Review: Wo Long Fallen Dynasty is an enjoyable if unremarkable adventure that’s more Sekiro than Souls

videogameschronicle.com:

If you’re going to make a difficult action game in 2023, you’re going to be judged, often unfairly, against some of the most critically acclaimed and beloved games of the modern era.

Not since Metroidvania has a term been so easily applied to such a litany of games as Soulsborne. With the latter, though, not only is there a mechanical expectation but also a bar of quality that’s often impossible to pass.

That’s not to say that no games have made it out of the enormous FromSoftware‘s shadow and trod their own path – the excellent Nioh series, also from Team Ninja, is a brilliant example of the genre.

That said, it’s hard to divorce the stacked expectations, even when some genre conventions are smartly subverted. That’s where we find Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty.

The latest action game from Team Ninja is set in the Romance of the Three Kingdoms age, where real-life battles clash with giant, multi-tentacled horses and steroid-abusing tigers. You play as a nameless hero who’s thrust into the middle of a power struggle, one that can seemingly only be resolved by your character learning the parry windows of dozens of horrific creatures.

Wo Long in this sense is less of a Souls-like and more Sekiro-adjacent. However, unlike From’s most controller-snapping game, Wo Long offers a much more forgiving parry window, allowing for masochists and non-masochists alike to enjoy the back and forth of the block-dodge-parry dance that encounters turn into.

The game is at its strongest when focussing on this parry. One-on-one battles are tests of timing and rhythm, examining your opponent’s tactics and engaging only when you know their next step before they do. Unfortunately, the game seems all too eager to remove you from these one-on-one battles