Koei Tecmo (originally just Koei) has been producing games based on the three kingdoms period of China since 1985. Starting with the strategic war simulator Romance of the Three Kingdoms, the publisher took the same characters and settings from the classic Chinese novel and, in the late '90s, launched Dynasty Warriors, a series that started out as a pretty standard one-on-one fighting game but, by the second entry, had evolved to a full-on 3D action game in which you would choose from a broad roster of characters and trundle around third-century war zones, mowing down generally pathetic soldiers by the thousands with the same basic button combo ad nauseam.

So when I first heard Koei Tecmo would be launching a new current-gen Three Kingdoms Era game in Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty, now with an added degree of difficulty, I could barely contain my excitement to hoist my Blue Dragon Blade and slice a path to victory.

Boy, was I a dumbass.

Wo Long is developed by Team Ninja, the same studio that brought us Ninja Gaiden and Nioh, two series that are known for their unapologetic punishment of players. I was provided with a copy of the full game for review purposes but, honestly, they may as well have just handed me the free demo that everyone else got, because I only made it one more stage out before the tentacle-cow-thing boss took me out in a single hit on our first encounter, and I still haven't been able to move past it.

Balancing is actually a major issue with this game. The first boss, Zhang Liang, brutalized me repeatedly until I learned to parry his attacks and open him up for some devastating punishment of his own. I must have died a few dozen times in a row trying to beat him, but with my Dragon Cure Pots (fancy name for health potions) depleted and my life bar near zero, I was eventually able to fell the mighty warrior.

And then he transformed into an even harder boss.

Meanwhile, the next couple of bosses were an absolute breeze, and I beat each of them on my first attempt, although I was over-leveled at that point (more on that later).

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There seemed to be a lack of communication that played into this mess of a first boss fight. Each level is pretty linear, and while there are some branching paths that will lead you to additional treasure or places where you can plant battle flags to increase your minimum spirit level (read: fighting power), playing through a stage is generally a matter of move along a path; kill random soldiers and zombies and maybe a tiger or a flaming hedgehog; fight boss. What the game failed to tell me is that every time I bowed before one of my already-placed flags, those random enemies respawn, and I could go farm them for extra experience points and then level up.

That's another problem — a lot of the boss battles are so dependent on your ability to time your parrys and counter attacks and absolutely nothing else that when I did manage to finally fell one of the more difficult bosses, it felt more like sheer dumb luck than an actual accomplishment.

And if you should double-tap that all-important parry button, you'll instead go into dodge roll. Unlike some other games, in which dodge-rolling grants a god-like level of invulnerability, here it has the much more realistic effect of a 5-year-old clumsily somersaulting into the path of a massive blade or energy blast, and it's painfully easy to do when mapped to such an important button.

I think I get where Team Ninja was going with this, and it's twofold. One, they wanted to show early on that even though the characters and setting are the same, this ain't your daddy's Dynasty Warriors. Two, Elden Ring is incredibly popular, so let's all make hard games like that.

To alleviate the pain, Wo Long lets you team up with some of the most prolific warriors of the era. This sounds like a good idea in theory, but bear in mind that parrying those deadly critical attacks seems to be the key to fighting most bosses, and if a boss decides to unleash all of these specific attacks on your companions instead of you, you've got no path to parry and stagger them and will instead likely have your health bar whittled down by broad-sweeping basic attacks as you're trying to get into position. I ended up skirting the formula by grinding on weaklings, overleveling, and using metal spells to weaken and poison bosses, then just generally avoid them until they slowly succumbed to the toxicity. I won, but it didn't leave me feeling like a hero.

Back to the octo-cow monster, and then I promise I'll stop harping on about the difficulty, because I've already run out of gameplay to criticize. To say I was above what Team Ninja feels is the basic requirement for this fight is an understatement. The recommended level for In Search of the Immortal Wizard is 25. I'm sitting at 45, with a full suit of Guan Yu's heavy armor upgraded as high as I can get it with the materials available to me at this stage of the game. I've generally balanced my level-ups among the five elements, so I'm not particularly weak to anything. And still, this thing can take me from full HP to dead in a single hit.

I get presenting gamers with a challenge, and maybe I'm just terrible at this one, but it feels like they're catering to a small fraction of the GIT GUD player base, which alienates the majority and will make them feel like they lit 70 bucks on fire (which is probably more than the anemic low-to-mid-level fire spells can do.)

All right, the urge to rage-quit aside, this game does have some positives. There's a wide variety of equipment you can collect, and each weapon has a distinct feel, so it's fun to play around with them and find your favorites. Additionally, journeying with other warriors will raise your relationship level with them, and once it's maxed out, you'll get access to a high-quality version of their weapon and a full set of their armor. The level-up system is pretty neat as well, as each time you spend a chunk of experience, it'll be on one of five elements of your choice, and each will upgrade different stats, weapon affinities, and defenses, as well as granting access to different sets of spells.

Graphically, the character customization function can let you craft just about anyone. There were even sliders in there that didn't seem to do anything when taken from one extreme to another. Still, while the scenery was gorgeous from a distance, some of the rock and leaf textures at close range looked very last-gen no matter how I adjusted the resolution. And while it fortunately didn't happen at any crucial moments for me, the animation did hiccup and freeze for a second more than once.

Enemies are varied, with basic human and zombie opponents wielding a wide variety of weaponry that all looks and feels different, and in addition to bosses, you can encounter a variety of challenging monsters like hulking man-tigers and semi-aquatic serpent women.

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As far as story is concerned, sadly, I don't really feel qualified to talk about it, as with nearly two weeks of exclusively playing this game, I've barely been able to scratch its surface. The English-language voice acting is all right, if a little bland, but I did enjoy the banter between the stoic Lord Lovely Beard Guan Yu and Duke Drunky Pants Zhang Fei. Because I can't fairly judge it, I'm not incorporating the story into my score, but at least from the early stages, it seems to be taking more than a page out of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, retelling a classic tale and adding in "and then our hero fought a couple walking corpses too." So if you're into that — and I know I am — it's a fun diversion.

That's not to say the game isn't without its faults outside of the unbalanced and, at times, ridiculous difficulty. Before unlocking character-specific armor, I had been wearing the heaviest thing my upgraded weight stat would allow, which was a full suit of Lieutenant General Armor. It provided a nice look, complete with a flowing black cape. Aesthetically, though, weapons on your hips and back probably shouldn't be poking through the middle of the cape, appearing and disappearing as you slightly shuffle in place, and the thing had a tendency to just clip tight through my head, flip over, and turn into a giant black lobster bib.

With a vast variety of historical figures to battle at your side and square off against you, you may be wanting to learn more about them. Fortunately, Wo Long's menu offers synopses of these characters, as well as every piece of equipment you can pick up. Unfortunately, the text doesn't all fit on screen at once, and it starts automatically scrolling down before all but the speediest of readers will be able to make it through the first line, with seemingly no controls to pause the scrolling or make it go back up. It's this poor attention to detail that really hurts the immersive experience of this terrible third-century apocalyptic world.

All complaining aside, what ultimately makes a game great is whether it's fun, and I have to admit that, despite my frustrations, I'm not ready to give up. No matter how disappointed I am with the game and myself after each "Crushing Defeat," I find myself wanting to go back and play again, even if it's just to build up relationships with Liu Bei and Sun Jian, unlock their armor sets and weapons, grind for levels and new spells and, maybe some day, finally get to use that wizard's house key. It doesn't excuse the faults, and I will die (quickly and repeatedly) on the hill that it would be vastly improved by adding difficulty settings, but if you're a fan of the Three Kingdoms and (not or) extreme difficulty, Wo Long may be a good fit for you. And if it's not, Hell, there's always Dynasty Warriors.

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