Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty is Nioh in everything but name. The only major difference is the deflecting mechanic that makes it feel like a clunkier Sekiro. Derivative doesn’t even begin to cut it, but the sharp blade of my sword does, so I press on. After ripping my way through a few foot soldiers and a pissed-off demon tiger, I encounter the first boss, a hulking pushover that’s obviously hiding a second phase. Lo and behold, when he ‘dies’, a cutscene plays and he turns into a giant, demonic monster. I whittle his health down until I can use my divine beast to finally step out of the prologue and into the wider world, only he destroys my beast in a second cutscene, sending me back to square one. I just described the opening of Wo Long, but the exact same thing happens in the first Nioh.
Granted, I like Nioh and Sekiro. Put the two together and I’ll probably have a good time, and I suppose I did here in parts—I’m a sucker for Souls-likes, and all the motifs are there in Wo Long. You have to carefully time attacks, there are replenishing healing flasks, dodging is pivotal, and you save at bonfires that reset everything, all leading to a boss. In Wo Long, the bonfires are flags, which are also its most (and one of its only) unique features. Capturing each flag increases your fortitude, which is the number your morale rank drops to when you die. The higher your morale rank, the less damage you take. In essence, capturing all the flags makes the area easier.
They make a staple Souls-like mechanic a more immersive part of the world, while also turning bonfires into a declaration of victory. You’re not just reaching the next section—you’re conquering it. Literally, since some flags can’t be placed until you beat mini-bosses, making the bonfire less of a sanctuary and more of a reward. By having several flags to capture throughout each level, there’s more reason to explore each area, often leading to hidden paths or carefully obscured nooks and crannies.
The downside is that the zones themselves aren’t that interesting to explore. For one, loot is a convoluted mess—like Nioh, Wo Long has a Diablo-esque system that fills your inventory with the same weapons and armour, but with different boons and quality ratings. One might even have a plus 132 percent tickle resistance bonus. Okay, maybe not ‘tickle resistance’, but something just as meaningless that you can fully ignore. I used the first sword and set of armour from start to finish, and I found Wo Long to be one of the easiest Souls-likes I’ve ever played. Faffing with a hoard that would make Smaug blush just wasn’t worth the headache.
When I stopped bothering with flags entirely, the difference in difficulty felt negligible, so the novel idea of fully exploring a level to make bosses more manageable fell apart almost immediately. Even when I stopped caring and started rushing to the boss, I found most of the flags anyway due to how tiny the levels are. The already-small-zones are split into even smaller areas separated via a menu. There’s no cohesive flow from level to level, and no potential for backtracking—even in 2011, this would’ve been archaic, since Dark Souls dropped that approach from its predecessor Demon’s Souls (which itself did it better back in 2009). The sense of adventure is carefully shuffled off in favour of arcade-like levels with lacklustre rewards, limiting Wo Long’s potential since it can’t make levels too big due to a rigid number of flags that it adheres to across the entire game.
What adventure left isn’t worth much, anyway. Every character is a walking trope. You come across valiant knights and damsels in distress, as well as distant fathers and backstabbing friends. I don’t remember a single name, but I remember each bog-standard archetype that not once subverted expectations. A huge part of that is because the majority of dialogue is exposition, and each level ends with animated cutscenes that throw an endless barrage of lore at you. Something so few Souls-likes understand is that the appeal of FromSoftware games is the mystified unreliable narrator and cast of characters defined by their bizarre personalities. Wo Long instead chooses to drown itself out in a sea of needless information that leaves no room for its characters, of which there are far too many, likely to pad out the NPC co-op roster.
Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty is, at best, a serviceable Souls-like. If you enjoy Nioh and Sekiro, it’s a fun bit of filler, but it’s derivative and bloated, serving as a highlight reel of previous Souls-likes while missing the point of what made its inspirations, and even predecessors, unique to begin with.
Score: 2.5/5. An Xbox Series code was provided by the publisher.
Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty
Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty is an action RPG from Team Ninja, set in a dark fantasy parallel to Han Dynasty China. You mist take on demons that have permeated the land, becoming a hero in the process.