Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty: The Final Preview

ign.com:

Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty might be an action game, but after playing through brand new areas for about five hours, I went away realizing that it innovates on the exploration loop in Soulsborne games more than anything else. While the game’s challenging combat is as stellar as you would expect from a Team Ninja game, it is the Morale Rank system that truly feels like it’s shaking things up.

In Wo Long, both the player and enemies have a Morale Rank that indicates their strength. You can raise your Morale Rank simply by defeating enemies, but it goes up faster if the enemy you beat has a higher Morale Rank than yourself. If you get killed your Morale Rank will decrease, and the same can be said for the enemy. Different from a level-based progression system, Wo Long’s Morale Rank indicates not how strong the player is, but how that strength compares to your enemies. It not only increases but can also decrease, which makes becoming stronger a completely different process.

But how is any of this related to exploration? Wo Long offers one other way to increase your Morale Rank: raising flags. At first sight, Battle Flags merely function as your traditional Bonfire-like checkpoint. By resting at a Battle Flag, you regain health, refill your potions, respawn enemies, and so on. You know the drill.

But finding a new Battle Flag rewards you in a way previous Soulsborne checkpoints haven’t: it increases your Fortitude Rank. Getting killed decreases your Morale Rank, but it will never go below your Fortitude Rank. That means that the more checkpoints you discover, the stronger you become.

Wo Long’s stages are also dotted with Marking Flags. Marking Flags don’t function as checkpoints like Battle Flags, but raising your flag here will