[00:00] What's going on everybody, Mortem here, this time bringing you a look at Wollong 2, Wings of Ember, which was technically announced a few months ago, but as part of the Tokyo Game Show which happened yesterday,
[00:19] Roll Long 2 here got a bit of an update via a whole bunch of information, and more importantly, a playable alpha demo that everyone can jump into over on places like Steam.
[00:31] That is how I am bringing you all of the footage that you are seeing on screen. But one of the reasons I decided to go ahead and take a look at this demo are that I actually reviewed the original one several years ago, and while I'll be completely honest with you, I don't remember everything about it,
[00:46] the main things I remember were that I really didn't like the way they handled loot in that game, on top of it being a pretty buggy experience at the time, which may or may not be fixed now, I suppose. But that detail in particular is important, I think, because it's probably worth mentioning
[01:01] that the demo itself does not run all that well. Plenty of stutters, other smaller lingering issues, that kind of thing. Now, it's hard to say exactly how up-to-date this alpha demo is, but, you know, with any luck, between now and the announced release date for this game of March 4th, 2027, they will get that sorted.
[01:20] But in order to talk much about this game, I should probably mention a few things about the original Wolong. So, Wolong, I would not say was received super well, like I think it did fine within its niche, but thanks to its really big focus on parrying, it wasn't exactly the easiest game to get into,
[01:37] especially since a lot of that challenge was front-loaded. I remember in particular that the first boss was the hardest of all of them to me. But obviously those parry-based combat systems are not exactly for everybody.
[01:50] Either way, I don't have exact sales figures for the original or anything, but I will say that I was surprised to see they were making a sequel at all, given the general reception of the original and everything, and the fact that it was, again, kind of a niche in and of itself.
[02:03] But regardless, that brings us to the second entry here, which I would say is retaining some of the good things from the original at the very least, but I've yet to see anything that truly overhauls the experience or makes me think differently about it, because right
[02:18] now with Wolong 2 doing pre that start at US and the fact that the previous game was a bit wanting I would say that this one has a lot to prove and I honestly just not sure if it going to be able to pull it off Either way let discuss a few details
[02:33] At the end of the day, this is a variation of the Souls-likes out there, and to that end, there's not really much to do with difficulty, it just kind of is what it is, and you have to overcome it, which is going to be maybe a little more difficult here for some people,
[02:46] because thanks to that parry-based system they use, there's a huge emphasis on timings and everything, and there are certainly ways for enemies to one-shot you pretty easily, thanks to the game's morale mechanic.
[02:58] So keep in mind it's a little challenging, I would say. But, given that Team Ninja is making this, as you can when you fire up a new game, create your own character, and this is an area that I would say Team Ninja has been doing quite
[03:11] well in. Their character creators have gotten really good, and that is, of course, then what we are dealing with here system-wise. And while I just picked a default character for the sake of this demo, there are a ton of different options to mess around with and make a character that is pretty tailored to whatever it is you want to do.
[03:28] Next up, what's the story set up for this sequel? So the sequel continues to take place in a Three Kingdoms era of China. And in particular, when our protagonist's village is destroyed by seemingly the antagonist, of course, you jump in to take the fight to that person, only to discover that the land has been overrun with demons and all sorts of other entities that you need to deal with in order to, of course, enact your vengeance, presumably.
[03:56] with that seeming to be the basic plot setup. I didn't really see too much else going on there, and I'm not terribly surprised, simply because of the type of game this is. While some of them can certainly have deep lore and everything,
[04:08] the actual narrative is usually much more straightforward. But where things get interesting with a game like this are progression and especially the actual gameplay elements of it. So, progression is a mix of Souls-likes that you have seen in the past,
[04:22] almost certainly. We're going to be picking up our resource key when we kill enemies and whatnot, and we're going to spend that at various shrines or battle flags in this case in order to improve our stats, otherwise known as affinities here,
[04:34] each of which includes a whole bunch of secondary stats that will make you better at those things, but typically also, in the case of this particular title, helps you govern your wizardry spells. So one of the items and things you be picking up along the way of defeating enemies clearing points of interest that kind of stuff are earning a currency that allows you to unlock things like magical abilities with the associated affinity of those stones
[05:00] This also applies to your basic techniques, which you can mix and match, sort of Neo-style to the weapon you happen to be using at the time, and that's before you start factoring in the actual equipment. So a thing to know about Wolong, and Wolong 2 here it appears,
[05:15] is that they use a Diablo-esque loot system, and where I think that's fine for something like Nioh. In the original game, at least, I will say that I don't think that system works particularly well with what they were trying to do there.
[05:28] And it's actually a situation where I think that game could have benefited from a more, let's say, traditional loot system than what felt like a very shotgun approach to everything else they had done. Now, I mentioned a little bit about gameplay, world, and a morale system.
[05:42] So, it seems, just like the first one, that morale plays a really big role here in terms of the enemy and yourself. So the higher your morale modifier in the various points in which you're using it,
[05:54] the less the game is going to try to hold your hand through and experience. And what that means is that you have access to a lot of your abilities and stuff. As you start moving through the game's world area,
[06:06] you start planting various flags in places, defeating enemies, etc. And those will theoretically increase your morale, which also increases your effectiveness in combat that in this instance outside of the addition of things like level ups.
[06:19] Now, enemies also have this morale that you have to watch out for. Ideally, you want to have a higher morale than them before you do things like take on bosses, because if you don't, it's very likely that you'll be pretty easily one-shot or something similar.
[06:32] And that's to say nothing of the combat itself, which involves a whole host of different elements, but a lot of it, again, revolves around parrying or deflecting, or honestly the several different types of parrying they give you access to.
[06:44] So you have your basic parry. As enemies go to hit you, you, of course, parry them, just deflect them, break their spirit, leave them open to more devastating attacks, the expected stuff. Now, there are bigger wind-ups that flash red and everything that require more precise timing even beyond that stuff and can't be, like, just normally blocked, etc.
[07:04] But then, to take that a little bit farther, you then have things like an insight parry or an airborne parry, etc. So the insight one basically the way you would typically access abilities like your wizardry spells based on what you have learned so far is to hit in the case of keyboard shift and that sort of puts you into insight mode so you can actually use things like the spells or whatever
[07:27] The thing is, this also applies to parrying. There are certain abilities you have to shift into insight and then utilize a parry when that state is active in order to actually see the intended effect.
[07:41] There's also an airborne parry, in particular against certain airborne enemies. they will give you a different type of visual clue that cues you into the fact that you're supposed to, like, shift into that insight mode, jump up,
[07:54] which should then parry or neutralize an airborne attack, provided you did it correctly. And that's before you start getting into the affinities themselves and how they interact with individual enemies. But I think you kind of get the gist of it for the sake of this.
[08:08] In addition to all that, you can, as you meet characters as part of the story, use them as backups. That is to say, summon them into missions where they can actually help you out. And the usual stuff. But sort of bringing all of that together to start wrapping this up,
[08:22] I would say Wolong 2, in many ways, feels exactly like Wolong 1, as basically everything I've mentioned thus far is in that game. But that actually leads me to some questions about how well this will actually perform,
[08:34] because it is, again, $70 as a base price. Wolong 1 was not exactly well-loved. And that's to say nothing of the combat system, which, you know, combat systems like this are just inherently not built for everyone,
[08:46] which can make certain things a little more of a hassle than they might be otherwise. But ultimately, we will simply have to wait and see. This game is out in March of 2027, March 4th to be specific,
[08:58] and if I have time, I will certainly jump in and review it when that time rolls around, but I will simply have to touch base with it in six months, and we'll, you know, see what's going on. But as for today's video, I do think that is pretty much going to do it.
[09:11] certainly hope you enjoyed it. If you did, by all means, like, comment, subscribe, all that YouTube jazz. Let me know how you feel about this one down below, especially if you happen to have played the demo for yourself. But regardless of any of that, truly
[09:23] just thank you so much for watching. I really do appreciate it. May you wander in wisdom, and have an amazing day.
[09:41] you