4/5 ★ – danielholt's review of The First Berserker: Khazan.

The First Berserker: Khazan is a truly wonderful souls-like that's both envigorating and deeply frustrating. The levels are samey and at times a little boring, the games armour mechanics make little to no sense and I often found myself overwhelmed by the games loot system.... All that said, the combat is where it shines, and oh boy does this thing shine bright. Snappy, direct and incredibly satisying, it plays like a Sekiro game as opposed to a traditional souls one and honestly, it may have Sekiro beaten on that front. It's incredibly........ It's the hardest 'one of these' games I've beaten to date, and I'll be honest, half way through the game I switched to 'easy mode', and even with the smaller enemy health pools and that slightly less insta-death enemy attacks, the final boss still took me the best part of 5 hours. That's both the games strength and it's weakness however. Oftentimes the game feels downright unfair in how many assists the enemy gets. Insta-filly stamina bars, health pools that refill, delayed attacks and the ever problematic status effects are all here, and whilst they do have their place, I can't help but feel the devs went a little too far on some fronts. That said, this game is great. And if you're the sort of sicko who enjoys repeatedly dying to the same boss for hours at a time, I think it's the closest thing to a must play that we've had since Lies of P came out.