Wo Long Fallen Dynasty Review: Fluid combat, flawed by performance issues

Wo Long Fallen Dynasty, developed by Team Ninja, the studio behind the excellent souls-like Nioh Franchise, has iterated on its Action RPG formula to create a new compelling game that unfortunately suffers some of the core issues as its predecessors. As a fan of deep combat systems and build variety, I spent many hours tinkering with different weapons, spells, and martial arts throughout my playtime. Tackling the varied battlefields and progressing through the world was immensely enjoyable; that was until the game took over for its heavy story moments, or my experience was interrupted by several performance issues that really held back what is otherwise an excellent game.

Gameplay

The player's journey in Wo Long is broken up into various battlefields, consisting of small explorable areas filled with enemies to fight, chests to open, and secrets to find. These environments are varied in their layout and locations, which kept me engaged throughout. Each part of the story is broken into three to four Main Battlefields and various Sub Battlefields. Sub Battlefields are secondary objectives you can choose to complete; these missions are often extreme challenges that are harder than the main campaign.

A new addition is the Morale rank system; each Battlefield has its Morale Rank, representing the player's strength and how much damage enemies deal. Increasing this rank on every Battlefield, separate from my overall level and build, became tedious after the first 20 hours of repeating this process. With each new Battlefield, you need to begin this process again. While exploring these locales was enjoyable, I eventually became tired of being forced to explore every area for hidden passageways that may increase my Morale rank.

Score: 4/5

Narrative

Wo Long takes place during the Han Dynasty of ancient China. Having no connection to the source material, It was difficult to connect with the rotating cast of characters as you travel between each major battle. New characters are introduced almost every turn, simply for exposition dumps, before disappearing into the background. When characters aren't explaining the story to you, it's presented in a wall of text on loading screens to fill you in on some events already passed.

Wo Long's story struggles with pacing as you regularly time jump between years of the Han Dynasty without explaining what happened during those year gaps. I found no connection to any of the cast, or their personal journeys, leaving the narrative hard to enjoy when it pulls you away from the combat, Wo Long's best element.

Score: 1/5

Related: Does Wo Long Fallen Dynasty have historical characters?

Combat

Action RPGs are made or broken by their combat system. Wo Long's key mechanic in combat is the Spirit Gauge. This Gauge takes the place of traditional mana and stamina bars; every action, be it casting a spell, blocking, dodging, etc., will consume your Spirit Gauge, while performing positive actions such as attacking the enemy or successfully deflecting an attack will increase your Spirit Gauge.

Evolving on the burst counter mechanic from Nioh 2, deflecting a critical blow can break an enemy's Spirit Gauge, leaving them open for immense damage to their Spirit Gauge and the potential to break their stance. However, if you mistime this, you'll be in the line of fire for a potentially one-shotting ability. I found the risk-reward decision of these moments extremely satisfying, especially when landing a perfect deflect.

Wo Long also has 13 weapon categories and many weapons, stats, martial arts, and Wizardry Spells. The build variety here is deep, with several unique ways to express your custom character with how you tackle combat. I thoroughly enjoyed the introduction of free character respeccing combined with the Battle Sets, allowing you to save a build and instantly switch between them.

Score: 5/5

Performance

Unfortunately, the worst element is the game's PC Performance; I tested the game on an AMD Ryzen 7900x and RTX 3080 system and could not regularly hit 60 FPS at either 1440p or 1080p regardless of the in-game settings. The game has random stuttering issues or occasions where it will completely slow down, almost in slow motion, despite being above 30 FPS. I experienced the same problems on my RTX 3060 gaming laptop, which could not get 60 FPS with every setting on low running a 1080p resolution. This is disappointing for a game that requires accurate timing for deflecting attacks and intense boss fights.

Additionally, Wo Long isn't a good-looking game, regardless of your settings. Texture quality is low throughout, with often muddy environments as the lighting system struggles to articulate distance and objects clearly. Rain-infested battlefields are especially poor performing and looking due to the particle effects on the screen; it can be hard to determine what's the environment, what's the enemy, and what is an explorable landscape in these moments. While these technical limitations were constant issues throughout my experience, I was still able to stay on the journey thanks to the satisfying combat loop and thrill of seeing the next boss.

Score: 2/5

Enemy and Boss Design

Second to combat, quality enemy design is a must for the Action RPG genre. Thankfully, Wo Long succeeded in this department with some minor shortcomings. Enemy design is solid; however, after 10 hours, you have seen most of the game's enemies. Wo Long does an excellent job of remixing these enemies into interesting encounters, including high ground and potential stealth options that keep them fresh over the game's story.

Boss design is hit-and-miss. While every boss I encountered was unique and looked stellar, the encounters needed to be balanced evenly across my playtime. Some significant final boss encounters were too easy, seemingly missing a trick or two to pull out at the player, while others had too many tricks. It took hours to learn their attacks, even with the help of your AI allies.

Score: 3/5

Verdict: An Action RPG Success, but a technical failure.

Wo Long Fallen Dynasty succeeds in being a complex, deep, and engaging action RPG with satisfying a combat loop and some boss highlights. The narrative and performance shortcomings are hard to ignore, and your mileage may vary as a result. I still believe that Wo Long Fallen Dynasty is a game worth your time once the technical limitations, at least on PC, have been sorted.

For more information on Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty, check out Best way to farm experience in the Wo Long Fallen Dynasty Demo and What carries over from the Wo Long Fallen Dynasty demo? on Pro Game Guides.