Edit 12/27/23: Still stand by the analysis here but used a weird tone, sorry if you are a Sekiro fan :(
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Also read Maddison Baek's thorough mechanical analysis. Huge thanks to those who helped with editing and feedback.
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Just as Nioh was based on Dark Souls, Team Ninja's latest game draws from Sekiro’s shallow, reactive combat.
Souls combat, while often devolving into iframe roll timing checks, has some good fundamentals underneath that reward spacing, smart attack timing, and stamina management. Nioh's great triumph is adding systems (stances, ki pulse, enemy ki, breakable yokai parts, soul cores, burst counter, yokai shift) that accentuate these while opening up opportunities for dynamic decision-making and player expression.
In comparison, Sekiro's fundamentals are: deflect, deflect, deflect. It is a game where the answer to every threat is a single, optimal response (the parry/mikiri/jump), ultimately pushing it closer to a semi-random rhythm game than an action game. While that has a certain appeal in creating a simulacrum of a sword clash as a part of an experientially driven whole (it cannot be overstated how critically important FromSoft's art direction is to their games), these days for me the illusion breaks fast. It feels like everything revolves around those parry visuals and sounds; without the satisfaction of dynamic decision-making, there’s little else to latch onto in the moment besides the clang of a successfully timed button press.
In a way it's the shadow twin of one of FromSoft's other series, classic Armored Core. Those games lean almost entirely on selling you the sensation of piloting a giant mech, and like Sekiro, a critical component of this is the game feel created by real-time audiovisual feedback. However, in AC's case this is paired with nuanced fundamentals of movement, energy management, aiming, and staying out of enemy lock-ons. Not only does this avoid sacrificing player engagement, but the decisions themselves further reinforce that sensation. Hoarding ammo to help pay your mech’s repair bills and struggling to get to grips with a new mech’s handling idiosyncrasies are situations that both arise during gameplay and would intuitively occur as a mercenary in this hypothetical world. In this way, even through an experiential lens, decision-making is an asset to be harnessed, not a weight to carry around.
So how does Wo Long, a near-exclusively mechanically-driven game, salvage Sekiro’s combat? In a word: clumsily. Like Sekiro, parries are still overwhelmingly the driving force behind defense, considering blocking and rolling both have heavy spirit drain penalties preventing you from using them for long, and parrying gains you spirit while draining the enemy’s. Huge tracking on many moves, combined with rapid-fire strings that quickly break blocks and catch rolls, means that learning the (reasonably generous) parry timings is ultimately the simplest and most efficient option at the end of the day.
The major saving grace here is the offensive side: Wizardry Spells, Martial Arts, and aerial attacks allow you to proactively pressure enemies, and there is some level of interesting resource management reminiscent of Nioh 2's Burst Counter with how executions, weapon swap parries, and parrying red attacks clears your red Spirit. But the damage values are simply too low, and risk of being interrupted too high, to warrant using anything but fast/hyper armored moves (random MAs per weapon exacerbates this by hindering experimentation). Without the importance of spacing and risk/reward dynamics of ki underpinning everything, it's hard for me to shake the feeling that it's all done better in Nioh.
It's in group fights that I see flashes of not Sekiro, but Ninja Gaiden, and what this game could have been. The assassin enemies' aggression, mobility, and tendency to attack in groups is a reminder that yes, this is the same studio that created the greatest action game enemy of all time, the black spider ninja. Wind Path/Enemy Step isn't quite up to its old enemy-homing, crowd-controlling glory, but it's still a fun movement option with a useful stun effect. In the face of numerous overlapping enemy threat angles, the parry’s movement component takes on new significance by allowing you to simultaneously defend from one attack and position around others. Having to multitask like this also gives the parry more opportunity cost and risk, as well as a "mental stack" type difficulty that doesn't devolve into trained muscle memory. The Zhang Rang fight leans into this and was far and away the most fun of the lineup for me.
Ultimately though, Ninja Gaiden this is not, and the FromSoft influences still weigh it down. Maddison does a great job analyzing the weaknesses here (few structured group fights, lack of support role enemies, NPC helpers deemphasizing crowd control, no soft-lock for blocking or executions), but even if they somehow fix all of that, the Souls camera will still be a huge issue. Locking-on to a new enemy or even quickly changing attack angles frequently causes the camera to sweep wildly, playing unlocked is unreliable for aim (especially with no soft-lock for performing executions), and the close-up, behind-the-back lock-on angle means much of your field of view will be wasted while you struggle to keep tabs on multiple dangerous enemies behind you. Ninja Gaiden’s fixed camera and soft-lock system never had any of these problems, which allowed you to focus on fighting the actual enemies.
One-on-one boss fights are the game at its most Sekiro-like, and worst. There are occasional fun positioning and offensive tricks to use, but knowing that the main path to improving at these bosses is essentially memorizing arbitrary timings is deeply frustrating to me. It reminds me of memorizing flashcards for an exam in school, and is just about as joyless, even with all of their (admittedly entertaining) bombast.
Nioh 2 is one of my favorite games of all time, so it's disappointing to watch Team Ninja awkwardly stumble around trying to elevate the broken combat base of Sekiro that they started with. Ultimately, it’s on them: Sekiro was a poor choice to build off of from the start, and I get the sense that the devs were hoping for more time in the oven on this one. But it’s hard not to imagine a world where Sekiro wasn’t hailed as one-on-one combat perfected, and instead recognized as a respectable, beautiful game about visceral-feeling sword clashes made shallow, but accessible. I find it hard to see Wo Long being made in such a world.
---
Also read Maddison Baek's thorough mechanical analysis. Huge thanks to those who helped with editing and feedback.
---
Just as Nioh was based on Dark Souls, Team Ninja's latest game draws from Sekiro’s shallow, reactive combat.
Souls combat, while often devolving into iframe roll timing checks, has some good fundamentals underneath that reward spacing, smart attack timing, and stamina management. Nioh's great triumph is adding systems (stances, ki pulse, enemy ki, breakable yokai parts, soul cores, burst counter, yokai shift) that accentuate these while opening up opportunities for dynamic decision-making and player expression.
In comparison, Sekiro's fundamentals are: deflect, deflect, deflect. It is a game where the answer to every threat is a single, optimal response (the parry/mikiri/jump), ultimately pushing it closer to a semi-random rhythm game than an action game. While that has a certain appeal in creating a simulacrum of a sword clash as a part of an experientially driven whole (it cannot be overstated how critically important FromSoft's art direction is to their games), these days for me the illusion breaks fast. It feels like everything revolves around those parry visuals and sounds; without the satisfaction of dynamic decision-making, there’s little else to latch onto in the moment besides the clang of a successfully timed button press.
In a way it's the shadow twin of one of FromSoft's other series, classic Armored Core. Those games lean almost entirely on selling you the sensation of piloting a giant mech, and like Sekiro, a critical component of this is the game feel created by real-time audiovisual feedback. However, in AC's case this is paired with nuanced fundamentals of movement, energy management, aiming, and staying out of enemy lock-ons. Not only does this avoid sacrificing player engagement, but the decisions themselves further reinforce that sensation. Hoarding ammo to help pay your mech’s repair bills and struggling to get to grips with a new mech’s handling idiosyncrasies are situations that both arise during gameplay and would intuitively occur as a mercenary in this hypothetical world. In this way, even through an experiential lens, decision-making is an asset to be harnessed, not a weight to carry around.
So how does Wo Long, a near-exclusively mechanically-driven game, salvage Sekiro’s combat? In a word: clumsily. Like Sekiro, parries are still overwhelmingly the driving force behind defense, considering blocking and rolling both have heavy spirit drain penalties preventing you from using them for long, and parrying gains you spirit while draining the enemy’s. Huge tracking on many moves, combined with rapid-fire strings that quickly break blocks and catch rolls, means that learning the (reasonably generous) parry timings is ultimately the simplest and most efficient option at the end of the day.
The major saving grace here is the offensive side: Wizardry Spells, Martial Arts, and aerial attacks allow you to proactively pressure enemies, and there is some level of interesting resource management reminiscent of Nioh 2's Burst Counter with how executions, weapon swap parries, and parrying red attacks clears your red Spirit. But the damage values are simply too low, and risk of being interrupted too high, to warrant using anything but fast/hyper armored moves (random MAs per weapon exacerbates this by hindering experimentation). Without the importance of spacing and risk/reward dynamics of ki underpinning everything, it's hard for me to shake the feeling that it's all done better in Nioh.
It's in group fights that I see flashes of not Sekiro, but Ninja Gaiden, and what this game could have been. The assassin enemies' aggression, mobility, and tendency to attack in groups is a reminder that yes, this is the same studio that created the greatest action game enemy of all time, the black spider ninja. Wind Path/Enemy Step isn't quite up to its old enemy-homing, crowd-controlling glory, but it's still a fun movement option with a useful stun effect. In the face of numerous overlapping enemy threat angles, the parry’s movement component takes on new significance by allowing you to simultaneously defend from one attack and position around others. Having to multitask like this also gives the parry more opportunity cost and risk, as well as a "mental stack" type difficulty that doesn't devolve into trained muscle memory. The Zhang Rang fight leans into this and was far and away the most fun of the lineup for me.
Ultimately though, Ninja Gaiden this is not, and the FromSoft influences still weigh it down. Maddison does a great job analyzing the weaknesses here (few structured group fights, lack of support role enemies, NPC helpers deemphasizing crowd control, no soft-lock for blocking or executions), but even if they somehow fix all of that, the Souls camera will still be a huge issue. Locking-on to a new enemy or even quickly changing attack angles frequently causes the camera to sweep wildly, playing unlocked is unreliable for aim (especially with no soft-lock for performing executions), and the close-up, behind-the-back lock-on angle means much of your field of view will be wasted while you struggle to keep tabs on multiple dangerous enemies behind you. Ninja Gaiden’s fixed camera and soft-lock system never had any of these problems, which allowed you to focus on fighting the actual enemies.
One-on-one boss fights are the game at its most Sekiro-like, and worst. There are occasional fun positioning and offensive tricks to use, but knowing that the main path to improving at these bosses is essentially memorizing arbitrary timings is deeply frustrating to me. It reminds me of memorizing flashcards for an exam in school, and is just about as joyless, even with all of their (admittedly entertaining) bombast.
Nioh 2 is one of my favorite games of all time, so it's disappointing to watch Team Ninja awkwardly stumble around trying to elevate the broken combat base of Sekiro that they started with. Ultimately, it’s on them: Sekiro was a poor choice to build off of from the start, and I get the sense that the devs were hoping for more time in the oven on this one. But it’s hard not to imagine a world where Sekiro wasn’t hailed as one-on-one combat perfected, and instead recognized as a respectable, beautiful game about visceral-feeling sword clashes made shallow, but accessible. I find it hard to see Wo Long being made in such a world.