One of this year’s big surprises turned out to be Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty, a historical fantasy game being developed as a collaboration between Team Ninja and Koei Tecmo. The video released thus far promised an experience similar to that of Nioh or perhaps Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, but is that really what it’s going to deliver? Fortunately, fans of these sorts of games don’t have to wait to find out because Wo Long has a big presence at Tokyo Game Show 2022 and our hands-on time with it has been telling.

The first thing that needs discussing is perhaps what everyone is most concerned about: the gameplay. What exactly should players expect in Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty? To be perfectly blunt, they should expect a varied, yet tough-as-nails experience. Wo Long is very Nioh-like when it comes to combat and it’s not at all afraid to wear that on its sleeve.

Players can have multiple ranged and melee weapons to choose from at any given time and have the ability to quickly switch between them as needed. All it takes is a simple pull of the R2 button and a flick off the d-pad. Only two weapons were available in the demo, so it’s not yet clear if they can be switched mid-combo, but it wouldn’t be surprising.

As their custom warrior (more on that in a bit), players have ranged, melee and magical abilities to call upon in combat. Ranged takes a lot of time to use, so it’s best used to either kill or damage before an enemy gets into effective range. It’s good for weak enemies or perhaps stronger ones if a safe vantage can be found, but will be mostly useless once in the thick of things.

Magic comes next and indeed has utility in close-range combat, but it’s relatively long cast time is going to force players to choose their moments carefully. Once the casting animation starts, it cannot be canceled. The warrior is totally exposed for the duration, so it’s critical to ensure that the enemy cannot exploit that opening. The same goes for using items: do it carefully!

This leaves melee as the main bread and butter of combat. It’s quick, does okay damage and allows one to recover from minor mistakes. That said, Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty is very much like Nioh in that players shouldn’t expect to be able to just rely on DPS to get the job done. Most of the enemies in this demo hit like trucks and could easily punish players who rushed-in carelessly. No, the “attack” button is not one’s best friend in this game, but rather the “block” and “parry” buttons that’ll win the day.

While playing this demo, it was discovered that well-timed blocks often negated all incoming damage, and even better timed parries opened enemies to counterattacks. Interrupting attacks with magic created even bigger openings, and a perfectly-timed summon of one’s divine beast would knock even bosses on their butts for a good few seconds. So long as timing is maintained and greed for damage is kept in check, then the enemies are beatable. Failing to do so, though, was a recipe for a fast and brutal defeat. Bosses were especially relentless in this sense, as they always pushed the advantage and required the memorization of their move set if victory was to be achieved.

Hopefully this’ll all hold true in the full game. It was hard, but it was the fun kind of hard thanks to forgiving check points, fluid combat and enemies with obvious tells to memorize. It also helps that the game just plain looks fantastic too. This demo was played on a PS5, and it looked like a modern game on that hardware.

All the models and textures looked crisp and clean, the particle effects were stunning and well-timed and the overall look just draws the eye in. It was all on point, art direction included. This also holds true for the character creator, which appears to allow a lot of freedom in how one’s warrior can look. Everything was written in Japanese, so it’s not clear if there was some gameplay impact to be had in it, but it wouldn’t be surprising if there was.

Expectations for Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty are high after this demo. It’s going to be a hard game, but that’s probably not something Nioh, Sekiro or perhaps even Elden Ring fans will mind all that much. Others who don’t enjoy that kind of punishment probably won’t get too much of this, but everyone else is probably in for a well-presented and limit-pushing treat.