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Billed as a ‘hardcore motion RPG’ (role-playing recreation), The First Berserker: Khazan from developer Neople lives as much as its description by providing a back-breaking, taxing, and demanding soulslike game that doesn’t ever let up, for higher and for worse.
Assessment information
Platform reviewed: PS5
Out there on: PS5, Xbox Sequence X, Xbox Sequence S, PC
Launch date: March 27, 2025
With some spectacular fight and development tweaks to the style’s formulation blended in, it additionally has some strong concepts of its personal. Dozens of hours of content material, elective facet missions, and secrets and techniques to search out are backed up by some wonderful voice work – even when the narrative doesn’t fairly match the efficiency high quality.
Nonetheless, for long-running Soulslike followers, The First Berserker: Khazan’s fight feels on par with Lies of P’s high quality. We are actually at some extent within the style the place builders are capable of make fight that’s on par with FromSoftware’s work on the long-lasting Darkish Souls collection, Bloodborne, and Elden Ring, et al. What’s much more spectacular is that that is Neople’s first soulslike – and you’ll’t inform in any respect.
A well-known formulation
The setup of The First Berserker: Khazan is a well-known one for the style. Common Khazan wakes up after narrowly escaping demise upon being branded a traitor and mercilessly tortured. Frail and weak, he stumbles upon an entity often called the Blade Phantom), offering him with grand, otherworldly powers, and permitting him to get again to his full energy.
On that journey, he’ll regain powers and skills permitting him to make use of one among three weapon sorts whereas assembly a solid of characters that be a part of him in a hub referred to as The Crevice. They’ll improve his gear, enhance his stats, and provide gear to buy, from weapons to armor items and your standard batch of consumables yow will discover in a soulslike recreation.
Khazan then journeys from degree to degree to hunt revenge and turn out to be The First Berserker. Whereas the sport is ready inside the Dungeon & Fighter (DNF) universe, I’ve no expertise with the opposite tasks in it, however I discovered the story to be initially intriguing, providing spectacular world design and nice visuals and environments that grabbed me from the get-go.
It additionally helps that the voice performances from Ben Starr as Khazan and Anthony Hell because the Blade Phantom, the 2 important characters you’re with for many of the recreation, are incredible. The remainder of the supporting solid, bosses, and human characters you battle are additionally simply nearly as good. Everybody right here does one of the best they’ll with the writing which regularly underdelivers.
Because the story goes on, the sport piles on lore and terminology that makes it a bit laborious to comply with for newcomers. The world you’re exploring and the principles of it simply type of turn out to be an amorphous blob of stuff interjected between every degree and boss battle. I’m certain it is actually cool for followers of the DNF universe to see their world delivered to life in a method it by no means has been earlier than, however The First Berserker: Khazan doesn’t do an amazing job of maintaining new gamers invested in it previous the primary few hours.
A brutal battering
Whereas I wasn’t thrilled by the story, the fight in The First Berserker: Khazan is simply beautiful. No soulslike has challenged me this constantly since I obtained into the style with Bloodborne. There are such a lot of adjectives I might use to explain the fight’s issue however it’s merely one of many hardest soulslikes I’ve ever performed. Nonetheless, I cherished each second of getting slaughtered.
The First Berserker: Khazan is closely reliant on blocking, parrying, and dodging on the proper occasions to keep away from assaults, with even one hit doing vital injury. Exact dodge timing is required and parry home windows are even shorter. Lacking these may also decrease your stamina with every block as you are taking injury, leaving you susceptible and unable to maneuver for just a few seconds as your stamina absolutely recovers. It’s grueling and there aren’t methods to get round these necessities both, except you go for the better issue mode which lessens the results of numerous these punishing mechanics. You’ll be able to’t merely out-level a boss or space.
The sport additionally doesn’t go for the construct flexibility and customization that many soulslikes do today, as a substitute letting you develop and deepen fight with the three important weapon sorts (twin blades, greatsword, and spear) as you play. As you kill enemies and executives, you earn talent factors that unlock skills which you can activate that fluctuate up a weapon’s moveset, in addition to different strikes and passive bonuses which can be imbued into the weapon as soon as activated.
I opted for a Greatsword in my playthrough and that allowed me to unlock skills equivalent to Breakthrough which let me cost into an enemy push them again away from a bunch after which slam down. Different skills like Interior Fury summoned an explosion beneath the place I used to be standing, dealing space of impact injury to everybody round me performing as a stun, increase an enemy’s stun meter to land a Brutal Assault whereas they had been immobilized. It additionally helped with crowd management.
Finest bit
The very best second in The First Berserker: Khazan got here after lastly beating Maluca after nearly six hours. The battle is likely one of the finest spectacles within the recreation, and it’s a enormous problem to beat, requiring you to grasp nearly each side of fight from managing your stamina, figuring out when to stun him, and honing your parries to deflect fast sword combos.
Inside the talent tree, there are additionally further fight strikes which you can seamlessly slot in between assaults, equivalent to with the ability to use a charged heavy assault with some added attain after performing the primary hit in a lightweight combo or with the ability to guard as you cost your heavy assault. There’s even a ranged Spear assault that you need to use.
That is the primary time I can bear in mind a talent tree and conventional fight skills working this nicely in soulslike and I cherished the fluid, dynamic nature of preventing in The First Berserker: Khazan as I unlocked extra expertise with a weapon. There’s an distinctive circulation I obtained into as i mixed assaults and seamlessly interweaved strikes that turned addicting. It’s all supported by wonderful sound design and music, with the clink of a parry and the swoosh of an ideal dodge being particularly satisfying.
After all, fight is nothing in a soulslike with out enemies, and The First Berserker: Khazan has a wealth of them. Skeletons, people, demons, dragons, and extra litter the sport’s 16 ranges and lots of bonus missions. All of them have an amazing, assorted choice of assaults and I by no means had points with struggling to grasp which strikes had been being telegraphed. The one draw back is there are just a few too many brown and gray villages and areas the place you battle these enemies, that lack the aptitude seen early on and in direction of the top of the sport.
Bosses, nevertheless, are distinctive and at all times a spectacle. The best way their assaults and the visible results mix collectively to create grand, herculean challenges is a side of the sport that by no means will get outdated. Every one additionally challenged me in solely alternative ways, requiring completely different approaches nearly each time and forcing me to adapt to new fight kinds.
Endure and attempt to survive
Nonetheless, the sheer quantity of assaults to be taught, the parry timing, and the injury these bosses do, mixed with the demanding fight is so much to endure. I spent a number of hours on each single boss, generally spending greater than 5 hours attempting to complete them off. For instance, Aratra, an enormous spider has a lot of stabs and swipes it could actually carry out with its legs, just a few leaping seize assaults, in addition to a cost that requires you to dam half-a-dozen successive hits. It can also inflict poison with its assaults, forcing you to handle a poison meter on the identical time.
One other boss Rangkus, affords a singular mix of each ranged crossbow atatcks and melee assaults, forcing you to regulate to his continually shifting moveset that switches between the 2 kinds. You not solely have to dam, parry, dodge, and shut the hole on him, however you additionally have to handle your place within the area to remain near him, stopping him from doing his extra punishing space of impact attacksor charged crossbow photographs which can be nearly unimaginable to dodge.
The First Berserker: Khazan has a number of the hardest bosses I’ve ever skilled within the style as a result of all of them ask a lot of the participant. Whereas it felt like being within the trenches within the second, the exhilarating jubilation I felt after beating each is a sense I haven’t felt within the style in a really very long time. Fight is admittedly fairly distinctive and to have one thing of this high quality come from a studio’s first soulslike recreation is spectacular.
Concepts of its personal
Whereas The First Berserker: Khazan positively borrows so much from the video games that got here earlier than it, there are just a few fascinating twists to the formulation, most of which work. For instance, you may really present bigger injury and stamina restoration boosts to Khazan past the standard 5 stat upgrades you get from the forex enemies drop. By discovering Vengeance Factors, you may enhance these stats universally throughout the sport’s ranges which inspires you to discover totally as there’s a significant reward for doing so.
You can even carry out related upgrades through the use of gadgets gained from the crimson enemy summons or spirits to spice up your personal summon, enhancing their injury and energy throughout boss fights, supplying you with a motive to truly battle them and spend money on your summon if you’d like. Though the AI isn’t that nice in your summon, they can be utilized as a punching bag for a boss to allow you to land some free hits.
There are additionally numerous enjoyable twists and elective bonus missions, equivalent to preventing a boss once more in a brand new kind or exploring an space from a important degree in a brand new method. There are additionally just a few collectibles to search out in these and the principle missions that may present quite a lot of additional bonuses, armor items, or gear. I actually loved doing these and chasing this stuff. Being inspired to discover on this method for tangible rewards made the linear-level design extra intriguing as I scoured each crevice for secrets and techniques.
The one space that the sport affords a twist on the soulslike formulation right here – that doesn’t actually work – is the quantity of substances (weapon and armor) customisation choices. You’ll be able to craft gear, improve gear, rework attributes and stat bonuses on gear and whole gear units, promote that gear for cash and purchase different gear, and even dismantle gear.
It’s numerous methods to make use of your undesirable gadgets, however I by no means felt the necessity to interact with any of them meaningfully. I used to be nonetheless simply utilizing all the pieces I obtained whereas exploring and making use of substances units and the bonuses granted by them. I by no means felt a necessity to truly take into consideration crafting a gear set or dismantling gear to avoid wasting up for a selected merchandise from the blacksmith. It largely simply feels tacked on as a result of I obtained a lot gear as I used to be enjoying.
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Accessibility options
The First Berserker: Khazan consists of intention help for ranged weapons and a simple issue for many who are discovering the fight too difficult. Nonetheless, when you select simple issue, you may’t change the issue again to regular, and the sport doesn’t have any fine-tuning choices for fight equivalent to adjusting the parry window. The fight additionally doesn’t have a lot wiggle room to make issues simpler with upgrades and you’ll’t customise button mappings outdoors of the 2 default templates.
There are additionally no choices for people who find themselves colorblind, visually impaired, deaf, or have motor and response time issues apart from some very minor changes equivalent to maintain to dash, turning display screen shake off, and fundamental subtitle choices.
How I reviewed The First Berserker: Khazan
I performed The First Berserker: Khazan for 30 hours finishing nearly all of the sport’s important missions and ending many of the facet content material. I performed the sport largely in efficiency mode on PS5 with a DualSense Edge PS5 controller on a Gigabyte M28U gaming monitor and utilizing SteelSeries Arena 3 computer speakers.
The First Berserker: Khazan examined me in a lot the identical method Bloodborne did once I tried the style in 2015. Since that yr I’ve performed nearly each recreation within the style together with Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, Elden Ring, Demon’s Souls, Lies of P, The Surge, Lords of the Fallen, Ashen, Darksiders 3, and extra.
First reviewed March 2025.