Wo Long Fallen Dynasty Switch 2 Review
Version Reviewed: Nintendo Switch 2
Soulslike fans on Switch 2 have been eating well lately, with Lies of P stringing us along and Elden Ring providing some polished, punishing gameplay to enjoy on the platform. Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty Complete Edition aims to compete with the puppet and the Tarnished by whisking us away to China during the tumultuous Later Han Dynasty, while adding its own unique mechanics into the mix. What’s It Like? Sharpen your sword, choose your teammate, and raise your banner high as we review Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty Complete Edition for Nintendo Switch 2.
Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty takes us back to China during the Later Han Dynasty, a period of political turmoil and rebellion that would eventually lead to the Three Kingdoms era, although this isn’t exactly the history lesson you might remember from school. While plenty of the game’s characters and events are inspired by real historical figures and the famous Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Wo Long throws plenty of Chinese mythology and supernatural elements into the mix, meaning we’re just as likely to be fighting a heavily armed warlord as we are a giant demonic tiger. You play as an unnamed militia soldier who finds themselves caught up in the Yellow Turban Rebellion, before events quickly spiral into something far more sinister. A mysterious Elixir capable of granting incredible power is at the centre of the conflict, and naturally, when something promises that much power, there are going to be plenty of people willing to kill for it. From there, your journey takes you across a China ravaged by war and corruption, meeting plenty of familiar faces from the Three Kingdoms period along the way.
Now, all of this does sound like it’s treading into Dynasty Warriors territory based on the shared historical inspiration, and a part of me feels like Wo Long could almost be described as Dynasty Warriors meets Elden Ring, although instead of facing off against thousands of enemies at once, things start off far more manageable, with most encounters putting you up against a handful of enemies that you need to approach a little more carefully. What really sets Wo Long apart, however, is its Morale system. Every character in a level has a Morale Rank, with stronger enemies generally having a higher rank than you, while your own Morale increases as you defeat enemies and decreases when you’re killed. It sounds fairly straightforward, but it adds an interesting layer to how you approach each level, because rather than simply charging towards the next boss, you’re encouraged to explore the area, defeat enemies and find Battle Flags and Marking Flags, which increase your Fortitude Rank and give you a safety net against losing too much Morale when you eventually bite the dust.
In theory, I really like this idea, the problem is that once the actual combat starts, I found Wo Long considerably less interesting than its systems initially suggest. Combat is fast and furious, relying heavily on a parry system which is performed by pressing A and a direction at the same time, and you really do need to master it if you want to get anywhere. Successfully deflecting an attack can open up an enemy to a counterattack, and when you get into the rhythm of reading an enemy’s attacks and responding at exactly the right moment, the system can feel fantastic, but I often found myself falling back into a much simpler routine of waiting for an attack, parrying it, and then attacking when I had an opening. That became really noticeable as I worked my way through the game’s levels, where the general rhythm often felt like fighting through a group of enemies, finding the next Battle Flag, and then repeating the process until eventually reaching a boss. There are other mechanics here, including wizardry spells and the various weapons and builds you can experiment with, but I rarely felt like I was being encouraged to think particularly creatively about how I approached an encounter.
Then there is the difficulty, which is where Wo Long really started to test my patience. The game is frustratingly difficult, and unlike other Soulslikes where I’ve generally felt that the difficulty was part of the appeal, I didn’t find that to be the case here. The problem isn’t necessarily that the game is hard, but that the learning curve feels less like a gradual climb and more like a series of jagged cliffs that you’re repeatedly expected to throw yourself against. One of the first major bosses is a perfect example of this, throwing you into an encounter that feels disproportionately difficult compared with what you’ve faced beforehand, and things are made even more frustrating by the game’s feedback during combat. There isn’t always a clear animation when you’re hit or when you’ve successfully landed an attack, and there were moments where I didn’t realise I’d been damaged until I looked over at my health bar. That lack of feedback becomes even more noticeable when you’re already trying to keep track of enemy attacks, your own positioning and the timing of your deflections, and when you add some janky movement, unpredictable attack patterns and a camera that seems determined to become the real final boss, the frustration can quickly overwhelm whatever satisfaction the combat is supposed to provide. There were certainly moments where things worked, and successfully deflecting a string of attacks before landing the finishing blow can feel incredibly satisfying, but those moments were too often buried beneath everything else going on around them. Rather than feeling like I was gradually learning the game’s language and becoming a better player, there were too many occasions where I felt like I was fighting the controls, the camera and the game’s presentation as much as I was fighting the enemies themselves.
Which leads us into the biggest issue with Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty on Switch 2, because unfortunately, this is a terribly optimised port. Choosing whether you want visuals or framerate becomes a real Sophie’s choice, because neither option feels particularly good for a game that relies so heavily on precision and timing. You can choose the sharper resolution mode, which isn’t particularly sharp, and the poor frametime makes the game feel noticeably uneven when you’re trying to react to incoming attacks. Alternatively, you can prioritise framerate, which does provide a much smoother experience, but at the expense of a resolution so blurry that I found it difficult to play for extended periods of time without getting a headache. For a game where successfully reading an enemy’s animation and pressing a button at precisely the right moment can be the difference between winning and being sent back to the nearest Battle Flag, this is an unfortunate compromise. In the end, I found the higher framerate mode to be the only real way I could play Wo Long, but having to accept such a significant reduction in image quality just to get the responsiveness the combat demands feels like a poor trade-off. This isn’t simply a case of wanting the prettiest possible version of the game. When the core combat is built around split-second reactions, inconsistent frametimes and poor visual clarity actively get in the way of the mechanics that are supposed to make Wo Long enjoyable. Some of the issues I had with the combat earlier in the review, particularly the lack of clear feedback when you’re hit, become even more noticeable when you’re also dealing with an image that can look incredibly soft.
The result is a port that brings Wo Long down considerably on Switch 2, and that makes it a particularly hard game to recommend on the platform. That’s a real shame, because Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty has been well received on other platforms, and there is clearly a good action RPG underneath this rather rough Switch 2 conversion. Unfortunately, after spending so much of my time fighting the game’s performance rather than its enemies, it’s difficult for me to overlook just how much these technical problems affect the overall experience.
In terms of value, there’s certainly plenty to get through with Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty Complete Edition, as this package includes the full game alongside all three of its major DLC expansions. The base game alone can take around 25 hours to work through, and once you start adding in the additional scenarios, weapons, characters, Divine Beasts and all of the other content included across the three expansions, there’s easily enough here to keep you busy for considerably longer than that. The problem, as I’ve mentioned throughout this review, is that all of that content is only valuable if you actually want to spend your time playing it. At around $109 AUD, Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty Complete Edition is a hard sell for me on Switch 2.
I wanted to love Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty on Switch 2, especially after coming to appreciate recent Soulslikes like Lies of P and Elden Ring, both of which have offered solid experiences on the platform. Unfortunately, Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty is a frustrating and underpolished port that diminishes its clever mechanics and unique twist on the genre by forcing players to choose between an awful framerate or a headache-inducing resolution. While some players may be willing to put those issues aside, I found the poor performance only compounded the game’s unrelenting difficulty spikes and occasionally frustrating design. Despite giving Wo Long several chances to win me over, the combination ultimately made this one of the most infuriating games I’ve had to review. There is a genuinely interesting action RPG buried beneath these problems, and when Wo Long works, its deflection-focused combat can be incredibly satisfying. But on Switch 2, those moments were too often overshadowed by technical shortcomings and design decisions that made it difficult for me to enjoy the experience.
So, What’s it like? Wo Long Fallen Dynasty is like Elden Ring set in Dynasty Warriors.
In the interest of full disclosure, a review copy was provided by the publisher, but this doesn’t influence my score.
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