Wo Long is the latest game by Team Ninja, the developers of the highly acclaimed Nioh series and we were lucky enough to get a preview of the game from Koei Tecmo. Like the Nioh games, Wo Long is a soulslike title but trades out the setting of ancient Japan with the Late Han dynasty of Ancient China, the starting point of The Romance of The Three Kingdoms.

As you can imagine from a soulslike, the game is tough and I repeatedly got my teeth kicked in throughout the demo but that’s part of the fun. Wo Long takes heavy inspiration from Chinese Wuxia films, bringing a fast-paced sense of agility to combat, combined with a stunning world and unique take on a classic setting and it’s quite the wild (and deadly ride).

Character Customisation

Like the Nioh games, Wo Long starts with character customization. The character creator is very extensive, you can change hair, eyes, face, and much more in various different ways, truly making the character feel like your own. 

Besides your character’s looks, you can also choose between five Phases (elements) based on the traditional Chinese elements of Wuxing which each have their own unique strength. We’ve listed the five elements below with their official description of them:

• Metal Phase: Debuff-oriented. Excels in debuffing enemies. The Divine Beast of the Metal Phase – Baihu (White Tiger) will accompany you for a set period of time to fight alongside you.
• Wood Phase: Support-oriented. Excels in support and recovery. The Divine Beast of the Wood Phase – Qinglong (Azure Dragon) has the power to greatly heal yourself and your nearby allies.
• Water Phase: Stealth-oriented. Excels in stealth. The Divine Beast of the Water Phase Xuanwu (Black Turtle) will remain still for a period of time and launch ice projectiles at enemies.
• Fire Phase: Attack-oriented. Excels in attack. The Divine Beast of Fire Phase Zhuque (Red Phoenix) has the power to engulf the nearby area in fire.
• Earth Phase: Defense-oriented. Excels in defense. The Divine Beast of the Earth Phase – Qilin has the power to summon stone pillars to impact nearby enemies.

The different phases give you different stats, skills, and Divine Beast to start with (though, you can change to another Divine Beast later on), but you also start with different weapons as well. I personally went with the Water Phase because I like stealth gameplay, and dual-wielding swords looks cool

The Spirit System 

Wo Long’s combat is pretty complicated. The core of the combat is your Spirit System and Morale Ranking. The Spirit Sysme works somewhat similarly to Ki from Nioh or the posture system from Sekiro. Your spirit can be seen in the bar below your health bar and has positive and negative values, blue being positive and orange being negative. You attack to gain Spirit and if it goes into the negative, you’ll get stunned.

Morale Rank is the number above your health bar. It acts as the game’s leveling system. If your Morale Rank is 1 and you attempt to fight Rank 20 enemies, you’re going to do minimal damage and probably meet a quick death. It affects your damage and enemies’ damage against you. What makes this unique as a leveling system however is that you kill enemies to gain Morale Rank, but you lose it and go back to Rank 1 when you die. 

The Spirit of Combat

Instead of light and heavy attacks, Wo Long has normal and spirit attacks. Normal attack and recover Spirit, and spirit attacks deal more damage, but consume Spirit in the process. You can also use Martial Arts, magic skills, and powerful Wizardy spells by consuming Spirit. The type of Martial Arts you can do depends on what weapon you use. Most of the starting weapons have just one Martial Arts skill, but you can later have weapons with two.

For Deflecting and Dodging, if you press ‘O’ (on a PS5 controller) before an enemy’s attack, you’ll deflect the attack. Doing this will increases your Spirit and decrease the enemy’s. You can also use Deflect Critical Blows, which can break an enemy’s stance and allow you to deal big damage with a Fatal Strike, a powerful blow you can perform against defenseless foes. You can also double tap ‘O’ to dodge, but this decreases Spirit.

The most notable thing about the combat of Wo Long is the agility and fluidity. Your attacks can chain together quickly and smoothly, almost like you’re playing a character action game, especially with the ability to jump and dodge. You’re encouraged to use this great maneuverability to weave through enemies before landing a well-timed strike. The fact that you lose spirits with one wrong move means you can’t just muscle your way through fights. You need to think on your feet about when is the best time to go in for the kill, which in turn will net you more spirit. It’s a great risk vs reward style of combat that really keeps you on your toes. 

All the jumping and flipping however does lead to the occasional camera stutter as it tries to keep up. It’s not unplayable but it can be annoying getting it to keep still when there are still enemies trying to kill you. 

Leveling System

Wo Long has a somewhat confusing leveling system. Instead of spending currency to level up vitality or dexterity like most games, this game levels up the five elements: Metal, Wood, Water, Fire, and Earth. If you choose to start as Metal Phase, then you have 10 Metal points to start with, the same way goes for the others.

Every element affects different stats. Water affects your stealth rating, Wood affects your HP more, and so on. These however will not affect your damage output. Your damage depends on your weapon, for example, you have some weapons that scale more with Strength, and some that scale more with Dexterity.

However, when you want to level up, it can be a little confusing, because when you choose one element to level up, it will affect your all the rest of your Elemental stats. For Example, if you level up Water, your Water abilities damage will obviously increase, but it will also increase your elemental defense against Fire abilities, and decrease your elemental defense against Earth. So this is an extra thing that needs to be taken into consideration which can make min-maxing harder to plan. 

Exploration

Even though this is just a demo, the area that you can explore is vast. The world on display is truly beautiful with a wide variety of landscapes to explore. You’re also given multiple ways to approach the different enemies much like how you can in Dark Souls and Elden Ring. It really adds another layer of strategy to fights, especially when you are playing a stealth focus character.

There’s a radar system at the top right of your monitor, that acts kind of like a map. Enemies will appear on the radar, although it doesn’t account for elevation which can be annoying. There’s also a red symbol that leads you to the next main quest. If you die, there will also be a yellow symbol that leads you to the being that killed you.

There are also spots for you to raise a Battle Flag across the map. These act like a combination of The Bonfire and The Maiden. You rest here to regenerate, refill your medicine, level up, and change your Divine Beast and magic. Raising a Battle Flag will increase your Morale Fortitude Rank.

Enemies

There’s a wide range of enemies in Wo Long. There are swordsmen, archers, and axemen, among others. They are in different clothing as well. While I didn’t find any obvious link with the Three Kingdoms, the enemies who are wearing yellow are referencing the Yellow Turban Army which directly led to the end of the Han dynasty and the start of the Three Kingdoms era.

Later on in the demo, you do begin seeing familiar faces from the Three Kingdoms epic. I won’t spoil anything but one of the early bosses in the game is a major figure in the early parts of the story. I died to him many times.

Since this game obviously has some mythical twist, you’ll also be fighting some supernatural creatures. The most prominent of these in the demo were the undead soldiers.

There are also vicious giant tigers, mystical birds, and humanoid fish creatures. There is also a demon-looking humanoid dual-wielding giant swords. I died to him a lot as well. 

Closing Thoughts

From what we’ve seen in the preview Wo Long is shaping up to be a unique and lively take on the Soulslike genre. The demo gave us a good glimpse of how large the world is and how much can be explored. This is made better by the aggressive, fast-paced combat with a lot of mobility. Performing stunning martial arts techniques while managing your spirit made the combat tricky but engaging. 

This game is unabashedly harsh, and you will die many times but like any good soulslike, it feels like a natural part of the experience. As you keep playing you feel yourself get stronger and it’s very satisfying when you finally do. 

Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty will release for PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, and PC in early 2023.

For more information on the game, check out our interview with its’ producers Fumihiko Yasuda and Masaaki Yamagiwa.