Key Preview Takeaways:
- Visually, Wo Long 2 is a beautiful game.
- No stamina gauge means faster action.
- I love that the combat system encouraged me to be aggressive and chase perfection.
I have a confession to make, friends: I’ve never played the original Wo Long. I know, I know. Dust off your pitchforks, light your torches. I have it coming in the same way that we all do. “How could you, Will? You’re an action game guy!” Listen, I’m of the opinion that Team Ninja is one of the best to ever do it. Maybe even the best. But everybody’s got blind spots. That’s what I told myself as a giant spider thing with weird arms named Wugu who I’m sure would have been easier if I’d played the original smashed me into the ground for the umpteenth time. I was also coming into the fight cold. My demo had been split by an interview with producer Mazakazu Hirayama and development producer Masaaki Yamagiwa. Great for this preview. Bad for me. But the beauty of Team Ninja’s games has always been that they ask you to believe you can make it to the next moment, that you can be perfect for just a few more seconds. You have to believe. And I did.
But before we talk about the end, we have to talk about the beginning. My demo started with a simple objective: retake the demonic island. Sure, man. Why not? As I maneuvered my character down the Red Cliffs, I was stunned by Wo Long’s beauty. Team Ninja’s games have always had a distinct visual style, but if I wasn’t marching off to battle the demonic, I’d have stopped to take in the view. Flowers swaying with the wind, a shadow cast by a wooden fence, a leaf carried gently to the ground by the breeze. Even the ships with their brilliant red sails, afire under the cliff, and the glowing mountain of corruption rising from the ground like a severed fist were beautiful, in their own way. Something to fight for, I guess. But beauty isn’t why I’m here.
Down the Cliffs, onto what remains of the pier. Open a chest for some of the loot Team Ninja has become famous (infamous?) for over the years. Raise a flag for the future and morale. Across a rope attached to a ballista’s arrow, I find my first foes. Regular soldiers. My Gray Iron Dual Chakrams (everything, everything is Xena) make quick work of them. God, it’s good to play an action game where weapons have movelists again. Just have to be careful not to follow those poor fools into the water myself. My character can duel with the best of them, but he can’t swim.
Across the water is where I find my favorite trick of the demo: launching a guy into the air and watching as he falls into the water, then jumping away at the last moment so I don’t take the plunge myself. Every game should have jump cancels. Wo Long 2 understands this. Yes.
A couple of boats (and deaths) later and I am coming to grips with Wo Long 2’s combat, its speed. And it is fast, something Hirayama and Yamagiwa emphasized when I spoke to them.
“We got heavy inspiration, obviously because it's set in China, [from] Chinese martial arts. And for example, if we were to take a game that was based in Japan, like a samurai game, the samurai really focuses on the non-movement as well as when they actually have to move. But when we looked at Chinese martial arts, there's a lot of speed, there's a lot of back and forth, there's a lot of over-the-topness to it. So we definitely got the battle system inspiration from that.”
But the battle system also emphasizes aggressive play. “One of the concepts that we have for this game is we got every inspiration from Chinese movies… back and forth attack and defense, like action movies…” the producers told me. “There's going to be really speedy combat and a lot of back and forth, but when you perform attacks in series… it's going to open your options up a little more and you'll be able to do more actions by continuing to attack.”
You can feel it immediately. By continuing to land hits, you build your own Spirit gauge, which you can spend on Martials Arts (insert drum roll), special attacks unique to each of Wo Long 2’s 18 weapons or Wizardry. Bolts of lightning to electrocute the unprepared. Freezing your blade to take out enemies made of fire. It’s in making the choices at the right moments, and being willing to play defense, that Wo Long 2 shines. You could just block, I suppose, or roll away. These are the tools we are used to in the soulslike, and they are the weapons of cowards. But there is no stamina gauge here, nothing to limit the fun or prevent you from being aggressive on the attack and risking parries on defense. Transcendence comes in the moments you see the attack coming, all outlined in a flashing red circle enclosing its occupant like a halo, and rush into it for the deflect. Perhaps you will die. Perhaps you will be glorious. But unless you open yourself to failure, neither option can come to pass. Glory is only possible in vulnerability. No heroes were forged in safety, in the conservative. I know what I would rather be.
Or perhaps I would rather be devious. Could I, I wondered as I squared up against Han Xuan and his minions, win by knocking him into the drink? Why should I play fair? One air combo later, and he was sinking to Davy Jones’. Brilliant. I learn not to play by the rules. I attack massive foes with ballistae from a distance. I send enemies to watery graves. I have come to play and to win.
I advance through armored enemies wielding maces bigger than I am, dodge through the arrows of archers foolish enough to hold their ground. I meet the heroes of the Three Kingdoms, save their soldiers, plant flags to raise morale and to bring me back when I fall to seek revenge against the foes who killed me, now strengthened by my defeat. Tecmo Koei is no stranger to the Three Kingdoms setting, something both Hirayama and Yamagiwa joke about when I speak to them, but for Wo Long 2, the team wanted to combine historical events with the dark fantasy element that defines Wo Long as a series. Creating an original character allowed them to do just that.
“We wanted to kind of have that character interact with these events and in a way it's like you could kind of see the behind the scenes of what was going on if this person were to exist when these events were happening… [We] think fans of… Chinese Three Kingdoms history would enjoy this game because it's based off of true events that happened, but even people that don't know, that aren't too privy to the Three Kingdoms will be able to enjoy the story because of how the main character interacts with these events.”
As I move deeper into the corruption, things get more intense. I fight beings made of fire and freeze my blade to dispatch them. I grapple with foes whose limbs are too long and who can kill me almost immediately. Sometimes I fight. Sometimes I run. Sometimes I manifest the presence of a divine beast, the beautiful phoenix, to aid me, and it carries me through. I upgrade and rework my skills. I begin to understand. And Wo Long teaches me every step of the way, largely through its UI. Whenever I have a question, I look at the options on-screen, and they often lead to answers.
My favorite moment in the demo pits me against Shi Huan. I have little health and no healing items. “I’m dead,” I figure. I’ll die, respawn, and try again. But why not make the most of the attempt? I stayed aggressive, wiping out his mooks and then taking the fight to him. I never let up, only pausing long enough to deflect his Critical Blows (the ones outlined in red), and somehow, I did it. It was immensely satisfying. But I wasn’t done. A few more fire demons (and one 30-minute interview) later, and I was facing off against Wugu again.
I beat him, for the record. It took everything I had: a spell that restored my health, the Divine Beast at my back, and a lot of trial and error and getting smacked into the turf by his weird tentacle arm. But I believed, and eventually I did it.
But I’d only seen a fraction of what Wo Long 2 has to offer. When I spoke to them, Hirayama and Yamagiwa emphasized the open field, a more strategic aspect that can have an impact on the enemy’s morale. “There's a lot of small things that you could do within [the] open field… You could attack a smaller squad of the enemy side, and you could even take over that squad, have their leader join you and become an ally. You could attack the enemy's foodstock and kind of lower their morale. As you play the game, you find all these small things that you could do on the battlefield for you to achieve that ultimate objective, main objective.
“Three Kingdom games are famous for the strategic aspect, taking over a certain area from the enemies,” they continued. “There's been a lot of that in a lot of these Three Kingdoms games, and we wanted to combine those two aspects... That's one of the main characteristics of the Wo Long series, the soulslike aspect, tons of dying as well as the strategic taking over areas from the enemy.”
My brief time with Wo Long 2 hadn’t allowed me to experience the open field, but it does give me something to look forward to. Still, I had one more question. One very dumb, very selfish question that anyone who had played a Team Ninja game, whether it was Ninja Gaiden or Rise of the Ronin, might have on their mind.. And I needed an answer: would Wo Long 2 have a weapon that featured an Izuna Drop? Hirayama and Yamagiwa laughed at that one. They hadn’t considered it, they told me, but it was a good idea. So who knows? If it shows up, remember this preview
Either way, Wo Long 2: Wings of Ember is shaping up to be an interesting sequel that combines elements of Team Ninja’s action game expertise with the Three Kingdoms games’ penchant for strategy. But what I liked most about my time with it was that it encouraged me to be aggressive and chase perfection. That’s what the best action games do. Will Wo Long 2 live up to that pedigree? That remains to be seen. But it certainly feels like it’s aiming for the right stuff. And if you can make it through the next few seconds, you can make it through anything.
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