For those who had requested me which property, of all of the cool IPs on the market, would get a significant push to new genres, I’d by no means have guessed that Dungeon Fighter can be an choice in 2025.
An action-oriented MMO that first stole hearts within the early 2000’s, Dungeon Fighter is getting a good-looking new figurehead in The First Berserker – Khazan. And you already know what? So far as missionaries spreading the nice phrase of Dungeon Fighter to the plenty go, it isn’t half dangerous!
Khazan is a Souls-like at its coronary heart, with an emphasis on ruthless aggression. The sport desires you to be aggro, dashing in and dodging injury, slicing by means of enemies in a deluge of blood splurts. With such violence comes shameless pleasure, and the sport is fast to thrust you into the motion ballet that has enraptured hundreds of Souls-Like fiends around the globe. Me included: I am a misplaced trigger.
Developer Neople reveals a deep understanding of what followers of this type of motion recreation need, primarily by means of its method to fight design. You get a block and a dodge, proper? Customary bundle. However, time each good – earlier than you are hit – and also you get a mirror or ‘blink dodge’ that present further alternatives for offense, or a stamina bump. You may be taught a parry by means of the talent tree, however there’s one other parry that solely works in opposition to particular unblockable pink assaults. The sport throws instruments at you, trusting that you are a scoundrel who loves messing round with all these choices. And guess what Neople? I’m a scoundrel, and revelled on this nonsense.
This aggressive method depends closely on stamina. Fight, particularly in opposition to bosses, is a recreation of motion and response – utilizing up nearly all of your stamina to pump out injury, then enjoying defence till you are again on the entrance foot. Stamina recharges over time, however sure talent tree upgrades can present boosts to stamina technology on mirror and dodge. Your enemies have stamina, too, and depleting that opens them as much as a robust Brutal Assault that absolutely refills your assets, and permits you to go all out but once more.
It is an intriguing method. Souls-Likes have been stamina-reliant ever since Demon’s Souls, however few have constructed a lot upon the useful resource. All the things ties into stamina. The results of this, at Khazan’s finest, is that gamers can have interaction on this partaking back-and-forth till you deplete a boss’s stamina fully, earlier than cashing out the next stun state for an enormous hit, a full stamina bar, and an open stage to drag of your nastiest combo. As such, a lot of the sport is constructed round pushing your benefit, staying proper within the face of enemies to stop them from catching their breath, and planting you within the hazard zone always.
Initially, I discovered myself torn between going ham and enjoying overly defensive. However at round 12 hours in all of it clicked. As you acclimate to Khazan’s effervescent waters, you spend much less time holding again and extra time up in individuals’s faces. On this zone, Khazan has a vigour to it that entraps the center and stored me eager. Let me put it this manner: I’d a lot fairly spend three hours grinding Khazan than play an hour some other recreation out proper now. Sure, including that one.
The sport’s method to weapons and tools freshens issues up too. There are three weapons varieties in complete, which does not sound like rather a lot, however every compliments a selected type. I, caught up within the haze of fast-paced mild assault flurries, stayed true to the twin wield weapon sort, however in case you like massive hits or extra conservative pokey fight the greatsword and spear respectively will preserve you content material.
You may then praise your type with gear that drops, all coming in quite a lot of attractive kinds and stat varieties. Gear also can are available in units, which have bonuses when mixed collectively, and you’ll even re-roll stats on gear items you prefer to superb tune your individual shirtless himbo. It is a large a part of Khazan. Gear set bonuses are extremely worthwhile, extra so than pure defensive stats, and among the ring/necklace units are bonkers. 30% lowered general injury taken? 50% elevated summoned bestie injury? Ridiculous numbers that show invaluable throughout tough fights.
No matter your method, it is price noting what lots of you might have assumed already: Khazan is tough. It is bizarrely arduous. Now, I’ve played my fair share of challenging Souls-Likes, however the distinctive quirks of Khazan set up it as its personal unusual place within the style graph of how arduous video games like this pull your tooth out.
Funilly sufficient, the common ranges aren’t arduous in any respect, however Khazan is so fast at throwing difficult bosses at you, particularly relative to the hardship you may face within the mission main as much as them. The second boss has two phases, with completely different assaults unfold between them. The third additionally has two life bars, unblockable assaults, vastly completely different assault patterns between the 2 kinds. The fourth boss has a passive elemental injury burn that whittles down your well being, an unlimited AOE assault, and it is even break up into two flooring in order that the boss can completely cowl one flooring in an unlimited blanket of fireside that’ll simply straight up kill you. The sport shortly throws you into the maw of an awesome beast, beneath the understanding that you are a masochist that’ll take pleasure in pulling your self out of its jaws.
Because of this Khazan does not have a problem spike, because it had been, extra of a problem stegosaurus. One can glean from the sport that you just’re meant to bash your head in opposition to these bosses. Actually, the sport rewards you for doing so! Each time you die in a boss struggle, you get a kickback of level-up forex you could slowly use to enhance your stats after every botched run. Identical for talent level XP, too. So the bosses are constructed as these massive partitions that you could bash your head in opposition to and – ultimately – by means of. Now, that is masochism.
If you’d like, you may summon a Spirit of Advocacy that can assist you out. It is just like different ghostly allies from the sport’s contemporaries, nevertheless it begins off weaker than an American lager. To energy them up, you could defeat summonable mini-boss phantoms for forex, the identical forex used to name in your golden homie to your facet. These are unfold throughout the varied missions in Khazan, and are supposed as non-obligatory challenges that make progress by means of common enemies spicier and, in flip, make the missions’ remaining struggle simpler. A trade-off that equals the scales.
What this implies for these completely caught, although, is that if you wish to enhance up your summonable pal, you could farm. Farm up forex to summon allies, positive, but additionally to strengthen them up sufficient so you may surpass your foe. Once more, in case you’re a lover of smashing your head into bosses advert neuseam like me it isn’t an enormous drawback, however spare a thought for Terry Jenkins, age 45, recent again from a shift down the mines and seeking to play some video video games in his spare time. He, and regular individuals I might assume, might not be eager on gathering dozens of summon tokens. And who can blame ’em, actually?
The sport additionally suffers from ample boss reuse, which would not be such a nasty factor if the sport had unfold the second coming of foremost story fights out a bit extra.. The second boss I discussed earlier has a barely completely different variant; you are requested to struggle them in a facet quest proper after the primary story mission through which you first encounter them, similar for the fourth boss, and this development continues. When used conservatively, boss reuse is usually a welcome sight. Even a hype one. However in Khazan, it is completed too usually, too quickly, and so the enemies lose their wow issue totally.
The sport has a type of animated film really feel with its 3D cel-shaded graphics that received me over. It is like the sport popped out of a type of greater finances CG anime films, and this goes a great distance in setting the sport other than grimdark Souls-Like motion recreation quantity 56 on Steam proper now. The background artists have additionally completed a stellar job; from the second the sport began, I discovered myself looking on the vistas simply out of attain and going, cor, that appears beautiful. Khazan breathes recent life into the Dungeon Fighter universe in a method that nearly made me need to obtain the OG MMO. It is a love letter, actually.
The place this falls to the realm of mediocre is the story itself, which is a reasonably customary revenge story with the world’s angriest man searching down those that did him unsuitable. It is fairly customary, although it is facet missions the place issues go from common to comical. I shall not spoil it right here, however aimagine Khazan handing an orphaned child gorilla a loaded gun, just for Khazan to be horrified that this gorilla has not solely attained candy revenge, but additionally a boss bar beneath him half-hour later. Nice job Khazan, very cool. In any other case the sport is a soaking in tragedy and indignant yelling which, y’know, I am not averse to. It is simply not precisely the primary draw right here.
Khazan is the proper instance of a recreation that is greater than its particular person elements. The sport does re-use rather a lot, however the gooey core of the sport is so partaking, so enjoyable, that you do not actually care. It is moorish, devilishly so, and whereas the sport does not nail all the pieces, it’s got sufficient guts behind it to warrant a sturdy advice to virtually everybody. That’s, except you wrestle with the problem these kinds of video games champion. In that case, Khazan will not welcome you to the Dungeon Fighter universe with an open hand, however fairly smack you away with a closed fist.
The First Berserker – Khazan was reviewed on PC, utilizing a code supplied by the developer. It is accessible for PC, PS5, and Xbox Sequence X|S on March 27.