Great? No.

Good? Yes.

Fun game, similar game style as Black Myth Wukong, Somewhat historically accurate clothing and armour to Three Kingdoms period.

criminally underrated/ funner than sekiro

I chose to pursue Lu Bu, and I regret it.

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You know, I really like Nioh and Nioh 2. I was, probably like most people, expecting this game to be "That, But Maybe With Some Three Kingdoms/Dynasty Warriors Paint Slapped On", and what I got was just... Not that. The game launched in 2023 in a terrible state, with unplayable online, absolutely trashcan framerate in cutscenes that still hasn't been fixed to this day, and graphical bullcrap galore. There's three weapon types gated behind DLC that are honestly so much better than all of the others that I would completely believe they were intentionally made better-designed to entice people to buy. Even now after the netcode has been improved and people have figured out ways to persuade the game to run better, the game feels... Cheaply made.

There's some good, here. The skin or perhaps core of a decent game -- on paper, it all works out. Go from mission to mission, slap flags (bonfires) down, slap nerds down, slap money and materials down for upgrades to your weapons. But there's so much chaff attached to this. Enemies either feel completely braindead or totally overwhelming with no in-between. Gear that drops has a rarity system which means you'll just auto-discard or salvage anything with less than the best rating. You get so much drops that you can afford to do that anyway (and will need to or your inventory will clog up). Salvaging items is worth more than selling them because the materials they give you can be sold for more than you would sell the item for. Weapon and armor bonuses are randomized, unless you're lucky enough to draw a piece of gear that has a skill that can be transferred to another piece of gear if you salvage it. It's noise. It's all noise.

There's only five stats, too -- you upgrade one of the five chinese elemental phases (earth, fire, water, wood, metal) and that corresponds to different gear's damage scaling and different categories of spells. Again, on paper it's fine but in practice things like buffs or spells either don't last long enough or don't do enough to warrant actually using them. This is probably because casting spells, using martial arts and blocking/parrying all come from the same meter, which is built by attacking enemies and reduced by using the aforementioned. But because you can't do something like attack, then cancel into a spell, then keep attacking, you're better off just quickly buffing before a flurry of attacks or opening your attack with one spell and then just wailing on an enemy until it's time to use a martial move. It all just doesn't "flow".

Not only that, but this game is clearly not built with co-op in mind. If you have a partner, and both of you are wielding staves, you can just press any humanoid enemy into a corner and hold the attack button while both of you windmill on him until his guard breaks or he gets the status effect that makes every hit stagger -- which is built into every staff weapon. It reminds me of Water Sword from Nioh 2, but dumber and unable to be broken by most normal enemies. It even works on bosses!

The bosses are also kind of a disappointment, coming in one of three flavors: Giant monster gimmick boss, humanoid with superpowers, or Lu Bu. Of these, the only one I ever felt truly challenged by (instead of just having to parry and riposte over and over or play along with the monster gimmick) was Lu Bu, because his fight plays by different rules than all of the others. I just don't feel entertained. The stages are long, the bosses at the end are what I've described, and you're basically just going through the motions in slightly differing environments over and over again, roll credits. It doesn't feel like there's anything to discover or uncover or dig through here. If there are sidequests (there are), I barely acknowledged them because of how vague they are and how frustrating searching through stages for pandas and gold cicadas is, only to be given yet another piece of gear you could have just randomly gotten during a stage. It's shallow.

Overall, it feels like we're watching KT try to make a Nioh spinoff but using the Three Kingdoms instead of Japanese history, and it shows in how they don't seem to have put nearly as much of the all-star effort we see from their other games. It's like they saw Sekiro, looked at Nioh and were like "Damn, this 'parrying' thing is kinda neat. Do we have any other ideas? No? Ok ♥♥♥♥ it, ship it."

Skip this, unless you can get it for like 20 bucks including DLC, and even then just for the weapon types. None of this will give you the joy or curiosity or cohesion of KT's other games of this type, and you'll just sit there thinking "Man, I could be playing ANYTHING else right now" while slapping Cao Cao's ♥♥♥♥ in for the sixth time because you want a 4* version of his sword.

Just... Don't bother. Especially don't bother with a friend, then you'll be wasting twice as many people's time.

So, it took me a while to figure out how I wanted to write this review. In all honesty I cannot recommend this game. This game blends demons and fantasy with the three kingdoms era. I love that era which is why I picked up the game and it was enjoyable at first. As the game went on, however though it just got increasingly tedious to play. It was fun interacting with the officers from the three kingdoms era like Cao Cao, Sun Jian, and Liu Bei but when it came to the main story and the demons, I could not care at all. I just wished it were just based on the era then adding this demon army in the mix. Fighting the demons was just tedious and extremely easy to fight. The only fight I had a tough time when u fought an officer. If you are interested in the game wait for a sale and I do not recommend the dlc I would only get it if you really liked the Three kingdoms era or really enjoyed the game.

Highly recommended, especially for fans of both souls games and dynasty warriors.

I hate all of you people.

"Oh, this one's not like Dark Souls."

And then it's like Dark Souls.

It's... alright. After buying it at 35% sale I feel it's not worth. I'd rather have waited for a better sale.

A souls-like with a more arcade-y approach. I kinda miss this game style! Also, THE DLC HAS A CHAIN HAMMER.

criminally underrated