The First Berserker: Khazan is already available in "early access" for those who have preordered the Digital Edition, but its official release date is still set for later this wee on March 27. With the thorough coverage of Assassin's Creed Shadows I've had to deal with recently, considering that we got Ubisoft's game at the same time as our codes for NEXON's game but it was coming out before, it was complicated to offer you a full review, but you know us, that was no reason for us not to offer you a bit of reading, this time even available in English.
Nioh and its sequel, The Surge 1 and 2, Demon's Souls, Dark Souls 3, Elden Ring, Steelrising, Thymesia, Soulstice - these are just some of the more or less demanding Souls-like games I've managed to complete without ever having to play cooperatively in the games that allowed it. And that's not counting Sekiro, where I had to stop at the last quarter of the adventure to keep up with the Gamersyde coverage at he time, or Dark Souls I, whose Switch version I ended up putting aside after Anor Londo for the same reasons. It was more or less the same story with Lies of P after reaching the Estella Opera level, just after the first half of the adventure. Even the first boss of Wo-Long couldn't get the better of my patience and eventually gave in. Of course, I'm still missing a few of the genre's most memorable titles - Dark Souls 2, for example, and above all Bloodborne (framerate and aliasing always got the better of me), games I hardly ever played at the time. All this to say that, without considering myself an expert in the field, and without reaching my good friend davton's level of mastery, I think I can handle a little challenge. The First Berserker: Khazan probably hadn't been informed of my few skills, or didn't care... Things had started off perfectly well, even though I hadn't had the chance to try out the trial version of the game in recent months. The first two levels (those offered in the demo) didn't last long when I finally got around to playing the final version, and the next one seemed to follow the same path. Until its boss... You may already know him, Viper was part of the game's private beta some six months ago. And he was already showing his teeth...
Before I explain how this hideous creature almost made me throw in the towel, let me start from the beginning. You may not know it, but The First Berserker: Khazan isn't exactly what you'd call a new franchise. While it is indeed a very first episode in the Souls-like genre, it is in fact derived from a South Korean MMO series born in 2005, which has already had several episodes. Khazan shares its universe with the pre-existing Dungeon & Fighter (DNF) one, but by drawing its game design inspiration from Souls (for its stamina management, counters/parries, XP gain and bosses) and Nioh (for its pronounced loot aspect, armor sets that grant stat bonuses and very linear levels), it quickly managed to attract the attention of a good number of gamers. And rightly so! From the very first hands-on experience in the beta a few months ago, the very positive feedback quickly set off the usual hype machine that the Internet is (too) often privy to. A reputation that Neople and NEXON's game has clearly not stolen. Not only do the gameplay sensations prove excellent from the outset, but the camera - the genre's arch-enemy - is so competent that in the end it's rarely caught out, even against the most vivid and/or imposing opponents. Thanks to the particularly satisfying feedback from combat, the game is just immediately fun to play, but it's the mastery of all the mechanics of its system that makes progression so exhilarating, as long as it isn't thwarted by certain difficulty peaks of course. The usual routine for this kind of demanding title, you may say, and you'd be perfectly right in a sense, but the fact remains that Khazan could have avoided certain pitfalls by making other choices, or by fine-tuning certain things.
With dodges, perfect counters, parries and counter-attacks, Khazan has the full Souls-like panoply, but it doesn't stop there. In addition to stamina, vitality and strength statistics, it also includes a whole system of skills linked to the three types of weapons available. In this respect, it's certainly less exhaustive than many of its competitors, that generally don't skimp on the variety of their arsenal, but it's nonetheless very flexible for the player, in several respects. Blades, spears and swordfish may be your only alternatives for tackling the game's (very) angry bestiary, but each of these weapons has a unique skill tree in which you can invest points on a regular basis after having earned them when simply using the weapon. Additional attacks (to increase the effectiveness of available combos), the ability to launch a strike following a sprint, passive modifications to guard (certain weapons allow you to cause damage to your opponent with each perfect counter), special skills that can be assigned to a combination of keys (to expand the offensive and defensive offer) - these are just a few examples of how the abilities offered by each weapon will truly evolve as you play. There are even more general skills that can be upgraded with these same points, to improve the hero's javelin (which serves as a ranged weapon), his brutal attacks (which can even be launched stealthily from above once the right ability has been unlocked) or counterattacks. You can even add a parry (rather tricky to place) to the hero's range of moves if you wish. The developers also had a pretty good idea by allowing you at any moment to recover the points you've spent and assign them elsewhere (for the same weapon, or another if you wish to change), which inevitably encourages you to experiment with different approaches to find the one that suits you best.
Added to this is the possibility of associating one's character with a demon, whose level increases over time as the hero defeats enemies. Depending on the “phantom” chosen, the associated bonus may vary: some, for example, provide a statistical enhancement for Khazan himself (faster stamina recovery, additional stamina damage to enemies, etc.), while others boost the effectiveness of the spirit of assistance, a NPC who can be called upon to face bosses - provided you possess a Lacrima tear, obtained by taking down opponents summoned in the various levels after a generally fairly tough duel. These optional opponents, like the others, will also allow you to pick up potentially interesting random equipment. Instead of the souls or runes found in From Software games, Lacrima is harvested here and used to upgrade the main character's stats in several categories. Unsurprisingly, Lacrima is obtained by defeating the many opponents you encounter. Once again, Khazan's originality lies in its determination not to punish the clumsy player too much when he finds himself stuck against a boss. For a start, the lost Lacrima will always be waiting for you at the arena door, so you can never lose it for good in this kind of situation, but it doesn't stop there. For the first time in a game of this kind, facing a boss and biting the dust repeatedly is never totally in vain. Indeed, each duel rewards perseverance by offering more or less Lacrima, the amount depending on the portion of life taken from the boss during the fight. In this way, leveling up can continue despite consecutive failures, which, in such a linear title (I'll come back to this later), avoids having to go back and engage in tedious regular farming sessions.
Khazan doesn't stop there, however, to perfect its Souls-like panoply. Neople's game incorporates a crafting system, which allows you to use resources gathered in the levels to craft items or equipment, as well as the equivalent of a forge, allowing you to spend your hard-earned money and sacrifice certain weapons and armor to improve others. It's also possible to modify attributes by sacrificing Lacrima for a random result. In addition to their basic stats, the gear that the hero can wear can also benefit from additional bonuses that are activated according to the number of pieces in the set equipped. With a game structure rather like Demon's Souls, i.e. neither interconnected zones nor an open world, you'll spend a lot of time returning to the Nexus' equivalent, the Crevice. It's there that you'll be able to converse with numerous NPCs, some of whom will offer you their services, and where you'll be able to select your next destination and choose your missions (main or secondary, as there are also a few - they either involve defeating a previously encountered boss again, or collecting pots for an NPC who's wearing and selling them). In the Crevice, you can also level up your spirit of assistance by increasing his health, stamina bar and boss damage. The problem, which won't necessarily be a problem for everyone but is likely to make the experience even more demanding for the less patient, is that all these systems (some of which are not even mentioned here) are made available to the player in just as linear a fashion as the overall progression of the adventure. When you hit the first real difficulty spike, namely the notorious Viper, you won't be able to upgrade your equipment or your spirit of assistance, and accessing some of these services may require some patience. Similarly, weapon skill level progression is also hampered fairly quickly, just in time for this same boss if you spend any time at all on it. This means you can't pick up a few extra points once you've reached level 16, as progression is only unlocked once the boss has been defeated.
The gradual addition of all these mechanics is of course an excellent thing for maintaining and renewing the player's interest, but as I've already mentioned, it can also be rather discouraging if you have difficulty defeating a boss. The reason I've mentioned Viper so much since the start of this article is that it's the very first major opponent to have two full life bars, and it's more than likely that it will be, for some at least, a difficult first wall to overcome on the default difficulty mode (normal). Given that the game offers a total of sixteen bosses (a small minority of which have multiple life bars), the title's first big challenge comes rather quickly. It's no coincidence that it's also at this stage of the adventure that you can call on the support soul to lend you a hand against him. Unfortunately, this fallback option doesn't fulfill its role as it should, thanks to an incompetent AI to say the least. Despite its ability to heal itself, it only managed to survive the boss's first life bar on one of my twenty or so attempts (in easy mode only). Worse still, she was systematically killed as soon as she reached the first half of the boss's gauge. At this point, Viper launches a swirling attack around himself, sucking the player and NPC towards it. It's not difficult to get out of the way, however, provided you're not a silly hot-headed AI character. As if stuck in the whirlpool of a desperate suicidal routine from which he couldn't escape, my spirit of assistance always abandoned me at this stage of the confrontation, even though this first phase posed no particular difficulty. Soon enough, it became clear to me that using him had absolute zero interest. Beyond his aberrant behavior, which I think will have to be fixed quickly via a patch, what made it all the more useless was the impossibility of improving it at this stage of the adventure. Otherwise, it mayt have been possible to compensate for his shortcomings with a more substantial life gauge, capable of giving him the necessary resistance to survive Viper's whirlwind (doubt remains, however, as his effectiveness against one of the following bosses was just as unconvincing, despite some improvements to his stats).
With only four vials of health at my disposal to withstand my opponent's two gauges, the task was far from simple. Though far from being able to perfectly parry or dodge any of his attacks, I played well enough I think, and many times I managed to reach his true second phase. Clearly, however, despite a good dose of patience, I lacked the necessary concentration to limit the damage received and conserve enough healing items to achieve victory. Viper is very unforgiving when you make mistakes, and you soon find yourself in serious difficulty. Unfortunately, the regular acquisition of Lacrima and the fact that I could gain levels didn't make me feel any better suited for this duel. While the mission itself advised that you shouldn't attempt it below level 18, I couldn't succeed even though my character had finally reached a proud level 45 (thanks to a number of unsuccessful attempts and the occasional obligatory run-in with spirits of challenge to recover a few tears needed to summon my spirit of assistance). In any Souls, this kind of situation would never have happened, as the character's increasing power usually compensates for the player's lack of skill or mastery. Here, improving Khazan's stats didn't allow me to inflate them enough to make an impact on the gameplay. Once again, I'm well aware that I'm largely responsible for my own misfortunes. Viper has a weak point that I obviously failed to exploit to cause him more damage, but even when dodging and parrying most of his attacks, the outcome of the fight could never turn in my favor as long as I persisted in facing him in normal mode. So it was with a heavy heart that I finally decided to turn to the easy mode. Three attempts later, thanks to all the experience I'd gained over the many hours I'd spent against him, I had it in the bag... Don't think, however, that this made the game any simpler then. Yes, the damage received is reduced compared to normal mode, the player's attacks also do a little more damage, stamina regenerates more quickly, and Khazan can carry a heavier weight of equipment without losing agility, but the fearsome enemies remain so, and death can strike just as quickly if you're not vigilant enough.
In a game that puts such a strong emphasis on combat, and where experience progression seems to have less of an impact than in other games of the genre, the addition of such a difficulty mode seems to make good sense, so as not to frustrate players who fully embrace the combat system (it's quite easy to fall for it as it's really very solid) but find themselves overwhelmed by the challenge on offer. However, having discussed this with a French YouTuber specialized in Souls-like games, who also tried out this mode on his own to see how it was handled, it doesn't stop certain bosses from making you bite the dust with two or three well-placed blows in the rest of the game. In the fifth mission, for example, I came close to defeat what seemed to be a simple spider that was just a little bigger and tougher than the others, even though all the other enemies (even the unique ones, those who don't come back to life once beaten) didn't pose any real threats to me. Despite having only seen the first third of the adventure, it's clear that the easy mode has been designed to maintain a certain level of gameplay mastery and not relegate the experience to mere button-mashing without much interest. A good point, then, but it's a shame not to be able to return to normal mode once this difficulty setting has been chosen. I suppose the fault lies with certain achievements/trophies being blocked when you dare to play in easy mode, but that's a pretty silly (and outdated) idea in my opinion. Of course, if the spirit of assistance had really been able to do his job against Viper, I would have continued my progress in normal mode and checked whether the following bosses were just as tricky to defeat. As all those I saw afterwards only had one life gauge, I have my doubts. Especially as their patterns seemed perfectly manageable to me, without necessarily having to go through hours of training to be able to counter or dodge them. Clearly, the choice of imposing a boss with two life bars at the start of the adventure will not be to everyone's taste, especially since, unlike a game like Elden Ring, once you're stuck in Khazan, it's impossible to go look elsewhere to keep busy and progress into a new area. The level structure is indeed very linear, with a few “hidden” chests or crystals to discover, but the level design doesn't really leave much room for exploration. This isn't necessarily a flaw, but it's something you need to be aware of before embarking on your adventure.
Unlike the trial version which was made available last January, the PlayStation 5 Pro build finally offers the same two graphics modes as on the base consoles, the PS5 and Xbox Series X. A decision that I assume is due to the devs' difficulties encountered in delivering a stable 60 fps framerate in what was supposed to be the Quality mode on Pro in the demo. If some were hoping for better in this respect, this is unfortunately not the case, and as I was able to access other levels, I can confirm that performance can be far more impacted than what you saw in the snowy levels. Having a VRR-compatible screen won't prevent you from noticing the slowdowns that occur in Quality mode, and the ability to lock the number of frames per second at thirty isn't an ideal option either. On the one hand, gameplay is greatly affected in this type of game, where timing is crucial and mistakes are often fatal. On the other hand, I don't feel that the lock implemented is as satisfactory as in Assassin's Creed Shadows, where playing at 30 fps never bothered me. Needless to say, on PS5 and Xbox Series, unlocking the number of frames per second in Quality mode won't be a good idea, even on Microsoft's console where the VRR window is larger. Then there's the Performance mode, which is generally satisfactory on Pro, with a notable improvement over the standard PS5. Here again, it's possible to deactivate the framerate limit, but this won't prevent the occasional slowdown that will occur (it's rare but it happens). In any case, these are much less noticeable than in Quality mode, especially when using a VRR screen. On base consoles, even without having been able to try out the game on all platforms, the result seems to be quite similar to what the trial version offered in terms of performance. It's not perfect, and it's possible that fluidity will suffer even more in the missions I didn't have time to reach, but the game should nevertheless remain playable enough to be enjoyable in Performance mode. Be aware though, that changes in LOD and the pop-up issues are more noticeable in this mode. The review document we received with the codes did mention that optimization work was underway, but the update we had two days ago didn't seem to correct framerate fluctuations in either mode.
From Software's games have a habit of making us cringe as soon as we consider the state of their performance, but they're generally known for offering game worlds with meticulous art style, giving players the opportunity to discover some pretty striking landscapes. Technique isn't everything, and this explains how most of their games have managed to give players such a change of scenery and surprise them with regularly sublime panoramas. The problem is that Khazan can't really say the same, and even if it's clearly not a game that aims to offer us a rich experience in terms of exploration, it's still highly unfortunate. Yet, I must admit to enjoying the early stages of the adventure from a graphical point of view. The first snow-covered areas aren't necessarily very impressive, but they immerse us in a convincing atmosphere, and then, despite the fact that the tracks left in the snow are far from being a technological revolution, they still have their little effect on me. Alas, the following environments are not only unoriginal, they're also particularly stark. The village of Phraugh, with its almost uniform greenish hues, looks a bit drab, and the overall modelling does not the bar. We then get to visit caves, cathedrals and towns that are just as dull and banal and all brownish to make it worse, and, while the excellence of the gameplay never fails, the pleasure of discovery takes a major hit. Coming from someone who completed the first Nioh, I fully admit that the argument is flawed, to say the least, because clearly, as with Team Ninja's title, The First Berserker: Khazan is not a game that players will play for its jaw-dropping graphics and scenery. That said, if this is an important element for you, if you're the kind of person who needs to be carried along by the game world and its artistic direction, chances are you won't find much to like here. However, it's impossible to overlook the game's gameplay strengths, which demonstrate the full potential of Neople as a studio. I mentioned this at the start of the article, but it's remarkable that the developers have managed to avoid the lock and camera problems that plague other games in this genre (including those from From Software, the inventors of the Action-RPG revival). Having not seen the whole adventure, I obviously can't assure you that you'll be safe from the slightest problem in this respect, but as far as I am concerned, apart from a few rare moments when I was pinned against a wall by several opponents, and where legibility may have been affected, I don't remember encountering a single major one.
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