Recent reviews by rKade

TLDR: an enjoyable game from Team Ninja held back with performance woes. Close to great but some gameplay decisions may put some people off.

Played on:
PC (970 GTX GPU. 8gb DDR3 RAM, i7 4770K CPU) at medium settings capped at 60fps via in-game settings
Steam Deck (LCD 256GB model) at low settings capped at 40fps via steam deck settings

Stats at the time of this review:
Level 377
Dual Sword build, light armour
Water Primary stat, Fire secondary stat


Pre-release:
Leading up to the release of Wo-Long, I was looking forward to what they were doing with Wo Long. I had got to play it at a public event and liked what I saw in pre-release footage. The Three Kingdoms setting made me want to plan out a sort of ‘Lu Xun’ build with dual swords. However, the first hurdle came with the launch of the demo on Steam.

The demo was not optimised (or appeared to be not optimised) as I tried on my 2 setups, achieving no greater than 30fps regardless of what settings I changed. I hoped to see this improved on launch to at least have a smooth experience as the combat required it.

Launch:
Although minor performance improvements had been made (I could get 40 fps on PC consistently) the Steam Deck still had troubles, leading to challenges in those first hours of play. The general traversal of each level was enjoyable, but any large mobs / bosses (particularly those with flashy effects) would tank the framerate and make it difficult to react to enemies, leading to some frustrating deaths. It basically meant that the Steam Deck was out of service for bosses, as I particularly experienced at the somewhat half-way point of the campaign with Lu Bu. I continued to go through the campaign with my Lu Xun wannabe, getting to grips with combat, martial arts, spells, divine beasts, and companions with a similar feeling - enjoying the mechanics that had been created for this game, but being frustrated by performance. I completed the campaign, finished off the achievements, and held off on new game+ until some of the performance issues were fixed. In that respect, I didn’t return to the game until 8 months later when a cheap deal of the DLCs was in the Winter sale.

2nd Time round - better experience:
Between those 8 months, some improvements had been made to the performance and the DLCs had come out so it was a good time to try it out again. This experience was thankfully better being able to maintain more consistent frame rates and frame pacing as I noted at the beginning. With that, I started going through the NG+ ranks and was able to start enjoying this game without those issues getting in the way. I started to get into the same rhythm as I experienced with Nioh 1 + 2 - going through missions, gearing up, levelling, and making slight tweaks to my build to meet the foe I was next facing. I understood the spirit system better, which takes a conventional stamina system and makes it similar to that of Sekiro managing the balance between defence and offensive manoeuvres. I took better advantage of the morale system, which determines how much strength (or weakness) you have against enemies. Missing critical attacks (the red glowing attacks that are needed to be parried otherwise you take high damage and loose morale) was less common now due to the performance improvement and more down to my own reading of the fights. Sure, I still had bosses I got frustrated by (Zhange Liao, and Taishi Ci come to mind) but nothing that a bit of prep, rethinking, and rebuilding couldn’t resolve.

End game: Thousand Mile Journey and Grace
I got to NG+4 then started to properly plan out my build with the Graces (end-game set bonuses) ready to start the Thousand Mile Journey (End-game dungeon). I had gotten to the end of the dungeons in Nioh 1 and 2 and was looking to see how they would differ in Wo Long, and I'm happy with what they did here. Choosing your path, going for specific buffs to help you along your journey and building up new ways to improve your character with level cap increases and upgrade material was fun. Personally, I think it’s done better than Nioh 1 + 2 in this respect, but knowing that TMJ goes on for up to 10,000 dungeons seems a bit excessive. At the point of this review, I'm at 101 and happy with what I've done.
With Graces, I think there is room for improvement as it has been quite the challenge to get things set up how I would like them to be. You do have a certain level of control, being able to increase drop rate of equipped gear items through gear gem enhancements (a system I do prefer over Nioh 2), but this doesn’t apply to trinkets or stratagems (the latter being an end-game equipable double-edged buff). This ends up creating a run of ‘hopeful grinding’ which can get somewhat dull. I would have preferred Team Ninja to follow the example from Nioh 2, having ‘grace lists’ for multiples of certain floors meaning you could plan ahead in that respect. Throughout my playtime, I’ve never really got trinkets that fully align with my build which is annoying.

Final thoughts:
If it wasn’t for the performance issues at launch, I believe myself and others would have had a much better experience with Wo Long and it would be thought of more positively. The combat is enjoyable and the levels have a good cadence that don’t overstay their welcome. It has that replayability with the NG+s but those with experience with Nioh 1 + 2 may get frustrated with the challenges to fully create the build you want. Now that the complete edition is released, I believe it’s a good offer of a game that many people would enjoy, even those who had a bad experience on launch.

I've played a few MMos over the years but this is one I've stuck with the longest. Enjoyed since original Beta's in 2012 and would recommend it to all :)

Nov 2024 update: Janthir Wilds has been an enjoyable expansion well recommended

Good TD, lots of replay ability. Free to play

A game that although launching with problems has continued to make quality of life improvements. A charming throwback to skating games of the past =)

A simple, pleasurable experience of a game that makes a gold standard of movement mechanics come to life. Whether you play for 10 minutes or an all-day session, It feels like soemthing you can come away from feeling happy.