Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty PC Demo Impressions – Satisfying Rhythm-Based Combat

gadgets.ndtv.com:

In today's gaming climate, releasing a free demo is emblematic of a developer's utmost confidence — even more so on PC, a platform that has consistently received the short end of the stick in terms of optimisation. Team Ninja's latest, Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty, shows some promise — it's a theatrical dark-fantasy getaway that feels like a lovechild born of Nioh and Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice. The short demo gives us a peek into its China-set lore and showcases its flashy combat as well as new features that will ease your journey inoto the intimidating Souls-like experience. However, for a game that's merely days away from launch, it also exposes some microstutters and a major issue with keyboard and mouse controls.

As a Koei Tecmo-published title, control issues on PC were somewhat expected, but I commend Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty's controls for being far less complicated than those of the Nioh series of games from which it feels descended. Keyboard + mouse button prompts can be enabled, which is a major step up from 2021's Nioh 2 PC port, which only showed controller button icons no matter what scheme you used. Sure, this was fixed in a patch, but until that happened, players were forced to spend time acquainting themselves with the mapping.

Camera controls in the Wo Long demo also aren't up to par, and fail to respond well when using a mouse. Even after maxing the in-game sensitivity setting, I couldn't shake the feeling of moving through sludge, as the camera would slow down at points and then a sudden jerk would turn it around. This was fairly common with vertical movement and when running around the map. Switching to a DualSense controller made the experience smooth and snappy. As someone who has played every Souls-like