New "Wo Long" demo is out, lets you carry progress to main game

Cool, the forced lock-on in this game makes one boss a particular hassle.

Pretty early on, some stuttering on PC, but I like it so far.

On the first actual level I think after the tutorial level, and I saw that I looted something that was to be used to upgrade my healing flask. But it said "full inventory" and sent it to my "overflow" inventory for some reason. Where the hell is that? It's not on the flags. Does this mean I have to wait for the village to open up before I can increase the number of uses on my flask?
EDIT: Wait, I just got one more. I think it's just refilling my flask, but since I have 3/3 it says that it's sending it to the inventory.

I forgot this game was on Game Pass, but it looks like I should wait until some patches before playing it. And I'm still on the fence about investing all my time in another Souls-like.

Having my first issue on PS5 but I'm sure it's down to the engine rather than something else. Got an enemy in front of me that vanishes in and out of existence.

I don't think I like this.

In one of the Game Settings pages there is an option to disable auto-lock when you melee, if it gets to be a problem again.

@jaqen_hghar: I haven't run into that. I've also tried to keep my inventory pretty clear in terms of selling or salvaging equipment I don't want, but I feel like that shouldn't make a difference for items like that? I'm sure there's a limit on pieces of equipment held, there was in Nioh, but it shouldn't apply to consumables. They should just show up in your consumable items list. If not, you should be able to access your storage by talking to the blacksmith chick who shows up in the middle of that second stage. Once you're in her shop, look at the upper-right of the screen and there should be a button to switch to storage.

FWIW, sometimes enemies will drop random extra flask charges that do nothing but fill up your current uses; if you're already full you'll get red text telling you so and it will stay on the ground. You're looking for "Dragon Vein Essence" and "Dragon Vein Crystals." One of them increases your number of flask uses, the other one makes it heal more per use.

Eurgh. Another roadblock. I do get the feeling from 3 of the bosses so far that they feel misplaced.

@atheistpreacher: I believe the item limit is 300. The major issue is the sorting is garbage. Not only is there basically no compare feature, but there isn't any way way to easily mark stuff as junk so you can sell or disassemble it. Nioh let you just check everything that wasn't locked in the menu, but you apparently have to do it one by one in Wo Long.

It's just crazy how many little QoL annoyance there are. They copied so much stuff from Nioh (Literally copied. The Terracotta Warrior enemies are back with the exact same model and moveset) but somehow not any of the menu interaction stuff. The Nioh system wasn't even that great either. It madness. This game feels like it wasn't play tested at all.

Not quite true. This is a thing I'd complained about earlier in the thread: you can lock items or mark them as favorites, but you have to do it from the "item" menu, you can't do it directly from "equipment." Which is stupid. Also, at least at the blacksmith I can indeed select a bunch of items at once with L3 to sell or break down... you can customize what it's selecting based on rarity.

But overall the loot system in general and the interface they give you to sort it does indeed suck. They learned nothing from Nioh or SoP, and seem to have regressed in some areas.

The Martial Arts had a bad first impression but I'm starting to rely on them a lot the more I play. Dual Swords have a lot of mobility based attacks and certain polearms let you charge up some 4-5 hit sweeping combos that a lot of enemies can't really stand up to.

Though I still look at the Wizardry tree and think that I'd have to go really deep into it and spec heavily for them before any of the offensive spells are better than "I run up and hit you".

The buffs are another matter though, every playthrough I do of this game is going to spec enough into Water to get the speed boost.

I'm going back and to the old missions in an effort to get the oaths up. It is fun to smash early missions with a mid-game build. I did wonder if the morale system would hamstring that but I've been confidently smashing things five and more ranks above me.

I'm also not sure what to use the wizardry tree for. It seems very situational like "This boss is hitting me hard so I'll boost defence." I barely have time to send spells out or apply weapon buffs. I've not really specialised in anything and have spread the points about. Respeccing without penalty is great. Really allows you to experiment with builds.

I am happy that Lu Bu is the "Have you learned how to play yet?" boss. This boss kicks ass, especially mine so far.

That did seem like a very well-designed fight. Not all of them have been. But he was tough and yet totally doable if you were on-point with your deflects, everything is pretty telegraphed.

@atheistpreacher: Yeah, it was the extra flasks. Didn't even say that it was sent to the inventory as I thought, just that I was full and all that. Realized it once I actually got one of the "Dragon Vein" things. Reading comprehension isn't always as high as I would like.
Gotten to the second real mission, and the ground and character flashes light blue sometimes. I also got the full screen white flash bug, but turning off AO fixed that. Debating with myself if I should wait on patches, but I am having a lot of fun with the game so now sure if I want to.

I'm guessing I will be able to do a lot of stuff once I get to the village I hear you unlock, but what can you do there? I bet that is where you can change your characters look, which I hope is as flexible as it was in Nioh 2. But can you also respec? I am putting in points in what I think I need so far, but that always changes down the line as you learn more about the game. And haven't dared put much into the Wizardry tree, in case I cannot respec that.

OK, yeah, here's a brief rundown of the village. It unlocks after main mission 4. The main thing to do there at first is just interact with the Blacksmith, who can upgrade your equipment, and salvage your junk items for mats that you can then use to customize your stuff somewhat... pretty much just switch out those little affixes on them. She can also do cosmetic changes, specifically make any piece of armor look like any other one that you've picked up previously. So you won't need to avoid an armor set just because you think it's ugly.

Completing one more main mission (the fifth one), will let you access another NPC in the village who will not only let you change your character's look at will, but will let you re-spec at will, for no cost. You can then save different builds that have different stats and switch them on the fly at battle flags. I haven't really started to leverage this any, but theoretically with the rock-paper-scissors element system, you could do different builds that are better against certain bosses. I imagine I might get into that in NG+ when the game gets harder, but for now I've been OK sticking to a generalist build.

There are a few other NPCs to interact with, but none of the others are that important. The chick who has lost the keys to her house will give you a Dragon Vein Essence eventually.

@atheistpreacher: Thanks a lot! Feels a lot better knowing I can experiment a bit with both armor, stat points and spells.

Yeah, I've respeced for Lu Bu and I'm having a better time of it. I still need the patience for it and, to be honest, your spells buffs last mere seconds.

Okay, screw patience. Summoned two absolute legends to get the job done. One of them was even nice enough to resurrect me from death. I know that fight. I just don't want to do it for 6 minutes each attempt.

It has strong competition in both Nioh 1 and 2 but The Tiger's Loyal Subjects might be the worst sub mission that they've made yet.

Three aggressive mid-boss level enemies at once, at equal Morale, and you cannot summon reinforcements. Miserable.

Are the rewards even worth it?

Absolutely not.

See, I actually didn't mind it. I beat that one on my first attempt. Helps to abuse Enhanced Defense and Absorb Vitality together, lets you just tank a lot of hits (also Illusory Shell, but you need 40 in Earth for that one).

On the other hand, just wait for the penultimate boss of the game, who is a flying enemy that stays out of reach of your melee attacks most of time. Now that is some serious BS.

But actually the boss who gave me the toughest time, at least on the sub-mission with no Reinforcements, was Zhang Liao, since his lightning element cancels out the Earth buffs I leaned on for the rest of the game.

I'm on to the next difficulty level, we'll see how that goes, I've only done a few missions on it so far. The drop rate of the new 5-star equipment seems depressingly low. Maybe it gets better for higher-level missions.

It really does feel like a game lacking polish, like there's stuff they meant to do and didn't get around to it. One thing I'm kind of astounded about is that your ranged ammo doesn't automatically restock at checkpoints, or even between missions. If you run out of arrows or bolts, you need to manually restock them from your Storehouse. I mean, seriously? In Nioh 2 they auto-restocked. It's like this game has regressed compared to the previous game rather than progressed, at least in certain areas. Hopefully patches will add this and other QoL features.

But I'll say this as well: it's weird that this game throws about as much loot as the Nioh games did, even though the fact that there's no inherent gear level means that you can use the same weapon and armor for the whole game if you want. I did just that. I had my Lieutenant-General armor and my Polearm Podao that I kept upgrading all the way to the max of +9 and never switched them, and eventually I had broken down enough gear that I maxed myself out on crafting mats. All I can do with new equipment is sell it, unless it's actually worth keeping. But the game just continues to throw oodles of it at me to manage.

Team Ninja really needs to either figure out how to design a loot system that's actually good, or get out of that game altogether.

That arrows and such don't auto replenish is crazy in an of itself but that you then cannot even access the Storehouse apart from the Blacksmith is just... that feels intentional. Like just take away the ranged weapons if you don't want me one shotting everything with them already.

Yeah, that too. Seems very strange that you can't access storehouse from flags.

While increasingly baffled at many QoL related decisions I do wanna say that this might be one of the best versions of a skill Respec I've seen.

To just be able to redistribute each stat point for point is really convenient, and at no cost. More games take note, it's fun to be able to hit a reset button and try new things stop treating it like something you have to 'earn'.

Yeah, I don't think this game lacks polish but it there's just odd decisions that have been made across the board. I'll never not be annoyed at how travel is handled post-mission. If it's a main battlefield, straight into the next one. If you've finished a submission, "WOULD YOU LIKE TO GO ANYWHERE THAT ISN'T THE MAP?!"

So, a few little tips that I wish I'd known at the beginning.

After I saw credits roll, I checked the trophies to see if I was near the platinum. I mostly was, but the one thing I hadn't been doing at all was interacting with those little panda things (Shitieshou) that can sometimes be found on missions. I didn't realize that there was a trophy associated with "feeding" all of them. Annoying because I had found most of them already, I just hadn't been doing anything with them when I did. I referred to this video to go back and feed them all to get my plat. Wasn't too bad since my gear was all +9 and I was rolling through enemies pretty good.

But here's the thing. Those Shitieshou are actually super useful because when you feed them a piece of equipment, they seem to *always* give you an accessory back that's of the same rarity--or higher rarity (low chance)--as the item you gave them. Doesn't matter if you give them a weapon or piece of armor, they'll still give you an accessory.

Why is this important? Because accessories are your one piece of equipment that can't be customized at the blacksmith. For armor and weapons you can use Embedment to switch out properties, but for accessories, the properties they've got are what they are. Hence, trading a junk 4* or 5* piece of equipment that you're not going to use for a chance at an accessory with useful properties is always worthwhile. Even if the accessory you get in return sucks, you can just re-trade it the next time you see a Shitieshou until you get something you want to keep.

Finished it with the Straight Sabre (Ring Pommel Sabre, etc) and definitely found it to be the easiest of the recent Team Ninja games, even including SOPFFO. The Sekiro style reliance on counters makes you feel very cool but the simplification of the mechanic (press B to parry anything, no need to add a direction or anything) means you won't be forced to think too hard just hit the button right before you get smacked. I really like the combat but the world design makes it far to easy to sneak up behind 90% of the too few enemies and kill them without a fight. The game needed a handful more fights that actually forced you to engage with more than one enemy without assassinating them to 10% hp first.

Damn does any part of the main game teach you about the weapon switch Deflect? I only saw it in the Basic Training mission while I was mopping up things on the map I hadn't done.

It's actually really useful, it would have been nice to know about.

@efesell: The WHAT?

Uh, I'm gonna go with no. You know, having played both Nioh games and Stranger of Paradise I knew I should do the Basic Training but I just never bothered.

Although, to be fair I never bothered equipping a second melee weapon in this game. Never felt the need as everything could be pretty trivially solved with the Straight Sabre. It just worked.

@dareitus: So... if you hold the Martial Arts button and use a deflect you will perform a weapon switch attack that acts as a deflect. Meaning you get the normal deflect and also a bit of extra posture damage as part of the attack.

It only works on normals, not criticals, and it's riskier to miss the timing because you can't save it by switching to a guard fast enough.

But it's really effective on huge telegraphed swings.

I wanna say it was mentioned in the second stage. I already knew about it in the demo and I never did the basic training at the time.

And yeah, it's pretty useful. Not only is it a quick way to switch weapons, it also restores your negative Spirit back to 0. I watched a couple of No Damage Boss videos and was surprised that none of them seemed to make use of it.

Anyway, I just beat Lu Bu. Been a while since I played a game with this style of boss that's this hard. He went from being seemingly insurmountable to fairly trivial. I did end up completely overhauling my build in the process, though. Think I'll stick to Earth from now on, as the glaive with the Soaring Phoenix attack you get from one of your party members is just too damn good.

Also, Aqua Blink did not disappoint. It actually allowed me to teleport through Lu Bu's attacks and hit him from behind, which would've been impossible otherwise.

Shame the next stage sucks so much. It's just not very fun exploring a city set ablaze. Hopefully I can get through it fast.

Maybe I just "played wrong" but I didn't feel the need to do any of the Martial Arts or fancy magics like teleporting. I just used the Flame/Poison/Ice weapons and the do more damage circle on occasion. Playing Straight Sabre meant my primary Stats were Wood Fire and Water so I had good Health and Stealth (Wood main stat for most the game til I got a companion weapon and could switch to Water).

I could assassinate 90% of enemies because this game always gives you an alternate path to get behind or above things. The basic fodder enemies I can just sprint directly at and X X X Y down. Stronger types I'll do a flame weapon first. Demons come down to countering the "red-eye" (sorry I can't not call them that) and just kinda playing passive otherwise (if I didn't just assassinate it the. XXXXXX mash it down while it does its aggro animation)

Never equipped a second weapon, wore the same outfit the whole game just upgraded it as I went, never bothered even looking at the trinkets.

Not saying omg ez git gud but honestly it felt like putting more effort/skill in was just asking to get punished (IE, longer animation locks on dual weapons) but you could just bop with sword and counter infinitely with the simple load out.

For reference, final stats were 20 22 12 12 34

I wish I experienced some of the stuff you guys are talking about like teleporting through bosses or using the magic system to counter their type but assassination is just so strong

Why yes it is.

I wish there was a good way to farm that weapon, as I'm now in NG+ and would like a 5* version. But there's no duel against Guan Yu, so aside from getting the free 4* version through bonds, it's sheer RNG.

Currently I'm using that and the Soaring Ursine Mace, which also scales well with earth and has its own great martial art that stun-locks human enemies pretty well.

Previously I'd used the Unparalleled Spear for a while, since I was able to pick it up from Zhao Yun in the demo. Again a nice martial on it, it corkscrews forward, good for ambushes. But ultimately I like the glaive's moveset better, and the mace is a better complement as a second weapon.

I only have a few companion weapons, but I really like Hong Jings staff. The primary martial on it lets you windmill at enemies until you run out of spirit and if you have high enough spirit it gives you a free Fire enchant.

@dareitus: I dunno. Outside of the "special" companion or boss weapons, the base dual sabres have a martial art that essentially side-steps you before counter-attacking. It's pretty useful to avoid burst attacks you might not otherwise be able to get out of the way of. It's probably the first martial art I use regularly.

I dot hink that the martial arts are another way the game is really poorly paced and communicated to the player. There are some good and borderline overpowered martial arts, but the starting ones are almost all utterly useless, which I think kind of drives people away from using them.

Yeah, agreed, the unique martial arts tend to be the good ones, most of the generic randomized ones don't seem worth using.

I'll have to try some of the other weapon classes now that I'm NG+ to check out new MAs. The companion Straight Sabre I got (Fruzion sp?) has a unique MA that's just two big swipes to the front that does decent damage but like most MAs leaves you open for very little extra payoff so I didn't bother looking at many others.

Yeah a lot of the martial arts just make you ask "Is this better than just using a Spirit Attack" and unfortunately for a lot of them the answer is usually No.

So it's a fair bit of trial and error to find the ones that stand out and are actually also good in live combat.

I've also had the minor frustration of seeing very, very few weapons that were enchanted. I finished NG and literally only have a single stone enchant and a single fire enchant and that's it. Maybe I haven't been paying enough attention and have accidentally sold some. But in Nioh that stuff wasn't so rare, and you could always just roll it onto weapons anyway through reforging. Now you have to find them on drops and the game seems to love withholding them...

I still keep a big Club of Polaris or whatever but I've barely found it useful outside of two early bosses. The pommel brings more spirit and it's quicker to attack or bail out of a string to catch a deflect.

Committing to a flurry of attacks and then seeing red is BAD NEWS. I'm not sure if Martial Arts are worth it because mine seem real easy on the spirit guage. Does that mean it's going to do an equivalent amount of damage? I'd rather spend the whole meter for a poke.

This is why I've been liking the dual saber side-step martial art. It seems like you can't dodge or parry cancel out of an attack string, but you might be able to martial arts cancel? I'm not entirely sure, but I've had pretty good luck avoiding the burst attacks when I couldn't otherwise parry. That might just be because the dual sabres are really fast, though.

Gaaaahhhh. Just managed to beat Lu Bu again on NG+ after something like 20 attempts. Hadn't fought him since the original new game, had to re-learn the fight again, and of course it was just way tougher. Still very well-designed. Really forces you to deflect, because there's just no other way to beat that guy.

@efesell: So, uh, yeah, I tried "The Tiger's Loyal Subjects" on NG+ for a while, and while I blew through the original version in a single attempt by abusing buffs, this time it seemed friggin' impossible. I managed to kill one of the three on a single occasion, but in my 30+ other attempts I didn't get any of them. Holy hell. Might not be so bad if they weren't constantly range attacking you with arrows and fire pots when you try to get distance and buff and heal. And there were multiple times when I'd opened up one of them to a fatal strike but couldn't actual do the hit since the others would just interrupt me before it could even start.

Hah, well, I whine about it and then I immediately manage to eke out a win, of course. No potions left at the end.

The key ended up being a return to Zhao Yun's Unparalleled Spear, which had been my first weapon of choice that I'd gotten away from. Like the Soaring Ursine Mace, it has a unique martial art with a lot of forward movement. The problem was that the mace's martial art stayed on the ground and hence got slowed going through the bogs on the level. The martial art for the Unparalleled Spear floats in the air as it corkscrews forward, so it was better able to do hit-and-run attacks without the other two enemies coming from behind and ganking me.

But holy man, I won't be doing that one again in a hurry. At this point I'd just like to see if I can clear the rest of the game on NG+ (not looking forward to that Zhang Liao duel). I don't think I have the dedication to also farm for 5* equipment, because odds are the DLCs will just add another rarity tier anyway, that's how these games always seem to work.

Managed to do the Loyal Subjects mission on the second try. I just picked a target and wailed on them. Occasionally spamming deflect for some lucky spirit boosts.

@shindig: Not sure if you're talking about the first NG version or the second NG+ version. I agree that the first one isn't so bad; your stats are comparatively good enough to quickly power one enemy down. The NG+ version is a different story!

I've now completed the entire NG+ aside from the final boss (who I beat on the first try in NG)... I've only been able to get him down to half health at best after about an hour of trying. Gonna keep at it for a little while, but he has HP for days and hits like a truck, there's very little room for error.

FWIW someone found a bugged panda in the mission "Fate of the Entertainer." Normally you can only feed them once per mission, but this one will reset when you rest at the nearby flag, allowing you to feed it again. Using the NG+ version of the missions, you can get guaranteed 5* accessories in exchange either for 10 jewel fragments or a 5* accessory you don't want.

Probably gonna exploit this for a while until I've got a pair of accessories I feel really good about. A lot of the properties don't do much, but "Power Gain upon HP Recovery" and "Damage Reduced upon HP Recovery" are great to have when paired with the Absorb Vitality spell, because they basically end up being permanent buffs. Would be even better if paired with "Health Restoration from Melee Attack Damage", which can also show up rarely on accessories.

Well, I may as well say that I've just beaten that final boss on the second difficulty level, meaning I've cleared all missions on both difficulties, so I'm probably done with this game until the first DLC drops. If it's anything like the Nioh games or Stranger of Paradise, the DLC will have a new tab's worth of missions, along with a whole third difficulty setting, and possibly a new tier of loot (unless they wait until DLC 2 for that). I suppose I could farm for 5* equipment, but the loot in these Team Ninja games is pretty unexciting, and since it'll also very likely be superseded later by orange-tier loot, I don't see much point.

This game definitely had some interesting notions, and the core combat is fun, but almost everything else about it feels pretty half-baked. Lots of expected QoL features missing, loot system a mess, terrible story, etc. I still like what this team puts out, but in my eyes they're in no danger of catching up to the folks at From Software who they're clearly trying to emulate.

I'm never sure if Team Ninja is actually interested in directly competing with From Soft in any way or just gleefully taking systems to augment what they really want to make.... a more relevant Ninja Gaiden.

I'm in a weird spot with the two though because I do think that at the end of day From Soft is making better games but I'd almost always rather actually play something from Team Ninja now.

@efesell: I think I get what you mean. I'd go so far as to say Team Ninja constructs more interesting core combat. One could argue that From's combat--excepting Sekiro--hasn't changed hardly at all since the original Demon's Souls. But From's games also have massively better art direction, storytelling, more interesting worlds to explore, etc.

As for whether Team Ninja seems themselves as "competing" with FS versus just ripping off various aspects of their designs, well... IDK, seems like we're into distinction without a difference land. I like both, and I suspect there's a pretty decent-sized middle portion of the Venn diagram there.