Wo Long, created by Team Ninja and Koei Tecmo, is a new rogue souls-like title from the team that brought us Nioh. With a new direction and setting, Wo Long takes place in China during the later Han dynasty. The story starts as the Yellow Turban Rebellion is taking place but there’s a darkness around it – Monsters and reanimated warriors are flooding the battlefield. It is up to the warriors of the land to fight the evil back and end it for good.

Players will take the lead as an unnamed militia soldier, and they’ll need to overcome the threat of the land and overcome the growing darkness that has twisted people and caused monsters to ravish the lands. After character creation, players are thrown into the first mission of the game but will have an AI named Blindfolded Boy, and he will assist you as you are taught the basics of how to play. The missions themselves can range from long treks to short encounters but feature a bunch of side missions. There is always some form of progression to be done.

Wo Long is based on real historic events, and along with historic battle locations like Hulaoguan pass, or as it’s better known, the Hulao Gate, players will also meet warriors from other eras, such as Cao Cao, Liu Bei, and Sun Jian. You can summon AI teammates and pick who you want by your side in almost every mission, but there are occasions where the characters are story locked to the mission. You can fill a Bond system by taking other characters along for missions, and this will reward the player with new outfits and weapons.

Other big names from the era are also available for boss fights. The Yellow Turban brothers, Zhang Liao, Jiao, and Bao, are featured early in the game when the era of the Yellow Turban is over. Dong Zhou’s forces start an aggressive push upon the kingdom. So yes, Dynasty Warriors fans hold onto your hats. There is a Lu Bu boss fight, and oh boy, was it the most amazing fight I had.

Wo Long has some features such as the moral rank system. Moral rank is a growth element fixed into the missions you are doing. The higher your moral, the less damage you take. Moral can be earned by drafting enemies, performing special attacks, and performing fatal blows, but there is a cap of 25 for the moral.

Enemies also have a moral ranking, the only difference is the higher their number the harder they hit you, but taking on harder targets does reward you with extra moral gain and gives you a higher chance of dropping rare items. Virtue can also be levelled up, and each stat is based on an element, but this will also impact what type of magic you can use.

Levelling the virtue associated with fire, for example, will grant you access to more fire-type spells, so be sure to look at the spell tree before throwing random points around. The new dodge/parry system is amazing.

Players will be able to slip in between enemies’ attacks and return with a counter-attack. The best and ideal time to use this is when the enemy turns red – when they’re performing a special attack. After deflecting, you will leave the enemy staggered and left wide open for a massive hit back to them.

Wo Long also supports online play with a three-player co-op, which is the best option for friends to join up, either with a password or via invites, and this plays a lot like solo play, except with two friends. The recruit option is like the Souls series summon – if you or the host die, the run is over for you. Invasions are back for players as well as NPC invaders, so look forward to some fun fights. A returning feature from the Nioh series is the revenge system.

You will come across purple war banners that are gravestones of other players, and close by you will find an enemy with a purple moral marker. When you kill this target, you avenge the fallen player and get rewarded with extra loot.

The controls for Wo Long are very similar to Nioh. Again, the same team worked on both titles, so expect some fast-paced combat and a gear swap system that works to keep the flow of combat going.

The visuals for the game are amazing. Watching the cutscenes and seeing the characters and monsters for the first time was amazing. The detail and work that went into them was a joy, especially seeing Lu Bu for the first time. It had me so hyped for the beating I took after seeing him.

There is some good music during missions, and your companions have some back-and-forth chatter, especially if they are in a bond with each other, such as Guan Yu and Liu Bei having an interesting exchange of dialog during missions. The difficulty is challenging but rewarding, but there is no New Game Plus option. Instead, you can freely visit any missions you have done in the past at any time, but when you do finish the game, you unlock a harder setting to test your might with.

Wo Long is a fantastic blend of a roguelike with the Han Dynasty era history, and I would highly recommend this title to any Dynasty Warrior fans and players that enjoyed Nioh. The core gameplay is basically the same. Even with the slight bugs, I had a blast playing Wo Long and can see myself playing it to fully unlock everything there is to offer, and given there is a season pass that can be purchased, it hopefully means that there will be some more big content still to come.

Written by: Shane Walsh