Coming to any game over a year since its release can be a daunting prospect. Stuffed full of alterations, adaptions, and updates, it’s often hard to know where to begin. This is even truer of a complete edition, which can be overwhelming in the sheer weight of content it throws at you from the very beginning. Add to this that the game is a rock-hard evil blighter that hates anyone who plays it and you can see why I was a little anxious about commencing playing Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty – Complete Edition for review.
Hailing from Team Ninja, Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty wowed souls-like fans when it debuted last year with its fluid, violent, swordplay and surprisingly coherent story. Now the Complete Edition is here, and it is an absolute beast of a release. Alongside the original game, you get all three DLC packs; ‘Battle of Zhongyuan’, ‘Conqueror of Jiandong’, and ‘Upheaval in Jingxiang’. That means all the new weapon types and armour sets are available from the get-go. As is all the equipment and stages from Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty’s collaborations with Lies of P, Nioh 2, and Naraka: Bladepoint.
If all that wasn’t enough, and it really should be, you get a vast swathe of new endgame content that plays like a roguelike and, like Lord of the Rings: Return of the King, never seems to end. That’s an awful lot of Wo Long for your wonga.
If you were thinking that Team Ninja would have come up with some fresh presentation for the Complete Edition then, well, you’d be wrong. This is the base game with the DLC bolted on, absolutely no new visual bells and whistles here. Also, the DLC content is hidden away behind the fact that you need to be around level 80 to experience it. As such, if the hardcore arcade soulslike gameplay of Wo Long isn’t your thing, then you won’t even be able to give the DLC levels a try.
If Wo Long clicks for you, and you make it that far, then the DLC is all of a particularly high standard. Each new chapter adds new baddies to be murdered by, as well as some suitably epic divine beast encounters that will truly punish any gamer’s skills to the limit. Even better, the DLC stories skilfully fill out on missing elements of the main game’s narrative.
So, in a nutshell, if you’ve ever been tempted by Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty, then this is the version to get. It’s remarkable how well the game plays; combat and movement are silky smooth, the parry system is masterful in its intricacies, and the morale mechanic adds a neat twist to the soulslike formula.
A word of warning, it can be hard to find anyone online to co-op with, and when you do they tend to be so skilled that they destroy everything whilst you check your nails. Fortunately, the AI comrades do a great job in their buddy role, so if you want to get by on your own, that’s totally an option. Even better, the historical setting and characters are utterly glorious in their presentation, the Romance of the Three Kingdoms has never looked better.
