Khazan do be Berserking

8/10 - Great (above average)

⚔️A masterclass in souls-like combat, an absolute must-play🔥

Playing The First Berserker: Khazan has been wild, unforgettable ride, one that every action-RPG fan needs to experience. From the moment I picked up the controller, I knew this was something special.

🎨Visuals & sounds🔊: The game's 3D cel-shaded visuals are nothing short of jaw-dropping. It's like stepping into an animated epic come to life, with vibrant graphics that feel both bold and immersive. The sound design and voice performances complement this beautifully, elevating every clash and cinematic moment.

⚔️Combat & bosses: If you live for intense, satisfying combat, Khazan delivers in spaded. The combat system is tight, responsive and layered like Sekiro's precision mixed with Nioh's complexity. Boss battles are standout highlights, testing your timing, strategy and patience. They're punishing, yes but every victory feels earned and exhilarating.

🛡Challenge made accessible⚖️: What remarkable is how approachable Khazan has become thanks to thoughtful difficulty updates. Neople added new "beginner" and "hardcore" modes, even renaming difficulties to make progression smoother. Whether you're a newcomer or a veteran, there's a path that fits your style.

📜Content & replay value♾: This game is deep hours of content, new game+ and ultimate challenge modes like the Great General's Crucible and Berserker's Bloodshed. Every run feels fresh, with new builds and weapons to experiment.

🌍Community & legacy🏯: Khazan marks a powerful expansion of the Dungeon & Fighter universe. It's a bold step beyond it's beat-'em-up roots and a perfect entry point for newcomers. You can feel the passion behind it and it's clear Neople is laying the groundwork for more epic adventures ahead.

⭐️Final verdict: if you love souls-likes, gripping combat and unforgettable boss fights. The First Berserker: Khazan is a must-play. This is the kind of game that stays with you long after you put down the controller.

🔥⚔️10/10 | Parry, slash and bleed!🩸🏆

Good

I have no idea what is going on with story nor do I care, the combat and gameplay loop is fun.

After extensive contemplation (and getting the platinum) I've come to a conclusion that this game is, ultimately, a bad one. It's a poorly designed game with unfinished mechanics, a confusing UI, and is really just a boring slog to finish for anyone interested in a completionist playstyle.

The main issue is that the game gives you the tools to play with, like three types of weapons plus skill trees and armor sets tied to them, but you realistically CAN'T USE any other weapon aside from the preferred one because you lack skill points (a lot more resources to be honest). And you CAN'T EARN new skill points until after clearing the main story mission. The progression is just locked, lol. Why?? Considering the bosses, who were incredibly difficult to beat at the beginning of the game because of their massive HP bars, design-wise that all was just super dumb. The same goes for the sets. You can farm those from bosses or craft them if you can find crafting notes, which are usually hidden in side areas much later in the story. Each piece gives a bonus, so it's preferable to wear only sets, but trying to get a viable one for the long run is a nightmare.

Personally, I had two breaking points of why farming here sucks. The first was at the beginning when I learned that when you farm a boss, you can't get every weapon to form a set. For example, if you chose a lance, you skip every set related to the greatsword or dual wield, including potentially interesting ones, just because you lack the resources to effortlessly develop one or two additional weapon sets. Three hours wasted, this sucks, but okay, I didn't pay attention to a small icon indicating that basically every set after the first one includes one weapon only. But the next breaking point was when I literally farmed for an entire day (10 hours) for a final piece of the "Crushed Dreams" set, just to learn it is IMPOSSIBLE TO GET this piece until almost the end of the game (a final piece gives you an active skill, which is the whole point of acquiring the set in the first place). That was it. I rage quit for like half a year and returned only after hearing about some extensive game patching.

About the "Fixes"

Again, I started playing on the release day, and while some things have been "patched" now, they are really just a bandaid, not a solution. For instance, there are now "templates" for both skills and sets. You can now "kinda" change everything "on the fly," except it's ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ not. You still lose your skills tied to sets and have to manually reassign them to the quick panel. And yes, a love message to everyone playing with a gamepad: instead of tying items to a quick cast like skills, it's a DS1-like "selector" quick panel without even the ability to quickly return to the first item. THIS REALLY SUCKS, especially after I managed to tie one item to a skill shortcut - it was a blessing, but a fleeting one. A bug. A freaking bug. It's just a shame.

Another thing that was "fixed" is a solution to the "permanent B-C" weapon scaling. Now, every weapon could be scaled to B+ or A using an item. A far cry from Souls progression, but at least you can now reset the scaling so all your weapons scale from one attribute. It feels stupid, but it is at least convenient. This also works for those who have been singing the praises of this game, chanting "you can effortlessly shift between sets" - yeah, sure. A bandaid upon another one. Oh, and there are "cubes" now, an item to increase the rarity of a piece of equipment, a power progression helper of some sort. I suppose they expect us to praise them for making it easier to upgrade old sets rather than farming new ones every 30 levels. Just a small note: it is an upgrade that would cost you an HOUR OF FARMING FOR A SINGLE ITEM, plus, it's just another complicated tool to fix the BS that was this game at the start. I could continue but this game is not worth it honestly..

So, why all the "hard thinking" when there are so many issues? In the end, while the boss fights and graphics could be appealing, these are severely overshadowed by design choices that make you want to give up on the game right from the start. I really wanted to like this game. I liked the characters and the aesthetics. Sadly, I never want to return to this nuisance again. Not to their "new wonderful challenge mode" and certainly not to the NG+. They have good PR, I wish them the same in the designer's chair in future.

Khazan was a game I was extremely hyped for. That demo was really good even I rage uninstalled because of the second boss in it, then reinstalled it to play it at the easier difficulty. It was one of the games I wanted to play for months, and I was starving myself of soulslike games for fear of being fatigued by the time I got to it. Well, the souls fasting stopped when I played like 5 of them in a month or 2. Which I don't think really made me fatigued, but definitely showed me what I actually like in the genre and much much much to my disappoint, Khazan is not really what I like; and I feel so bad about not liking it.

I think the game still starts out strong. It's the demo, I started on the games "Normal" Difficulty, which was the Demo's easy difficulty apparently. When I got to the demo boss I didn't beat at first, I was like "That was too easy" and then swapped it back up. Thankfully a sidequest let me fight that boss again and I actually did it. All those recent soulslikes (mainly Lies of P probably) boosting my gamer skill. The next boss was also pretty fun. I spent almost 2 hours on it, and it was really fun learning it. I did think this game was a little too parry focused because the fights could last really long, but I was enjoying it.

Then comes the spiral downwards, the 4th(?) boss, the goat ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. Nothing really bad about it really, but the fact his status effect can go through your perfect blocks really tilted me. Maybe they didn't want perfect blocking to be the only skill the player should get good at, but it upsets me to no end. I was building around just being a parrying to lower their stamina bar to get brutal attacks because, frankly, the actual combat is not what I like.

Let's get to the weapons, there are only 3 weapon types, a Sword + Axe dual wielded, a Greatsword, and a Spear. At first I went for the greatsword because its a big ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ sword! It's pretty cool, but in bosses it feels so slow, kind of same problame I was having with the Axe in Wuchang. I don't like Sword + Axe because I don't really enjoy faster weapons like that in these games, i want that heft and faster weapons just feel too lightweight. Then I saw the spear perfect block can do more stamina damage, and settled on it. I will say after around 13 hours though, the combat gets real boring. Is it because I don't really like all the weapons? Is it because there is only 3 weapon types?

Maybe another angle on this is that this game is a Looter, and while I think it is more manageable than Nioh (because that game has so many niche stats and this has more normal ones), I still ended really bouncing off of it, Hard. I enjoyed Diablo and Grim Dawn well enough, but I think that is because they aren't very hard and its just clicking on ♥♥♥♥, maybe more viscerally satisfying. I don't like Looter mechanics in Souls games at all because I would just rather have handcrafted loot that is cool. It kind of affects my mental when viewing the whole game because I know I will never find a single weapon or clothes to focus on. I will always finding new weapons that are stronger, then I will have to worry about rolling correct stats on it, and basically any weapon I have will always be worse than whats next. The levels are boring now because, while there are meaningful things to find, I just know this is the equivalent of a Diablo map and they probably want me to rip through here grinding stuff.

The levels are mission based, like Nioh, and idk, everything feels so lifeless man. Is because everything is disconnected? Could be, I really like Wuchang because it had these huge interconnected levels, and it even did have segmented areas by chapters! There are like, shortcuts I guess, different areas within some of these levels, they do wind, but it all kind of feels meaningless to me.

Do the areas feel meaningless because the story is not hooking me at all? Nothing is very engaging I don't think, You get infected by a Demon thing, kind of solve that mission two and then the Demon guy keeps going "You must defeat the big evil" once you find out some stuff and im like "okay??". IDK, I think this is probably another case of the Looter style game affecting my mental cause I also just stop caring about the story in Diablo and such. I think Looter just poisons the whole game for me.

Back to the weapons, there are skill trees to give you cool weapon powers, but idk, none of them ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ interested me. Then what is the point of the skill tree if I don't like any of the cool abilities, then I'm stuck doing the boring base movesets. I think this is another example of the previous soulslikes I went through affecting this because Wuchang just has better skilltree to me. I feel like the weapons in that each provide pretty different gameplay and its so easy to respec and experiment, mainly also because stats are included in that skill tree, while I have to spend extra materials to respec my soul levels in this. There are some trade-offs, cause I think Khazan feels pretty good right at the start, and Wuchang takes some time I think to unlock its funner stuff.

The visuals are also kind of boring too. I like the anime models, but they are kind of jarring with the rest of the game. A lot of the enemies honestly could fit right into Borderlands, not + or -. The areas are pretty boring looking also.

All of this adding up, me not liking every boss after the 3rd one, loot being existentially pointless to me, not caring about in anything in the world, all just a void game. I feel really bad about it too because me being hyped for it for months and my friend bought it for me full price...

This game is amazing! The graphics are awesome! The mechanics are awesome. The story is cool! Everything about this game is amazing... Except for thing:

If you die in a boss fight that has more than one phase, guess what.. you have to re-fight the boss again but from phase 1! I think there should at least be an option to skip to the 2nd phase of a boss fight.. its kind of annoying making one mistake in the second phase, dying then having to do it again but starting from the first phase.

That is my only complaint about this game! Aside from that - Amazing game!

nioh-like game

super fun