and as other players have pushed back on that and told me they've found it pretty smooth, I wonder if it's just the weapon-types we've chosen that causes that feeling. In these kinds of games picking a weapon that suits the player is pretty important, so I've started to mess around and try different ones.
Wolong is not a soulslike because it doesn't have stamina: there's no turn based combat; you can push your offense without restraint. It's an actual action game, with a sprinkle of stat progression for the min maxers. It's one of my favorite games. Nioh feels stiff in comparison, like I'm not playing but doing what the game wants me to do at all times. I don't know about performance problems on PC though, and I run 5 years old gear; I don't recall any stuttering or fps drops. /// The reason why Sekiro has a 3 way defense is because of For Honor: the entire fromsoft audience switched to for honor on release, so they had to do extra for their new game's combat to get their audience back. They were already struggling with ds3 being just fan service.
There's a lot of facets to this game that definitely put it firmly in the Soulslike category, I would say - though certainly a lot more fluid and faster paced than any other. I quite enjoyed it. Not every Soulslike forces the player to abide by my-turn-your-turn combat flow when you get really good at them either, but I would like to see how you explain Red Attacks/Critical Attacks in Wo Long. You can very, very rarely ever interrupt them in practical gameplay, so doesn't that make them an enemy turn you're forced to respect? Nothing wrong with that of course, but that's what my experience was when I played it: for me Wo Long enforced its turns quite clearly in those moments. (That said I did enjoy moments where I could hit the enemy with a martial art or Wizardry Spell when their spirit was almost broken and interrupt what they were doing that way, very fun.) I would be shocked if FROM cares anything about For Honor or anything you suggest, honestly. Sekiro has multiple defensive mechanics for the same reason Sifu does, or fighting games as old as Street Fighter 1 do. It's just healthy game design that keeps things dynamic.
@@LeoKRogue poise attacks in wolong can be interrupted using spells or special moves, tho you get the most points for deflecting them so it's more like an opportunity to charge up than losing your turn to act. In fromsoft design your turn is taken from you, rather than give you an opportunity for more gameplay. And I guess you should be shocked cuz elden ring is a breath of the wild clone with ds3 combat: where's the healthy game mechanics to keep gameplay fresh? Fromsoft only creates clone games, they're glorified modders, which is finally coming to light with their elden ring incoming mod 😅 modding their own games is a new level of mediocrity; even their new armored core is the fire fades and estus flasks and dodge spam 😅; Elden ring is an assassins creed without parkour and invisible checklists figured out by youtubers 😅 When your main promoters switch to other games, like oroboro did, you do care about losing your audience's money. For honor's combat is one of its kind, and it was the first third person fighting game: it attracted almost everyone from dark souls who wanted massive battles of havels vs catarinas. I don't need to convince you, this is basic marketing.
Very forgettable team Ninja title. Literally i forgot this game exist in their catalogue and I still know when I seen it for the first time it just made me to believe it's a sekiro rip off. But I like rise of the ronin thought
You can probably ignore more of it in Wo Long than any of their other non-NinjaGaiden games, so you might appreciate that. You definitely are forced to engage with it the smallest amount here compared to their other modern releases since like I said, you can pretty much just find a weapon you like and upgrade it to the end, if you so desire.
Wo long's worst problem is having to play every bit of the lvl to have a fair fight. It gets really annoying on repeat plays, and it already annoyed me on playthrough 1. I just miss the complexity of Nioh too. Fun enough but I played it on gamepass and never want to go back. Also, saying it's easier than Nioh is true to some degree but I know my friend quit Wo Long because the 1st main boss is so insane; He even beat the tiger miniboss on his 1st or 2nd try. And he's played every souls game and Nioh game.
That's really interesting about the first boss, I mentioned in another comment that it's possible that fight has been nerfed severely since I don't think he killed me even once. He may also be a 'check' of sorts to see if you've been diligent about ticking your flags because the difference between low and high Morale is pretty substantial. On that note, I thought it was a fun and unique system since I already explore levels very thoroughly in these kinds of games just by accident, and movement is so unbelievably fast in Wo Long that it made it feel very breezy and effortless to do so, even having little wallruns and double jumps that just let you zip around everywhere. The levels are also usually _very_ small compared TN's usual stages in other games, so maybe the devs thought that if you didn't feel pressed to explore, it may have felt like there was too little to bite into here.
![Leo K [Rogue]](http://yt3.ggpht.com/ytc/AIdro_lU2XPRnoiDY_KR9FankuYDSJC2utR6y9iK6BreeHJD_PA=s48-c-k-c0x00ffffff-no-rj)
There is a low chance I check out New Game+, optional content and higher difficulties, but right now my desire to do so is quite faint because the game runs so poorly. I'll probably just get back to Nioh 2 since I was in the middle of that when I received this game. Because of that, it's possible I just haven't reached a point in Wo Long where loot is success-defining and the overall difficulty kicks up. What I know for sure though is Nioh hates your soul right from the very beginning and will do whatever it takes to make you hate your life from the moment you Press Any Button on that there main menu. Even if Wo Long eventually gets _way_ harder, it's still going to be a night and day difference. ^_^
I've had an interest in this game for a while now as I tend to really enjoy Team Ninja's games even if they are typically flawed. Thank you for this, I'm definitely gonna check it out now!
Awesome. ^_^ Hope you find some fun in it.
I really wish this game had better basic enemy variety. You really start to feel it quickly, even with the DLC. For comparison, Nioh 2's DLC added the following (excluding bosses and ''retools'' of existing enemies):
#1 added 2 new enemy types; Bakegani and Nuppeppo.
#2 added 4 (!) new enemy types; Yasha, Oboroguruma, Underworld Soldier and Hellish Hag.
#3 added 2 new enemy types: Konaki-Jiji and Itsumade (Suiki, Fuki, Kinki and Ongyoki are retools, but unique enough that you could count those too)
Wo Long's DLC added the following unique enemies:
#1 added 2 new enemy types; Bingcan and Huodou.
#2 added 1 new enemy type; Shrimp Soldier.
#3 added 1 new enemy type... is what I'd say, if the enemy they added wasn't just Shuyao, the first boss of the DLC, but smaller and weaker.
The issue shows pretty much immediately here. The game already had bad enemy variety, but the DLC added basically half as many new enemies as Nioh 2's DLC did on top of that.
Semi-related, but I also just really miss the Nioh 1/2 model viewer. It was so cool being able to see enemy models up close. For some reason, they replaced that in Wo Long and just made them static pictures for every enemy/character. It's one of several small things (like not being able to preview transmogs....) that feel like a completely unnecessary regression from Nioh.
The overall scope of the game is just pared down in basically every way, yeah.
The upside is improved focus, the downside is that lack of diversity in situations becomes apparent before long.
In a game like this where player moveset is pretty limited, usually variety is kept by providing a lot of different enemies and having _their_ movesets be the different things we react to.
In Wo Long you definitely learn most enemies super fast and it's what contributes to that crazy power fantasy where you feel relaxed and unstoppable, but it's also part of why many players will likely put the game down without entering NG+.
I've had this game on my Steam Wishlist for a long time now but haven't gotten to buy and play it. Thank you for covering it on your channel because now I have more interest in buying and playing it. Your reviews are some of my favorites due to their level of detail and focus on the things the player wants to know, which isn't always something nailed well in other reviews that I've seen.
Thanks so much Jose. I'll keep trying to focus on those qualities in new videos I make, I mostly just talk about things I found interesting and it tends to work out that way. ^_^
finally someone who reminds us of Ronins greatness
I would also wanna mark, Ronin has all the good elements from all the Games they did, the stance switch, the parrying, endless combo variation with no pauses... just peak
Yes! Rise of the Ronin is one of my favorite games I've ever played. This is the video I made on it a short while after release. I love that game to an inexplicable degree.
ruclips.net/video/U-ttbfWD0nY/видео.html
Honestly I was quite saddened on launch day when the PC Version of this game didn't even WORK at the lowest settings. Sad to hear from the pinned comment that it moved up to "runs poorly"
Addendum: I have heard frequently that its quite good when it runs well! I just cannot stand temporal scaling and the the dithering it introduces to the image quality
I'm with you. The difference between this game and Nioh 2 is astounding in how smooth and performant Nioh 2 is no matter what's happening on screen. I'm not really sure what happened to Wo Long but it was a big reason behind the way the game landed for people. Even for me, though I enjoyed this game, I don't even want to play NG+ or pursue any extra build-sharpening because I know if the difficulty gets just a small bit higher than the relaxed tuning it had on the first playthrough, the performance will just make it feel really frustrating, so I'm done with it.
I feel this is one of the best videos regarding Wo Long and why it was a very polarizing game even amongst Team Ninja fans.
Thank you. It's pretty difficult (like, even on a technical level, wording everything and including what's most relevant) to be properly fair to the game _and_ the games it's often compared to so I'm pleased most people have been enjoying the video.
Since you mentioned Wuxia,i just wanna say that genre is tailor suited for video games alongside Xinxia and i really hopped this game could deliver at least a lil bit, but it fumbled so hard..Just imagine ARPG like A Record of Mortal's Journey to Immortality type game..Alchemy, flying on swords, making insane formation to trap enemies , just imagine how much fun we could have farming stuff or flying on a dragon instead of riding a horse..We'll see how Phantom Blade Zero fairs or Where Winds Meet..But yeah Wo Long is underrated as relaxing diet type Nioh game..
Exactly! I've been looking for games that can give that fantasy to the player for such a long time, but very few even approach the subject.
Looking forward to Where Winds Meet and Phantom Blade Zero a lot, I think even things like The Perceiver have some potential.
I would agree with the notion that the game is a chill time. But that is due to how the combat is designed. The parry is simply too powerful, and you can get away with spamming, ignoring the majority of enemy movesets a lot of the time.
This aspect massively changes in the DLCs, with Team Ninja basically trying to challenge the player by elemental chip damage, super high spirit damage, enemies making distance and shooting projectiles, forcing you to parry towards them to get openings. There is also light positioning to ignore attacks. The hardest boss in the game has a lot of these aspects built into his kit.
Base game wolong is a good action game, but it feels like junk food, just mindless arcady slop that is very fun in the moment. However the DLCs tell me a different story. Of a game so close to greatness, but fumbles right at the doorstep.
That's very interesting, sounds like two different games almost.
I noticed the DLCs are all reviewed Overwhelmingly Negative on Steam, while the game is Mixed - that's very different indeed.
I wonder if it was a good idea to make the experience so much more arduous when nothing in the base game hinted that should be expected. I say "I wonder" because of course, I don't know. As I'm sure I mentioned, I haven't played the DLCs since the friends who gifted me the game just got me the game itself without them.
@@LeoKRogue the DLCs are mixed bags, with great and mediocre content mixed together. Its a quality downgrade from Nioh 2, which had DLCs being mostly good to incredible content. Also the difficulty jump had the symptom of people thinking its BS, combined with the performance issues makes it hardly surprising to get nuked on steam
@@LeoKRogue in particular I can think of a few bosses in the DLC which are underatandably considered bs design.
For example there is one boss that never stops attacking outside of certain combo enders and has like 4 different variations with different timings for a sibgular attack, that also spaces you out and spams hugh spirit damage arrows with chip damage for blocking.
Another basically runs away from you and then nukes you with projectiles from the other side of the arena.
These are very simply natural progression of how the combat system is built, specifixally to counter how powerful the parry is and punish you for dodging by spamming. However to the average player it might come across as BS. I for the record found the bosses people complain about to be incredibly peak
That makes a lot of sense. Soulslike and Soulslike-adjacent games do _tend_ to have DLCs that are more challenging than the base game (I fully expect the Lies of P DLC coming this year to be quite a bit tougher than anything in the city of Krat). Since deflects are so universally strong, finding ways to make getting them less comfortable was probably one of the few things Team Ninja could think of. If you were already someone who really enjoyed the base game but just wished it could push you harder, I could see that kind of player really appreciating that the DLC actually tried to construct something harder.
What are your personal favorite bosses in Wo Long, in case I want to look them up (or if I get the DLC sometime later, to look out for them)?
@@LeoKRogue
1. Lu Bu: good fight, strangely hard for early game
2. Dong Zhuo: tricky fight, rewarding to get good at
3. Blindfolded boy:great movement fight, however visuals are weird and obstructed
For DLC:
1. Dian Wei: best beast fight in the game, nice and easy spectacle fight, super spammy
2. Taishi Ci: hardest human fight in the game, lots of combo variation and aggression
3. Taishi Ci demon form: hardest fight in the game, super rewarding to get good at and go on the offense
4. Guan Yu:considered the best fight in the game, basically Lu Bu on crack
I just enjoy how every game team ninja makes, they try something interesting with one of your gauges like xp or stamina. In nioh it was the Ki pulse, in ninja gaiden it was with the orbs absorption, in wo long your gauge is your stamina, you posture and your mana pool at the same time and replenishes with hits and parries, and moral system just makes the leveling progression tied to the mission itself, so every mission you start at basic moral and level through out the same mission. Great game, just wish the they get rid of the loot system for their future games.
That's something I also find really admirable about them. You really get this sense that Team Ninja themselves get easily bored, so they're always trying new, wacky, fun things in every new title they drop on players.
As for getting rid of loot, I feel like since that's the one constant that's _stayed_ in all of their modern titles, that means it's probably not going anywhere.. 😅 That said, maybe we get a new 3D Ninja Gaiden sometime, and there's probably no way loot is a part of that game, given its nature.
@LeoKRogue you make a good point about the loot. oh boy, i just imagined Ninja gaiden with color coded loot, and the tought is terrifying 😂. Ryu Hayabusa stopping his rampage to sort his collection of color coded trousers.
Regardless I always find myself buying their games, they just have an unmatched consistency, including stranger of paradise.
I feel like Ryu Hayabusa would look at a pile of blue, yellow and white drops, hit the Compare button and realize literally ALL of it is just worse than the Dragon Sword and go on with his day.
@@LeoKRogue would be funny, if they made a fake out at the start of the game, the first boss you kill showers you with loot and as you think oh no another one of those games, Ryu goes : not this time.
Honestly leave it to LeoK to make a well spoken review about Wo Long I swear you are to good, and I agree with your takes 100% percent on this game, happy New Year.
Happy New Year, Kazuto.
Wait, Team Ninja made Stranger of Paradise?! I need to install it now!
Amazing game.
Nice video man
Thanks.
Nioh 2 is one of the best games ever fucking made the combat the world ugh that shit has almost infinite game time
Yeah, I've heard that if someone can get into it properly it's really quite something. I'm not there yet myself but I keep hoping I can fully enjoy it some day.
hey Leo, just wanted to let you know Ubisoft just came out with a huge parkour mechanics reveal in their official discord for AC shadows, and without spoiling anything it seems to blow the previous 4 games out of the water. I would love to see a video of your analysis
I saw it, it looks pretty cool.
@LeoKRogue I agree. if they're continuing with the current engine and thus samey-feeling parkour with the annoying pauses before jumps, adding fluid stylish animations and more gameplay options that make use of the parkour is pretty much the best thing they could do. if only they started doing this with origins
Definitely the type of review I needed, thanks for your input as always. Now that the game is on sale, ima check it out. Also hoping ninja gaiden ragebound does well, so we can hopefully get Ninja gaiden 4🙏😭
That's my hope exactly. Ragebound looks like my kind of game already, so I'm sure I'll have a good time with it - but it's not THE Ninja Gaiden people have been waiting for so hopefully that gets some motion.
@ Facts, Ragebound looks fun, especially the pixal art being gorgeous like blasphemous, but it never reach the pure insanity and beauty of the bloody pure action of the 3D ninja gaiden games. Btw, what would your ideal ninja gaiden game be?
I think basically anything is fine as long as we get a new game in the style of the Black/Sigma Trilogy. Crazy futuristic stuff, Ryu taking everything way too seriously as he runs around the world killing hundreds of dudes, Flying Swallow, Izuna Drop, the usual stuff. A prequel set further back than NG3 would be fine too. I just want it to be a good game is all.
Bro you should make a video on the Ac Shadow news, they delayed it again to polish further and apparently there are back ejects and parkour improvements. Some of the footage looks more fluid than Unity even. Imo the game will be the best since Origins, despite all the controversy.
I have a Rogue's Chat on the way, and something else two weeks from now that I think people looking forward to Shadows will be VERY interested in.
Played this on PS5 and it’s definitely my favourite of their games. Love the energy, the art style, the whole vibe really. It’s tough but crucially you can summon help if a boss gets too much. 👍🏻
I was wondering if some would hold Wo Long as their favorite, and it makes sense. It does so much to separate and distinguish itself from _any_ of their other titles (it genuinely doesn't play that much like Nioh, or Stranger, or Ronin really) that if you love the things it's doing differently, you probably _really_ love them. I just enjoy the crazy flow-state you can put yourself in. It's kind of nice not having Stamina and basically just being concerned with momentum. The back-and-forth of fighting something that does actually push you -- which was admittedly rare for me -- can be exhilarating in a way none of their other games have really given me.
@ Exactly that. It’s a wild ride with a real understanding of its own kinetic vividness. I really hope they make another.
Could make a lot of really cool improvements if they ever decided to revisit it, yeah. I would love to see expansions to how we engage with battlefields, controlling flags being even more meaningful in some way, and enhancements to the Reinforcements/party-system that go beyond buffing one or both of your dudes and benefiting from their passives.
While I think Wo Long doesn't quite reach Nioh 2 level of good it is quite high bar to meet after all, however in terms of boss fight Wo Long have some of the best special mention goes to Lu Bu, his fight is amazing and surpassing most of Nioh Boss fight
Lu Bu is amazing, probably the highlight of the game for me in both his fights.
Best Magic system in a Souls-likr bar none
I really like it. I think people praise (new) Lords of the Fallen for how it handles Magic and Ammo, but Wo Long for _spellcasting specifically_ is on a totally higher level compared to that.
Everything is part of the intuitive combat flow-state where how much you can do depends on how much momentum you have on the enemy, or how much the enemy has on you. If your spirit is super high you can press your advantage, and it can tempt you into casting at the wrong moment and "biting off more than you can chew" so when a big hit comes in you're suddenly very Orange. It also makes spell-costs feel genuinely quite heavy from neutral which kind of "paces" and slots them into being ideally-used _during_ combat.
Popping the Wood Lifesteal spell turns you like 80% Orange instantly, so yes you and your squad can heal from attacks but blocking or eating any hits yourself now has a massive consequence. And the coolest part about all of it is that there's no need for mana-potions or any such mechanics that would slow down the experience. Just fight more and have good momentum.
@@LeoKRogue I wish Fromsoft would've just ripped it off. Especially since Fromsoft refuses to do regenerating Mana
My biggest issue (outside dlc, havent got to that yet, beat the base game though) was the exhausting use of Large Boss enemy #678. The fights with enemies your size are AMAZING. Im getting very tired of the majority of my boss fights are just big enemy swing hard. Elden Rings best fights were medium-large to small enemies. Bale excluded, that was tight. Too many Souls likes have far too many large enemies, that doesnt make use of the cool fighting combat. Hated it in Ninja Gaiden too, tower biss fights felt horrible, while the normal size enemies were sooo much fun.
I also tend to like it when there's a pretty good mix or when a game leans toward player-sized foes more often. Oh, but with this in mind, you would probably really like Rise of the Ronin.
Made with some of the lessons learned from Wo Long, and since it's not set in a fantasy universe like their previous games, but mostly adheres to history, _all_ the enemies are either human, so our size, or normal animals that actually exist.
@LeoKRogue Yeah, I'm a good mix kinda souls player as well. I had heard good things about Ronin, haven't played it myself however. I might just give it a try considering the wait for Nightreign, or Crimson Desert(fingers crossed on this one)
There is no need to play at full Low to play in good condition, you have to set the FPS option to 60, that's what slows down the game severely. When you freeze you can't do anything about it but in Low or in Ultra it's the same thing, it doesn't change anything.
Ah, that's a shame. Good advice though.
I recently found Wo Long just sitting around in my hard drive and wondered why i don't play the game. I launched it and after 2 hours of inconsistent frame rates, i remembered...
The technical state is still pretty rough.. 😅
Great video Leo. Tbh I probably won't play a melee action game like this for a while since I have a lot of games to play already my backlog is so full, but who knows 😅 The new Ninja Gaiden game looks sick I loved The Messenger and it looks like the same style as that, but I wonder what the gameplay will be like. As always thanks for the subtitles!
I really enjoyed the Messenger too, this'll probably be more of a linear game with less backtracking but it's hard to tell right now, they could totally go Metroidvania since that's what The Game Kitchen have experience making.
Cool video man. Now that I know wo long and Rise of ronin are team ninja games they have my interest. I always like their games flaws and all. The one thing I dislike about the Nioh games is that there was a bit too much loot. I just got so tired picking all that stuff up and looking at numbers when I just wanted to hurry up and get back into the combat. So less loot in Wo long sounds great to me. And it sounds like parrying in this game is pretty good like in sekiro. And not the crap you see in the Dark Souls game. What I will miss in this game is the Stance changes. That aspect feels great to me. So thanks for the review im gonna go pick up both wo long and Rise of ronin soon because of it.
Everything you said makes me think you'd probably really enjoy this game, yeah. Less loot-focus, lots of rhythmic parries and a general fast pace of play. Rise of the Ronin meanwhile is a _little_ closer to Nioh, with some stance-play involved. Just know there's only human enemies (and animals) since it's not a Fantasy setting.
I thoroughly enjoyed this game.
The prepatched builds were rough and i remember the first boss being a wall to most players.
Excellent game.
I'm not sure if the first boss has since been nerfed or anything like that but I basically never struggled against any boss in the game except for both of Lu Bu's fights, a few of the optional sparring battles against party members, and some of the duo-bosses especially.
I also had a lot of fun with it and don't regret playing it at all. It was just a nice "play it once" experience that didn't change my life or anything but it was enjoyable all the way through.
@@LeoKRogue Yeah the game has become more balanced since release.
That explains a lot. It also affirms some lingering thoughts I had that TN probably decided to aim this game at a different audience than Nioh, since I don't think those games would ever consider restraining their cruelty in that kind of way.. 😅
@@LeoKRogue On release the first boss was harder than the next 3 or more. It was crazy.
That is wild to imagine, wow. I wonder what the idea behind making it such a high wall was back then.
I love the simplicity in this game. And loot serves its purpose rather than just taking space. My only issue is the enemy variety and and the unimaginative map design but i think fromsoft spoilt me in those regards. I infinitly prefer this fast and furiois gameplay to the spam roll mechanic in DS. It helps that im just better at these kinda games. Sekiro and Lies of P are great too.
Lies of P was my Game of the Year for its release year. To this day I haven't played something that was exactly what I wanted so much, except maybe the closed beta for Khazan which was amazing in similar ways. Looking forward to the PC demo Jan 16.
@LeoKRogue Yeah Lies is my only platinum. I'm looking forward to that Kazan game too. It's on my wishlist.
Haven't completed the video yet.
But I am sure the analysis will be pinpoint, insightful and tactful.
Edit: Just completed it. Great video as always.
I appreciate the faith. I don't think I go into too much detail this time, just putting into general context why this game isn't super beloved, but why I found it pretty fun and chill anyway.
Is it true that Team Ninja is going to reveal a new game this year ?
They did hint as much in a recent post, yeah.
I really hope we get a new team ninja game
WARNING! This video is an opinion, not fact.
I agree. Nioh>>>>Souls on difficulty and it’s only on NG+ Max that you will create a build that makes the game play itself. Like Nioh 2 stacking spirits that create a combo that leaves enemies stunned forever or 1’s Living weapon build/Paralysis R1+ ⭕️.
Wo long is even more souls than Nioh, true. However it’s still Nioh. By the time you reach high NG+ you’ll create that new insane build.
The uploader is late to the party and hasn’t even finished the journey.
Wo Long is a game with a lot of “lost history” of those who waited for the DLC.
Killing that damn Monkey in 30 seconds with a pure Water build for a 0.00001% drop rate for the first “divine rarity” weapons.
Thankfully Veterans know that the game is destined to evolve with each DLC, by raising the level cap and all of that.
Of course. All discussion videos are opinions. ^_^ If people wanted facts they'd hit up Wikipedia. This is just based on the experience I had with the game. Hopefully it encourages more people to pick it up, play it themselves, and have their own experiences since I never see anyone bring this game up but it's actually pretty fun.
Hated Sekiro, loved Wo Long. Loved Nioh 2, SOP and the like but for some reason Wo Long just comes back to me, not even I to it. I hate rhythm games, but love Wo Long.
Wo Long is an enigma, it's a modern day game that plays like a PS2 game: it's just flashy fun that you can pick up and put down whenever you want. That's what makes a good game to me, so Wo Long is a good game. Thumbs up, though I play on the PS5 so am not plagued with poor optimization. Any TN fan just expect a PC port to be poor, it's not what they are good at (Like more developers).
It's a very unique game for sure. Rise of the Ronin definitely took inspiration from how quickly and satisfyingly you can run and jump through environments here.
I think it would be enjoyed by many more players if they did work a little harder on fixing up more of the performance, since like I said Nioh 2 and Stranger of Paradise both run much better and Wo Long deserves that same care IMO.
I think Wo Long leaning too much into souls games where it shouldn't. It feels like they tried to mash up souls loot with Nioh loot and it was more like oil and water. Every piece of loot upgraded the same so it didn't matter what start tier it was other than how many embedments you could slot in it. One of the games biggest mistakes was making marital arts hard tied to weapons like dark souls 3 weapon arts instead of elden rings ash of war system. Made having a good martial art combat setup really difficult. They fixed in the higher difficulties in a roundabout way, but it would have been better to just do it freely. My biggest gripe with the game was with morale. Even though it can prevent one shots as you said it was tedious in higher difficulties, It felt like it was testing the waters for something else that maybe never got used. Ronin's version of morale worked better. I do hope Team Ninja gets' another crack at Wo Long with a Wo Long 2. If not I'd like to see someone pick up where Wo Long Left off and make souls like that riffs on the things they tried,
Another Wo Long game with the good stuff they learned from Rise of the Ronin could be an incredible experience, especially since part of why Ronin was so good was them taking some of the smart things from Wo Long in the first place.
Weirdly enough i had no technical issues when trying it out back when it came out the game however really didn't click with me. I had a weird journey through the souls like genre (though i dont like putting nioh games in the genre for some reasons you mentioned here) After mastering Nioh 2 and 1 and then mastering the Fromsoft catalogue of ER Sekiro and DS3 Wo long did feel a tad too easy , the areas were also nothing special, the parry mechanic being able to parry everything from huge swings to random barrels rolling down a hill was just the best iteration of the system i've ever seen, and it added a bit more flare to the gameplay than simply parrying specifics which is what annoyed me with souls titles and is why i almost exclusively avoid any sort of parry build or playstyle in those games. NIoh 2 has the amount of depth that really takes you hundreds of hours to fully grasp and understand but once you do the ceiling feels like it just keeps getting higher and higher , once you've made your build learnt the moveset of your weapon and learnt the moveset of your enemies the main goal you have is how do i make this fight look cooler and more anime than the last time, in Sekiro the game is already designed to be flashy and cool at a base with paired and locked in animations of certain counter moves so once you hit a certain level the peak is already kidna there you can't go much futher and in other souls titles the main thing is can i beat this boss with the least amount of power (since the games make you OP as all hell, which is why the issue of any sort of balancing in fromtitles is just negated by how broken everything is you the boss the regular dude with a torch) and the lack of build expression you mention here in Wo Long just leads me to believe the game would be even less for me than i initially thought. I do hope you end up liking Nioh 2,but even if you don't im glad you adore Team Ninja so much and i cannot wait to join you in loving Rise of the Ronin once it comes to PC. Love how you approach discussing and analysing things you like and not like and how you still find good things about Nioh when it hasn't clicked with you or you find it unenjoyable as a whole. It's rare to see this amount of a measured approach.
TL;DR absolute banger of a video i am super glad i checked it out (for some reason i havent had a video of yours pop up on my timeline in ages and i had to manually check to see if you've been uploading )
Pretty good comment. Makes me think the way I described how players felt about this game was quite accurate - so that's really good.
@@LeoKRogue I was astonished witth how well you articulated every point really loved the vid
Thanks. ^_^ I'm not giving up on Nioh (yet) either, there's way too much cool stuff in it to let how annoying it is stop me until my patience is truly spent. I still got a bit more in me.
@@LeoKRogue This makes me really happy to hear ! I've always thought you'd love Nioh 2 and wanted you to try it so hopefully it eventually becomes your new fave hahaha
I played this a month ago on gamepass but on second map (when MC first met with Guan Yu), the fps really dips and I uninstalled later on. The fps have been all over the place but that map in particular was so terrible in that regard. I was having 50-60 fps in previous map but suddenly dips to 19-20s.
Overall tho, it's a much more simpler Nioh and the parry is good but the technical side of it turned me off
Yeah, on PC especially the performance is all over the place. I even took notes on which maps and levels ran better than others so some of my longer footage segments could be recorded from there.. 😅
@@LeoKRogue i also think the gamepass version is a lot worse than steam version because I compared my performance to other people on steam with similar spec and the gamepass is a bit worse. Or I'm just unlucky, idk..
It really sucks that it is a fun game from the time I've played but the performance needs a lot of work, even to this day
I have a PlayStation 4 and I can say to you, it sometimes barely hit 30
Yeah, I assume it would be pretty rough on PS4 too. It really does dampen what would otherwise be a pretty fun game for some players.
5:38 Not technically correct since From also makes Armored Core, lol.
Have you ever played Armored Core and if not, how can i drag you into one of the best games ever made in the form of Armored Core 6?
Seriously, Armored Core 6 is beyond amazing
It's not relevant to the conversation since it's not a Soulslike and bringing it up in a video about Wo Long would be pointless -- so it's not part of the script on purpose. I didn't bring up Otogi or Shadow Tower either. ^_^
But yeah I've played a good amount of the series and AC6 is my favorite. I have a lot of very positive things to say about it. (Soon, possibly!)
@@LeoKRogue Personally Master of Arena, Last Raven and For Answer are in the general area of where my favorite AC game is. I hope 6 receives an expansion like prior games received, because that'll probably result in the best game in the series. 6 is almost the best but there's a few flaws that hold it back for me when compared to what the entries I mentioned have to offer.
@@LeoKRogue yes!
The og comment was just an excuse to talk about AC!
I've said it before and will say it again, after Nioh 2, the quality of team ninja games has dropped.
Both gameplay-wise and graphics/performance-wise the games after Nioh 2 are downgrades in those departments.
And if those 2 are basic, mediocre or terrible, that right there is a disappointment and a cause for concern.
Performance aside (which was and is still pretty bad) I think Wo Long is just very different, it's a game that focuses on different things. It's not really serving or catering to players who enjoyed Nioh so it's understandably not appreciated by them. With that said after making two bangers in Nioh 1 and Nioh 2 I could see Team Ninja wanting a break from that series. Also Rise of the Ronin is legendary and no RotR slander is allowed on this channel, on pain of death. 😤
its also overpriced which is the main problem besides the performance issues at release (are they even fixed?)
Performance is still pretty rough and rocky, or it was for me.
I played the demo and the game stuttered every single time you were supposed to parry making it impossible to time properly... I was actually looking forward to the game but after the demo it went straight into my ignore list
Very much undone by its performance / tech-state, yeah.
You're not saying any of the stuff that makes the game interesting.
The party system is not just npcs that heal you: it's a gang you control in real time; you can notify them to attack to create gang combos, like you would in a turn based tactics' game but real-time.
You're not supposed to fight pressing 1 input to attack and 1 to defend, but control your party in the fight in realtime alongside your main character.
///
The platforming is simple but very refreshing. The fact that you can jump to a ladder and enable the interaction with it in air and transition seamlessly, without losing momentum, feels like miles ahead of anything fromsoft ever did.
///
The tug of war system to control action/reaction as a different way to stamina's "wait your turn" is what makes this game truly unique.
It's not that it makes the game easier, but that turns the game into something different. The fact that you need to deflect not to break posture but to build the stat in order to use spells, or special moves, or give commands to your units... The game is rewarding you with special currency for being good at the game, rather than just rewarding you with damage.
You would be deflecting to heal your party, or buff it, or debuff the enemies, rather than doing it for damage; you would be taking advantage of the situation rather than doing it because the game wants you to. You can play full support if you want to, and never directly attack enemies, but rather use your units to deal the damage.
///
People just don't understand how to play this game as it's meant to, they keep playing it like a soulslike because it's wrongly advertised: this is an ARTS (action realtime strategy), not a soulslike.
Just cuz you have to enable checkpoints to level up doesn't mean you have to wait your turn during combat and have to do everything yourself.
For perspective I have a background in RTS games (Red Alert 3 and Brood War mainly) so I'm no stranger to those concepts, but your comment surprised me and I don't think advertising has anything to do with that. ^_^
I'll check out the game again with a fresh perspective the next time I play it again and give those things a try.
I didn't look up anything about this game until I played it, I just played it and all my thoughts came about from what the game gave me.
You clearly love Wo Long a lot, and I wish I could have experienced any of those things when I played it myself, but none of that was ever surfaced to me or made to feel very meaningful on this first playthrough I had. I'm actually kind of sad about that because it sounds really cool and unique.
I also do mention how nice and fast paced exploration is, and cover that different party members have different effects that become part of customization.
Thanks for watching and your effort making this comment.
@@LeoKRogue advertising the game as soulslike makes players approach it as a soulslike, which is going to be the worst way to approach this game or any other soulslike.
Fromsoft doesn't make action rpgs, they make Realtime-Turnbased adventures. Action rpg implies hack and slash, but Realtime-Turnbased implies tactics and methodism: the opposite of hack and slash.
The way games are advertised shapes the players' perception of the game, in a way it can lead them or mislead them. If people knew "soulslikes" are turn based they would find them the easiest games, as they're basically pokemon.
@@LeoKRogue next time you play wolong imagine you're micromanaging your units like you would in starcraft, or that you have all your pokemons available at all times.
Although said in this vid to play it rather on console. The game is on PC Gamepass :) Might try it.
Not a bad idea, if you already have access to Gamepass anyway it's a good way to try it out.
The lack of stances or more appropriately; different movesets in weapons in the same way Souls have is what kills a lot of the game's potential. It's like going back to "everyone's a clone" in DW terms. Not to mention that there was a game that launched just before Wo Long called Xuan-Yuan Sword VII that had a "sword" attack aka the light attacks and "martial arts" attacks that were the heavy attacks and despite the player havng only a sword, he had three martial arts stances, a similar parry. Xuan-Yuan copied Nioh a lot for that title so when Wo Long comes out and is lesser on that front along with having the absolute worst HUD ever, you can see why people are just turned off. In comparisson, while SoP doesn't have stances or ki pulses etc and arguably doesn't have as cool a parry as Wo Long's, the way you have a very satisfying small combo with good light-heavy interractions and the fact that the HUD isn't an absolute disaster helps quite a lot.
Wo Long is one of those titles that need a second game to improve. Nioh didn't need one yet Nioh 2 was welcome for what it did. WL is in dire need. It doesn't need to change much either beyond those two things I mentioned. They would need to include one or two weapon types more though.
Finally, the fact that you can't really mitigate or turn off the "qi circulation" particle effects on your body or the enemy's is just bad at times, the screen becomes way too busy. SoP kinda has that problem at times but it's a different thing having 90% of the visual noise coming from you and the one enemy compared to the three people of your party and the enemies combined.
Just told me about a cool game I hadn't heard of before, I want to play Xuan-Yuan Sword, it sounds pretty fun.
@@LeoKRogue It's very chinese(comes from china after all) and is very jank(made on gamebryo, the same engine Skyrim and Oblivion has IIRC?) but if you like xanxia it's worth it.
Im really conflicted on the morale system
It's pretty unique, for better and worse.
It's the difficulty setting you can tweak in realtime. If you want to play hard mode ignore it; if you want to adjust difficulty then interact with the system.
If you feel it's a chore then you're just bad at the game, cuz you wouldn't need to do it if you were good enough.
I was excited to try this game 2022 but after seeing it had a stamina bar it took away all my enjoyment I’m not much of a soulslike type of gameplay it’s a turn off for me it just how I am I stay clear from any game with a stamina bar
Since you said yourself you were excited, that's reason enough to check it out if you can get it cheap sometime. You're exactly the player who should give it a try, since it _doesn't really_ have a Stamina bar. Not the way you think of it.
It basically has a guard-break meter where if you block too much you'll be stunned, but you get it all back as soon as you attack someone a few times, it doesn't limit any of your actions.
You can attack as much as you want for free, jump as much as you want for free, sprint around as much as you want for free, those don't cost anything. It's really approachable and chill for players who don't want to deal with managing that kind of resource.
I could basically ignore it for my entire playthrough and it never became a problem.
With that said, don't cut yourself off from games that do have one either, man. You may be surprised how much you like them.
It doesn't have a stamina bar.
It has a tug of war bar.
The more you push, the stronger you are; the more you get pushed, the weaker you are.
Nioh is a very chill game lol
That has absolutely NOT been my personal experience... T_T
i really wanted to play Nioh 1, but the fluidity of combat is non existent for me. It feels so cluncky
I'm feeling similarly myself with both Nioh 1 and 2, and as other players have pushed back on that and told me they've found it pretty smooth, I wonder if it's just the weapon-types we've chosen that causes that feeling. In these kinds of games picking a weapon that suits the player is pretty important, so I've started to mess around and try different ones.
For me, Wo Long problem is that it's a ok game in everything but isn't great in anything.
Yeah, nothing wrong with that. Some games are just solid 7/10s. (The deflect-chains are preeetttyy satisfying if the game isn't lagging.)
Wolong is not a soulslike because it doesn't have stamina: there's no turn based combat; you can push your offense without restraint. It's an actual action game, with a sprinkle of stat progression for the min maxers.
It's one of my favorite games. Nioh feels stiff in comparison, like I'm not playing but doing what the game wants me to do at all times.
I don't know about performance problems on PC though, and I run 5 years old gear; I don't recall any stuttering or fps drops.
///
The reason why Sekiro has a 3 way defense is because of For Honor: the entire fromsoft audience switched to for honor on release, so they had to do extra for their new game's combat to get their audience back. They were already struggling with ds3 being just fan service.
There's a lot of facets to this game that definitely put it firmly in the Soulslike category, I would say - though certainly a lot more fluid and faster paced than any other. I quite enjoyed it. Not every Soulslike forces the player to abide by my-turn-your-turn combat flow when you get really good at them either, but I would like to see how you explain Red Attacks/Critical Attacks in Wo Long.
You can very, very rarely ever interrupt them in practical gameplay, so doesn't that make them an enemy turn you're forced to respect? Nothing wrong with that of course, but that's what my experience was when I played it: for me Wo Long enforced its turns quite clearly in those moments.
(That said I did enjoy moments where I could hit the enemy with a martial art or Wizardry Spell when their spirit was almost broken and interrupt what they were doing that way, very fun.)
I would be shocked if FROM cares anything about For Honor or anything you suggest, honestly. Sekiro has multiple defensive mechanics for the same reason Sifu does, or fighting games as old as Street Fighter 1 do. It's just healthy game design that keeps things dynamic.
@@LeoKRogue poise attacks in wolong can be interrupted using spells or special moves, tho you get the most points for deflecting them so it's more like an opportunity to charge up than losing your turn to act. In fromsoft design your turn is taken from you, rather than give you an opportunity for more gameplay.
And I guess you should be shocked cuz elden ring is a breath of the wild clone with ds3 combat: where's the healthy game mechanics to keep gameplay fresh? Fromsoft only creates clone games, they're glorified modders, which is finally coming to light with their elden ring incoming mod 😅 modding their own games is a new level of mediocrity; even their new armored core is the fire fades and estus flasks and dodge spam 😅; Elden ring is an assassins creed without parkour and invisible checklists figured out by youtubers 😅
When your main promoters switch to other games, like oroboro did, you do care about losing your audience's money. For honor's combat is one of its kind, and it was the first third person fighting game: it attracted almost everyone from dark souls who wanted massive battles of havels vs catarinas.
I don't need to convince you, this is basic marketing.
Very forgettable team Ninja title. Literally i forgot this game exist in their catalogue and I still know when I seen it for the first time it just made me to believe it's a sekiro rip off.
But I like rise of the ronin thought
I think most people feel that way until they play it and are like, "this is kind of basic but actually pretty fun."
All fromsoft games are bad ninja gaiden clones with rpg stats added to make the games playable.
I'm just unable to enjoy team ninja loot system.
You can probably ignore more of it in Wo Long than any of their other non-NinjaGaiden games, so you might appreciate that. You definitely are forced to engage with it the smallest amount here compared to their other modern releases since like I said, you can pretty much just find a weapon you like and upgrade it to the end, if you so desire.
not well optimize game though
Indeed, the performance can really hurt sometimes.
14 :00
Love tn bullshit lol
It's so stupid... ^_^;;
Wo long's worst problem is having to play every bit of the lvl to have a fair fight. It gets really annoying on repeat plays, and it already annoyed me on playthrough 1. I just miss the complexity of Nioh too.
Fun enough but I played it on gamepass and never want to go back.
Also, saying it's easier than Nioh is true to some degree but I know my friend quit Wo Long because the 1st main boss is so insane; He even beat the tiger miniboss on his 1st or 2nd try. And he's played every souls game and Nioh game.
That's really interesting about the first boss, I mentioned in another comment that it's possible that fight has been nerfed severely since I don't think he killed me even once.
He may also be a 'check' of sorts to see if you've been diligent about ticking your flags because the difference between low and high Morale is pretty substantial.
On that note, I thought it was a fun and unique system since I already explore levels very thoroughly in these kinds of games just by accident, and movement is so unbelievably fast in Wo Long that it made it feel very breezy and effortless to do so, even having little wallruns and double jumps that just let you zip around everywhere.
The levels are also usually _very_ small compared TN's usual stages in other games, so maybe the devs thought that if you didn't feel pressed to explore, it may have felt like there was too little to bite into here.