The First Berserker: Khazan Review - Almost Perfect, but for who?

Preface

Before I start, this is actually the script for the youtube video that went up today, so if this feels familiar, that's probably why! This is the first review both here and on Youtube, though I may not always have a video for every review I throw here!

Introduction

Khazan is a new, okay, maybe not new by the time I’m done with the video, action role playing game created by Neople and published by NEXON. I’d never really played a game from Neople before so I wasn’t sure what to expect, but with the genre being so full of good games from devs I’d never known recently (such as Wukong and Lies of P), I was more than willing to give it a shot. I originally heard that the game is a Souls-like game, and I don’t agree with that sentiment. I’m not going to withhold my assessment, Khazan is a very strong recommendation if, and this is a big if, you are part of the target audience for the game. Who is that and why is that important? Let me explain.

For context, back when I started playing the game Hardcore was the Normal difficulty and Easy did not exist. Khazan on Hardcore has been the most anti casual game I’ve seen in the genre, and I think that’s saying a lot considering the giant debate that every game needs an easy mode started because of Dark Souls. There are very few resources and the enemies are spongy, hit very hard and have complex enough movesets that you can’t just sight read. This leads to the game being extremely high on the difficulty scale to the point that I don’t think I’m their target audience. To be clear, this is NOT a bad thing. It’s a very hardcore game that knows its target playerbase, and it doesn’t make any concessions for players outside of that target, though I guess now that they’ve added the easiest difficulty it might be more accessible. I have made a new playthrough to try Normal, and I think that the main difference is you do more and take less damage while being more resistant to status effects. I have not tried Easy but I imagine it’s just more number adjustment. I’m not sure how these changes play into late game since I kinda got bored with early game combos after being used to how fluid late game felt. For the same reason, most of the footage you see is going to be from my New Game Plus playthrough because this doofus forgot to record gameplay as he was playing. I kept the footage used for this recording from the first few missions of the game so that there are no spoilers, though I will have some gameplay stuff people won’t have on first playthrough so keep that in mind.

Khazan reminds me a whole lot of Nioh both in terms of format and in terms of gameplay progression, which is actually a good thing in my book. The game is structured into a list of different missions that have checkpoints you can load into allowing you to replay missions and fight bosses as necessary, and it is going to be necessary because of how its crafting system is set. This is a change from the Nioh system where you always start at the beginning of a stage, and I really like this change since I can practice bosses even after I beat them without running through the whole map again.

Story and Presentation

Khazan was once known as the Great General Khazan. He and his bestie, the Great Mage Ozma, are the two heroes of the empire who brought down the feared Berserk Dragon Hismar. However, right before the start of the story, the Emperor decided to betray and frame the two of them for conspiring against the empire and executed Ozma while torturing and imprisoning Khazan. While being transported, a ghost, later known as the Blade Phantom, takes notice of Khazan’s powerful body and tries to take it over, leading to when we are given control. 

The story is generally a pretty standard revenge story and despite the twists they t

hrow at you, it is generally quite predictable. Even so, I’ll avoid spoilers so that people who want to go in blind for the story can do so. The presentation of the story is quite straightforward, the cutscenes focus on Khazan’s current time when he’s on his revenge quest, with pretty cool flashback sequences that are told in a really pretty artstyle. I like it enough for what it is, I don’t think Khazan is trying to be some masterpiece of storytelling, and a simple barebones story like this that taxis you from one place to another for the cool fights is enough honestly.

The simplicity of the story though is why I have two main complaints about the story and formatting. The first is you don’t really get enough time to really get to know the characters so the attachment you feel when things happen to them isn’t quite there, which weakens the impact of the story a lot. The second is a bigger issue that I noticed, which stems from a strong dissonance in gameplay and story. Khazan is presented in cutscene and lore as an absolute badass, nigh unstoppable warrior who can make giant monsters stop in their tracks through sheer aura. However, in gameplay I will find myself getting my ass kicked by that same monster for 2 hours straight. It causes a really big disconnect in the feel of the story and gameplay and takes me out of the moment quite a bit. I actually talked to Taloriann about this a bit, because Khazan feels to me like a really composed Kratos. Unstoppable warrior on a revenge quest, nothing really can stop him, and in gameplay you feel that way in God of War, but in Khazan each boss fight feels like a struggle to survive.

Visual and Sound

Visually, I think Khazan is quite pretty. It has a very anime inspired visual style, and a lot of cool shots that really add to the vibe. The areas that you explore are pretty varied too, so it doesn’t get samey too fast, though it will happen as side missions reuse main mission areas. Character’s designs are pretty anime in general, and the attacks they do have huge particle effects which can make it a bit hard to see sometimes.

The music in this game is fine. It’s nothing that stands out for me, but it does what it needs to without being intrusive. There IS one boss track that goes really hard, but since it’s a late game boss I don’t want to spoil, I will just say I really like that track. Which is good because I spent 3 hours listening to that track while getting absolutely destroyed.

The sound design of the game is in general really good I think. The attacks and blocks have very satisfying sounds, the dodge has a wind-ish sound especially if you do it last second. Enemy sounds feel fitting for what they are, and I can’t state enough how much I appreciate when a game actually does it well. The sound cues in this game are really good, they’re distinct, you can use it to dodge attacks from off screen quite consistently. 

I will say though when the boss is making other sound effects and visual noise it can be hard to hear/see the sound cue for stuff like grabs or unblockables. Not a major complaint as at least some of them feel very intentional as well.

Gameplay

This segment is gonna be quite long, so if you don’t really want to listen to it all, please feel free to skip this segment. However, I wanted to make this segment because you don’t get access to all the tools until quite a bit later, and not knowing all the cool tools and progression was why I ended up not buying the game immediately. I did buy the game quite early still, but due to a recommendation from a friend, shoutout to you Hobosapien.

Okay so, Khazan is a very varied warrior with a huge arsenal of skills at his disposal. There are three main weapon types with their own skill trees and a common skill tree, and a huge amount of customizability on how to approach the game. The aforementioned three weapon types are Dual Wield, which is a sword and an axe, Greatsword, which is great sword, and a Spear, which funnily is not just a spear but actually a lot of different polearms. They all have different branches you can go down in each skill tree, which lets you invest in different things like focusing on dodging or guarding, or getting active skills (which you can set the keybinds for). There’s a huge variety in what you can do, I don’t realistically have the time to go through all of it, but it’s a really good game for buildcrafting especially when you combine that with gear sets, which we will get to later. One thing I forgot to mention as well is you can refund and respend points at any time so you’re not locked into any specific build too, which I think is a great setup for the format.

Some of the core mechanics of this game are the Brink Guard and Brink Dodge. Essentially if you dodge or block at the last second, then the stamina consumption is significantly reduced and you get access to different counters you learned in the skill tree. I think having both gives you a ton of ways to approach each fight, though I do think that realistically you’ll want to utilize both, especially if you’re playing on Hardcore since the bosses will absolutely destroy you if you screw up just using one or the other.

The next core mechanic is Counterattack. Counterattack is a mechanic similar to the Burst Counter found in Nioh, wherein some powerful attacks can be stopped or countered using a well timed Counterattack which will deal a lot of damage while opening them up to your own combos. I could not figure out the timing for this for a very long time, but essentially the counter frames start as soon as your counter goes off, just learn the timing of the attack since it’s usually really delayed, and you’ll get to using this quite fast. This is a core part of making it so you can set the pace of the fight at specific points rather than just reacting.

On the other hand, you can unlock a Parry mechanic that is quite similar to the Dark Souls parry, wherein you can parry most attacks with a delayed timing that will knock the enemy off balance and let you really combo them. I will be honest, I think on first playthrough, this mechanic is so strongly disadvantageous to try because if you screw up most of the time that’s half your health gone. However, ever since I went into New Game Plus, the skill point improved parry has felt much more forgiving to use and having a lot more healing makes it feel actually nice to use. Successfully using it lets you set the pace of the fight even more so than Counterattacks, so players who are really skilled can really make it work.

The spirit bar is a resource that you’ll have access to once you get into the second stage. The spirit bar is essentially a mana bar, with each skill costing a certain amount of spirit to activate. The first skill you’ll get access to with this system is Javelin, which is your ranged attack that you can utilize at most points to draw enemies or snipe ranged enemies to stop them from sniping you while you fight other enemies. The active skills in the skill tree all utilize this resource, and some upgraded parts of the basic moveset will utilize this as well. You can regain Spirit through just fighting, with many skill tree skills dedicated to improving this. I will be honest, other than Javelin and upgraded parts of the basic moveset, I used it in very few cases (with Phantom Heatwave being 90% of my use).

A mechanic that is hidden for a long while is Phantom Form, which is similar to how Devil May Cry’s Devil Trigger works. I don’t honestly think this mechanic is working properly, because my damage drops like a sack of bricks when I use it. My assumption as to why is that you don’t get bonuses from weapon skill trees, since you have a completely new moveset, which is really cool but the numbers are just not there. It can save you sometimes if you need some room to breathe, and you can upgrade it so that it activates if you’re about to die, but I’ve noticed it fails to activate sometimes and I WILL NOT not trust in an inconsistent mechanic to keep my run alive. In New Game Plus you can use the gauge to do a bigger finisher than usual, which is a nice way to not have to go into this stupid form. Please let me know if I’m missing something because it’s such a cool form that just hits like a wet noodle.

Let’s move on to the maps. The maps in the game are, as mentioned before, visually really varied. I generally quite like the design as it's a very standard Souls design where the map loops in and opens shortcuts, and there’s a lot of secrets you can uncover. Unfortunately, I think a lot of the time it’s just kind of boring to traverse, with some really rude design like random death holes at places you’d want to rush, say like if there’s an enemy shooting from that direction. There are also a lot of enemy spam moments, especially so in side missions, and I’m not that big a fan of it if I’m being honest, especially since side missions reuse parts of the main story maps. The main story maps are generally fine about being fair and fun though so I can let it slide.

The bosses in this game are very much the highlight of the game, with honestly fantastic and generally fair boss design, I think it can stand up close to the best bosses in the genre, barring a few fights that I think are kind of just badly designed or annoyingly designed, but that’s something you expect in every game in the genre so it’s not a dealbreaker. Though their movesets and attacks are all generally pretty fair, the bosses ARE generally a bit too spongy for my preference, and with the limited resources you have it can get quite tedious. One mechanic that I really like that they added is that even if you fail to kill a boss, you will still get souls based on how far you got into the fight. This lets you keep upgrading your level and make it a tinge easier each time. There IS a skill point cap however which is actually the more impactful part of progression in my opinion, which stops you from earning more skill points than you’re supposed to at that part in the game. I am kind of undecided on whether I like this or not, as a struggling player will have the most need for extra skill points, though I kind of see that they want a very specific level of challenge. 

The gearing system in Khazan feels very similar to the Nioh system, and that can put a lot of people off. I personally really like it, and I think it does it quite well. Each armor or weapon that drops will roll different attributes that boost your stats in different ways. If you wear multiple pieces of a set, you get a set bonus which is really impactful and well thought out by the devs. I can’t state enough how cool these set bonuses are, as they can be genuinely build changing in the way it’s implemented. 

To complement this system and reduce the RNG involved in getting pieces you like, you can actually unlock the ability to craft gear from sets if you want to. This will of course require resources that will need to be obtained, but I really like that you can make specific pieces at your current level. You can also unlock upgrading gear to bring your favorite pieces to current level, though it will require a lot of armor pieces as sacrifice as they will eat up pieces that are higher level to upgrade depending on rarity. To reduce reliance on RNG even more, you can reroll the stats the gear rolls with. Each reroll costs more so there will be a point where crafting a new piece, or resetting it using another resource, will become necessary if you want to keep the same piece for a long time.

As of reading the script, the developers just dropped an update that introduced the ability to upgrade gear rarity and change weapon scaling, as well as gear and skill presets. These are huge improvements I really wish had been there at launch, and I am happy to see the devs are doing it now. They also introduced a boss rush mode, and while I think the bosses were the highlight of the game, I don’t think I like it enough that I want to repeat the initial bosses only to make a mistake and get deleted and have to start over.

Conclusion

Alright so what’s the verdict? I realize that having not played the easier difficulties of the game then not recommending the game due to the difficulty may sound kind of stupid. I get it alright? However, I think it makes the most sense to me that a game with this level of technical depth and buildcrafting should be played on the intended difficulty, which is the original Normal mode, or as it is now, Hardcore. I don’t think that players picking the game up and deciding to play on Easy are going to be the same players experimenting with every little detail of their kit to edge out that extra bit of damage. 

I would also struggle to suggest the game to the story focused segment of the playerbase, because despite how pretty the game can be, the story of the game is quite weak and it can be a chore to traverse the maps. For players in the middle? I still wouldn’t suggest it, since I would put myself there and as hype as all the bosses are to fight and how fun Khazan is to control, that’s what feels like the only relevant content in the game. If you’re looking for a mix of story and gameplay, there’s many other options that will be a lot more engaging. 

For players who are looking for an action RPG with a very deep gear and skill system, a really high skill ceiling and a ton of well designed bosses to really utilize those mechanics, I think it’s very close to perfect. For the rest of us mere mortals? You can be the judge. Khazan isn’t a perfect game, but I genuinely think that it succeeds in most of the things that it was trying to do. I respect that, even if it makes it a hard game to recommend.

I hope you found this review informative, and I hope this helped you decide if you wanted to buy the game!