4.5/5 ★ – dolphy's review of Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty.

Wo Long's plot is set during the Han dynasty. Some of the enemies, bosses, and Divine Beasts are completely based on Chinese mythology and folklore. Which I hugely appreciate as someone who is interested in history. Wonderful mechanics. It takes after the Nioh games and a bit of Sekiro. The deflect system and swordplay in this game are phenomenal. The deflect timing is a bit more forgiving compared to Sekiro. But it is very rewarding to master. I've seen people complain about the graphics and visuals being underwhelming. Personally, I really liked the artstyle and had no issues with either of those aspects. That being said, I am someone who focuses more on gameplay and combat. The game definitely delivered those for me. I do appreciate great visuals when a game has them. But I'm always willing to look past that completely if the gameplay system is just perfect and hits the spot for me. I found the difficulty to be just okay to easy. However, there were a few out of place difficulty spikes. For example, the tutorial boss is the 2nd toughest boss for me in the entire game. Right off the bat, I thought I was signing up for an unfair and unreasonable difficulty. But that was not the case at all. The game was mostly rather easy. The areas were not all that long and can be beaten and explored to the fullest quickly. Not that that's a negative thing. Games don't need to be stretched out to be great. I'll take a short and memorable experience over an unrewardingly long and grindy one any day of the week. We've got a great variety of beautifully made areas and some wonderful boss designs. The final boss fight was really well-made! Being a melee based build in most games I play I struggled with that one a lot. Lu Bu was another boss I really struggled with. Had lots of fun trying to learn everything. Obviously, Team Ninja had to not stray too far from their style. So just like in Nioh they had to repeat a lot of the enemies over most of the areas. Not that it's a valid complaint in Wo Long considering the length of the areas. But I remember that particular thing being annoying to me in Nioh. Having platinumed Nioh and being quite frustrated with the sub missions and the sheer amount of those double boss fights, I expected to see a lot of those in Wo Long but there really weren't any. The final sub mission was a tad bit annoying and I had to get help online with it despite trying to mostly solo everything. I enjoyed my time with the game a lot. Looking forward to platinum the PS4 version as well and maybe Nioh 2 at some point in the future.