Wo-Long: Fallen Dynasty (Nioh/Dark Souls/Sekiro Clone with Co-Op) by Team Ninja

jro

Gonna take a lot
20 Year Member
Joined
Oct 11, 2004
Posts
14,410
Great balls of Vishnu Lu Bu is tough. It's sort of a pain in the ass but I can't help but admire Team Ninja's willingness to throw down hard skill checks with zero cheese.

I.e. I beat Sword Saint in Sekiro by spamming the umbrella counter for projectiles into counter damage, which felt like a pretty interesting strategy that did indeed take skill even if not the intended method. In WL you parry or die pretty much.
 

jro

Gonna take a lot
20 Year Member
Joined
Oct 11, 2004
Posts
14,410
Just beat Lu Bu. I had pretty much given up, uninstalled, then yesterday evening thought WTF might as well give it another shot, no idea why other than being a masochist and thinking no I am not going to lose at a Team Ninja game.

So tonight I ran around with Man of Benevolence Guy for like three hours killing dudes (I had already given him and one other guy all my Cups of Best Buddies) until I could get his armor and weapon and keep the momentum meter (whatevs it's called) at 25, then tried Lu Bu again and was about to die and then somehow won on a parry into red spear to yo face move. Didn't even really register as that whole OMG adrenaline dump you get when you beat a Souls/Sekiro boss (HELLO Genichiro and Sword Saint), more like, shit did that just happen kind of feeling.

I guess that's like a third through the game I'm sure it only gets easier from here.
 

jro

Gonna take a lot
20 Year Member
Joined
Oct 11, 2004
Posts
14,410
That last line was meant to be tongue-in-cheek but actually turned out to be kinda true. Demon Lu Bu was far, far easier than human LB, and I'd say only the Blindfolded Boy really stood out as challenging, and even then I got him on my second try. The Crouching Dragon trial at the very end of the post-game though, that's rough, feels like it's tuned like Nioh's DLC where you're supposed to come back after leveling more in NG+ with the way that dang Aoye can literally one-shot me at level 120.

Game very much changed my mind, I'd be happy to play a sequel.

edit: also found that certain magic spells can be very effective. Changed from wood to ice build around mid-game and then learned to love the icicle rain spell that pretty much wrecks any enemy that stands still for long at all, i.e. pretty nice against bosses if you have allies that can draw aggro. Good move by TN to allow for easy respec as desired.

Edit again, I know there's a new Crouching Dragon challenge if you've finished everything else but I'm not sure I wanna do Lu Bu again with a bunch of other motherfuckers mixed in. I suppose I'll try it sometime but slow cooking my nads sounds not fun for now.
 
Last edited:

jro

Gonna take a lot
20 Year Member
Joined
Oct 11, 2004
Posts
14,410
Finished up Crouching Dragon's Trial a few nights ago to get 100% in the default difficulty, sounds like Aoye is almost always the hardest part of that for people. I'm about 25% through NG+ now but the sorta weird tuning (main level is easy as hell then the boss can two-shot me again) is making me think I'm going to hold off until the dlc comes out starting at the end of the month.

Online community, maybe not coincidentally, reminds me a lot of that in Nioh. Fair few number of players that just legit want help against a hard boss and that's it. Then there's the weirdos that pose at the boss door and try completely inane shit that will never work and are basically completely trolling their summons, just odd. I had one guy, I remember, in Nioh 2 that summoned me then ran all around the level aggroing everything he could and trying to lead them back to me. I eventually aggroed a guy he couldn't kill, summoner died, and I had an odd sense of respect for the sheer gall/gamesmanship. Couple days ago in WL, guy summoned me, then spent ten minutes at a shrine, took off all his armor (I know it's not as big a deal in WL but it made him a two shot kill guaranteed after), posed by the door for another five minutes, then finally went in and solely used thrust kick on the boss. I revived him once then let him die and was like WTF. Didn't have that spice factor like the N2 guy I guess, imo.

Edit, not good at posting on tab. That comment meant for here.
 
Last edited:

jro

Gonna take a lot
20 Year Member
Joined
Oct 11, 2004
Posts
14,410
Finished the first DLC. It was fine, but completely uninspired. Cestus weapon is basically a faster but slightly less damaging dual-sword, I liked it enough to leave it set as my second weapon instead of a spear. Levels are exactly what you'd expect. Bosses... eh. The last one is pretty tough but due at least somewhat to how Team Ninja tweaked spells, i.e. there's no longer a morale requirement to cast better ones and they also take less spirit bar, I was able to beat it mostly by just spamming the shit out of icicle rain while my AI guy drew aggro. I have one optional mission left against a handful of mobs and then two boss humans with no summon, not sure if I'll bother or not, but otherwise I'd guess I got another six-ish hours of generally good game for the $11.99, can't really complain.
 

jro

Gonna take a lot
20 Year Member
Joined
Oct 11, 2004
Posts
14,410
The remaining community for this is pretty fun. Responded to a summon request tonight on the demon Lu Bu mission to help a guy who was about level 70, we were doing alright and then got aided by a dude who knew the level back and forth (I was curious checked his gamercard over 200 hours in game), were moving along swimmingly (when the hell else do you get to use that word) and got the "you are being invaded by tittiesprinkles3000" notification and I thought yeah sure, one of those ai invasion deals, whatever. But, this was a real dude, unlike how I have invasions turned off in my main game, so, yeah, my actual human friends jumped right on his ass while I mostly absentmindedly sat back and cast icicle rain, he lasted maybe 10 seconds. Didn't think much of it, finished the boss then got a PM, which I generally fucking hate don't send me messages if I don't know you, that said "wasn't expecting that!" to which I bowed in respect and said yes, bro, got some luck there, gg, and got a gg back.

Sometimes it's just nice to see the more positive side of playing online.
 

jro

Gonna take a lot
20 Year Member
Joined
Oct 11, 2004
Posts
14,410
I took a brief detour into Remnant 2, which sucks, but I will now be back at WL NG+ and then some. That makes sense.
 

Lagduf

2>X
20 Year Member
Joined
Dec 25, 2002
Posts
46,682
I took a brief detour into Remnant 2, which sucks, but I will now be back at WL NG+ and then some. That makes sense.

Hey! Im about to make a Remnant 2 thread when I sit down and play it this weekend lol.

Played through the first one last month and absolutely loved it. So we’ll see.
 
  • Like
Reactions: jro

jro

Gonna take a lot
20 Year Member
Joined
Oct 11, 2004
Posts
14,410
Hey! Im about to make a Remnant 2 thread when I sit down and play it this weekend lol.

Played through the first one last month and absolutely loved it. So we’ll see.
Hot-ish take:

Remnant 2's bosses are brutally badly tuned against solo players. There are more than one that (dumb cube, dumb one-hit-kill-grab lady) are just horribly stacked against you if you can't draw aggro from anywhere else. The Cube, in particular, is a one-shit kill if you're a few frames off on the cooldown for its roll. Just awful game design. The grab whore, she comes from the walls, you have about a half-second, if you don't roll, one-shot.

It's a bad game. I liked the first one enough, finished it on normal difficulty, took me maybe 30 hours, one of the more creative final bosses in the entire genre. Remnant 2, just, no. The bosses are the worst in the entire genre outside of maybe Dolmen (which doesn't fucking count it's not a real game), levels suck, just, fuck this game. Gunfire Games did fine with Remnant 1 and their various Darksiders, but Remnant 2 is awful.

Uninstalled, picked up FF 16 and then uninstalled that because it's also awful. Currently on Atlas Fallen, maybe that won't suck balls (it will).

Edit that's a Freudian slip for the ages up there.

Edit again Wo Long is still very awesome! Kinda like eating big helpings of crow but I'd honestly say my favorite game of the past year, easy.
 

Lagduf

2>X
20 Year Member
Joined
Dec 25, 2002
Posts
46,682
Hot-ish take:

Remnant 2's bosses are brutally badly tuned against solo players. There are more than one that (dumb cube, dumb one-hit-kill-grab lady) are just horribly stacked against you if you can't draw aggro from anywhere else. The Cube, in particular, is a one-shit kill if you're a few frames off on the cooldown for its roll. Just awful game design. The grab whore, she comes from the walls, you have about a half-second, if you don't roll, one-shot.

It's a bad game. I liked the first one enough, finished it on normal difficulty, took me maybe 30 hours, one of the more creative final bosses in the entire genre. Remnant 2, just, no. The bosses are the worst in the entire genre outside of maybe Dolmen (which doesn't fucking count it's not a real game), levels suck, just, fuck this game. Gunfire Games did fine with Remnant 1 and their various Darksiders, but Remnant 2 is awful.

Uninstalled, picked up FF 16 and then uninstalled that because it's also awful. Currently on Atlas Fallen, maybe that won't suck balls (it will).

Edit that's a Freudian slip for the ages up there.

Edit again Wo Long is still very awesome! Kinda like eating big helpings of crow but I'd honestly say my favorite game of the past year, easy.

Fair criticism. My buddy and I just beat the game on normal. We were playing on the first harder difficulty and got to the last boss but we encountered a bug in the last boss fight that made it so the boss was “defeated” but we didn’t get the rewards and couldn’t refight the boss. Basically needed to reroll his campaign to actually progress, which sucked so we blazed through normal.

A lot of bosses simply seem to do too much damage though I think you’re right: The game is clearly tuned for three players. Not in terms of damage you need to output but more like swapping aggro, applying buffs/heals, etc.

Also fuck the last boss in the ass. He’s absolute bullshit with mechanics more frustrating than fun.

Still I’m enjoying the game though it’s not without its faults. The archetype system is great, I like the exploration, etc but the first game was a tighter package if that makes sense.
 

jro

Gonna take a lot
20 Year Member
Joined
Oct 11, 2004
Posts
14,410
Fair criticism. My buddy and I just beat the game on normal. We were playing on the first harder difficulty and got to the last boss but we encountered a bug in the last boss fight that made it so the boss was “defeated” but we didn’t get the rewards and couldn’t refight the boss. Basically needed to reroll his campaign to actually progress, which sucked so we blazed through normal.

A lot of bosses simply seem to do too much damage though I think you’re right: The game is clearly tuned for three players. Not in terms of damage you need to output but more like swapping aggro, applying buffs/heals, etc.

Also fuck the last boss in the ass. He’s absolute bullshit with mechanics more frustrating than fun.

Still I’m enjoying the game though it’s not without its faults. The archetype system is great, I like the exploration, etc but the first game was a tighter package if that makes sense.
Glad to hear that it was doable in co-op, that's clearly the way to go. Kinda nuts that the lack of polish went all the way up to the end though, I could have sworn the first Remnant was pretty damn stable throughout from the get-go.

Also, I didn't realize that I left out one part that was basically the last straw for me in R2. I was annoyed enough on the cube thing after a dozen deaths I uninstalled the game. Couple days later I thought eh, maybe I should try it again, so I re-installed it. However, since my save file was for the deluxe edition, it had originally included a few bonus consumables (that were useless, I think it was Mudtooth's moonshine or whatever) that could only be downloaded one time, so my character showed as a corrupt save that I could no longer use (believe me, I tried to figure out a way around this, 10-ish "install content"s did not do it). 25-ish hours and at least three re-rolls that I can remember, and I was not down to start completely fresh. That was my final delete. Started up (of course) Wo Long and proceeded to get one-shot by Aoye repeatedly on NG+ but didn't mind at all by comparison.

Felt like too much of a departure from the first Remnant. R1 was hard and mostly tuned for multiplayer, but very beatable in 1P. Coulda sworn that it had mostly good boss fights, with the final boss in particular being incredibly creative and satisfying to beat. I even very much enjoyed Darksiders 3, Gunfire was pretty sweet in my book up to this. Maybe someday I'll start the whole thing over again but it's not going to be any time soon.
 

jro

Gonna take a lot
20 Year Member
Joined
Oct 11, 2004
Posts
14,410
Eh, I get why they'd not make the consumables downloadable more than once, but yeah, I was not happy that it meant my entire character/playthrough was no longer usable.

I dunno, the game felt like it was so stacked against a 1P playthrough that I was honestly less annoyed to quit playing it than I would have been with something that felt more like it was, I guess.... my fault.

I have since finished 9 of the 10 total missions on the first Wo Long DLC, last one being a rush against 3 or 4 of the strongest bosses, all amped up, with various waves in between, final being the last boss of the DLC, again powered up a NG's run or so. Quite a challenge.

Next DLC is planned for sometime this month, looking forward to it.

edit: I did also manage to finish Final Fantasy 16. Most of the game was blah but goddamn were the boss fights amazing, made it worth the time/effort.
 
Last edited:

jro

Gonna take a lot
20 Year Member
Joined
Oct 11, 2004
Posts
14,410
DLC 2 is... not good. Three main missions, five side-missions, three of which are just boss fights against super-armor versions from the main ones.

Team Ninja is leaning waaay into elemental damage and resistances, way more than is good. Like, if you have a water build (like mine), you'll do very, very little damage to Taishi Ci in the main mission or the side mission. I beat him on the main one by switching to Earth and just spamming Slab, but then on the side mission he has super armor and I just don't care enough to switch and hope.

Longsword is pointless, it's 50% slower than dual swords and 50% less damage than spears with no stagger.

Feels like Team Ninja is out of ideas for this and needs to move on to something new.

To be fair, still an incredible value on GamePass in particular, I got, jeez, 120 hours out of the game to this point, just weird how TN is closing the book on it with increasingly underwhelming DLCs.
 

jro

Gonna take a lot
20 Year Member
Joined
Oct 11, 2004
Posts
14,410
Final wrap-up on WLFD I guess. Finished up the last DLC, proper story bosses were hard but doable, then it offered up the traditional Team Ninja crazyballs optional boss just in case ya wanna get nuts. I got, I dunno, maybe 20% of his health bar down a couple times but nothing more than that, and from watching Youtube videos, it's pretty much entirely down to parrying red over and over and over and over.

Around the same time on my NG+ playthrough I managed to hit the level cap of 150, can't remember seeing a level cap in TN games before, though I probably didn't grind as much.

Anyway, I didn't come close to beating Yuan Shu and I was also at the point where NG+ bosses were one-shotting me at 150 and I didn't really care enough to re-do my build to maybe come a little closer.

Great game still, I managed to put 140 hours into it and finished all the proper bosses and DLC, but the post-game balance is one area that Team Ninja has never really figured out IMO. Nioh had issues with it, WL does too.
 
Top