The moment when it clicks, and you understand how to deflect attacks and dodge effectively, to parry a Critical Blow and strike back even harder, the experience kicks into high gear and becomes its own beast entirely. While complex, this all feeds into the combat system, which is uniformly excellent from front to back. Your own will decrease when you die, but never lower than your current Fortitude level. Every enemy has their own Morale level, and you can lower it map-wide by defeating specific foes. You raise it by defeating enemies, using certain items, and raising Battle Flags (which are hidden all over the place).

Morale is effectively your power level, and it actively makes you stronger. In addition, this will raise your Fortitude level which, along with Morale, makes you more powerful in various ways, but crucially, only within that specific battlefield. When you raise a flag in one, it replenishes your stock of reusable Estus stand-in potions (called Dragon's Cure Pots), but without respawning any of the enemies you've defeated. Exploration is made not only rewarding but essential due to the implementation of the Battle Flag system, which is kind of genius but also somewhat overwhelming.Īs you explore a battlefield (of which there are around 40, both major and minor), you encounter recesses that function like bonfires or checkpoints in similar games. The player character, a silent protagonist, is crudely shoehorned into overly dramatised moments from Three Kingdoms-era Chinese history.Įach environment (called battlefields) in Wo Long seems straightforward at first, but quickly you find they're riddled with complex encounters, traps, shortcuts, valuable treasure, NPCs to chat with, and secrets to uncover. It tells a story, but outside of bookending each major mission with some melodrama, it's really just the vehicle through which epic combat scenarios are delivered to you.

Free ps4 save wizard