Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty is a pretty interesting pitch for a game. At its core, it is Dark Souls played as a Dynasty Warriors game, with straightforward level-based progression. The confluence of musou controls and characters mixed with souls-like design somehow winds up feeling pretty unique from both inspirations and results in something surprisingly fresh.

You play as a custom character of seemingly no significance who everyone inherently trusts immediately. Seriously, my character, who was sorta a spooky pirate lady, could walk into any tent she wanted and every imperial general she met would praise her as an incredible warrior and join her team. Unlike many games of this type, you won’t choose a class when making your character. Instead every character essentially starts as a blank slate with the same generic stats. I like this from a balancing perspective; by the time you’re focusing on specific stats, you’ll have had enough time with the game to actually understand their significance.

As someone who has been playing Dynasty Warriors games off and on since the PlayStation 2, I chuckled to myself as I started Wo Long to once again find that darn Yellow Turban Rebellion in full swing. But rather than being greeted by open fields full of hundreds of barely conscious grunts to mow down and thrashing electric guitar music, Wo Long presents a darker, quieter take on this well worn story. Throughout the game, this experience was repeated. My brain would snap back into Dynasty Warriors mode before being ruthlessly reminded that I wouldn’t be able to hack and slash my way through these levels quite so easily. At the same time I found the checkpoints more plentiful and the bosses less difficult than I’m used to in other souls-likes. It feels like Wo Long is trying to very carefully ride the line and for the most part it succeeds.

Wo Long places a heavy focus on companion characters, both in the form of optional online multiplayer, and NPC characters that join you on a level by level basis. Even when they aren’t narratively present for a level, characters you’ve met can be summoned to join you, which can hugely affect the difficulty of a stage or boss fight. As your affinity with these characters grows, you will unlock perks and gear specific to those characters. Bosses can also drop rare items and gear making replaying completed levels worthwhile to grind out unique armor. In a way, this reminded me as much of Monster Hunter as it did Dark Souls.

Combat strongly emphasizes timed dodges and effective use of counter attacks. As you progress you’ll also unlock skill trees of various magical abilities. Each weapon also comes with its own unique martial art abilities. Your character’s movement feels very much like a Dynasty Warriors game; your combat moves are fast but there is a stiffness to some of your traversal options. The way this mixes with the enemies you encounter can be somewhat hit and miss. Some encounters feel great while others feel like you and the enemy are from different games, and the souls-like inspired bosses in particular don’t always blend well with the musou inspired combat.

That being said, for the most part, Wo Long’s willingness to reinterpret the ideas of its various inspirations makes it a surprisingly approachable game. The one area in which I found Wo Long got a little lost in its own complexity was in its abject denial of any established RPG terminology. Every single mechanic and stat has its own terminology which puts a weird jargon barrier between the player and their character. Long-standing RPG concepts like strength, agility, and wisdom are replaced with fire, water, wood, and other elements. Even something as basic as your stamina and magic meter have to be renamed to your qi and spirit meters. It meant every time I leveled up my character I had to double check what leveling up my water would do.

The Switch 2 version of Wo Long isn’t without compromise, but it is largely up to the player to decide where that compromise lands. When playing docked, you’ll have access to both a resolution and frame-rate mode. Resolution presents a quite clean image at the cost of running the game at thirty frames-per-second. While frame-rate mode offers a pretty consistent sixty frames-per second but with a very muddy image. Meanwhile handheld just has one mode targeting 60 frames-per-second, though the smaller screen does a lot to hide the image quality. I found myself preferring resolution mode for exploring levels as it allowed me to make out details better and spot hidden items. But when it came to bosses I naturally wanted the higher frame-rate. The problem is that in order to switch modes, you’ll need to exit all the way back to the main menu. I appreciate that the option is there, as both modes have their advantages and use cases, but it would be nice to be able to swap between them seamlessly or even just when at checkpoints rather than having to exit entirely. If you can accept a very muddy image in frame-rate mode you’ll have a much smoother journey, but if you’re like me and want to make use of both, be ready to see that main menu a lot.

All that being said, for as derivative as it would initially appear to be, Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty manages to result in something remarkably unique. There are some rough patches along the way but the overall package presents a fun blend of ideas. In a genre full of mimicry, Wo Long strives to bring its own unique flavor to the table, and when it works, it works very well.