The First Berserker: Khazan Steam Charts & Stats

the bossfights are good for the most part and levels are pretty fun. combat feels fun and fluid. gameplay can get repetitive and the game lacks creativity in certain areas but the combat is enjoyable enough to overshadow those flaws. 9.2/10

If Nioh weren’t garbage, it would be this game. And this game copies it in everything. Sometimes to an absurd degree – the mission system, the backtracking in “side missions”, the gear/sets/stats system – all of it is lifted straight from Nioh. Even the same “graves” are scattered around locations, from which you can summon a spirit to duel. The only difference is that in Nioh you could farm the gear you needed from these spirits, and the summon points appeared where other players had died, whereas here they’re just randomly placed. If you don’t mind, you can collect every single one along the way, but after a while it just gets tedious. I fully completed Nioh 1 only because it had an interesting story that was fun to follow, and I wanted to know how it ended. Everything else in this game is awful and miserable mess and i have no idea how it even has fans. The second game turned out to be exactly the same – except with no story at all – so i had zero desire to keep playing that pile of garbage. And here’s where the Kazakh shines – it fixes the “original’s” mistakes by adding a ton of ways to avoid and counter damage, proper enemy animations, reasonable timings, and minimal reliance on grinding numbers. The ability to set up tons of moves, chain them together without pointless, tedious stance-switching, and instantly shift from offense to defense by canceling animations makes the combat smooth, easy to pick up, and simply satisfying. And the thrill of landing a ten-hit combo on a raging boss – complete with screen shakes, effects, blood splashes, and all those flashy sh*ts – is something you just can’t get in any other game in the genre. I doubt the announced Nioh 3 will be even a third as good as this game that copied its formula and actually perfected it. Everything else – like location visuals, effects, and music – is also top-tier. The effects designer must have been working 24/7, and the composer delivered an excellent OST. Hearing metal music in a soulslike is something truly rare. The enemy variety is a mixed bag. Out of my 47 hours in the game, the full enemy roster was already revealed around the 20-hour mark, after which it was just random combinations of the same ones. The placement logic isn’t great either – the same corridors with 1–3 mobs every couple of minutes. With this combat system, the game had potential for much more, but sadly the devs didn’t bother to realize it. Still, that’s not even its biggest flaw. The worst part of the game is, oh f*ck, its story. I have never seen a more cliched, uninteresting set of events with such utterly useless characters, except maybe in recent Marvel movies. The funniest part is how the game tries to stage a dramatic moment around the death of a side character, but your interaction with them beforehand is so minimal that the devs shove in a one-minute cutscene right before it – packed with random “romantic” moments – just to make you feel sad. You know, for emotional impact, yeah. And this applies to all the side characters – they show up, dump a ton of supposedly important exposition in your face, and then die in the dumbest possible way three hours later. Every major plot twist can be guessed about 10 hours in advance, and the final one is obvious from the start. If the main story is just dull, then the side quest stories are such surreal, lazy nonsense sh*t that the only way to play is to turn your brain off, press buttons, and enjoy the awesome combat. All in all – the game is excellent, and everyone clearly put effort into it… except the writer. Playing it is a pleasure, but following the story is physically painful. If that’s not a dealbreaker for you, and you just want some great action on screen, this is one of the best picks you can make. For everyone else – I recommend turning off the voice acting and skipping cutscenes. You’ll lose less than nothing. 6/10. Could have been higher if not for the terrible story.

Love the game so far. I got this game rather late and have been enjoying it. It's good and smooth all around. This is a personal nitpick. I'm a bit of a trophy chaser and was hoping to get an achievement called 'The Expert's Journey', which states beat the game on normal. I'm finding out now that you need to do it on expert. (Some would argue that it's called the 'Expert's Journey' for a reason, and you'd be right but the requirement for this was beating the game on normal). I didn't know that they rescaled difficulty for people who weren't comfortable with these kind of souls-like games. It's just gonna take a NG+ playthrough but I wish there was a sign or notification or something within the game to tell you this. If you got into the game and started playing after the patch like I did: - Their previous "Easy" is now "Normal". - Their previous "Normal" is now "Expert". Save yourself the time, just play it on Expert. The game is fun enough and enjoyable enough to make me try for a NG+ for this but it's just a minor inconvenience. Again, I recognize this is a nitpick. I just really REALLY would've appreciated a heads up in game about it.

Changing terms without offering a refund is a big L. Great game otherwise

Solid souls-like. Combat and bosses were excellent and make it standout from other similar games. I definitely recommend to those who enjoy difficult action RPGs.

[b]The First Bereserker: Khazan[/b] is a game that is not shining as bright as it should, but it truly deserves the word-of-mouth praise it has been getting, despite recent uproars over cosmetic additions and difficulty tweaks. We’re seeing a very interesting divide in the Soulslike genre in recent years, and I feel that Sekiro and Nioh were the starting points of that shift, which led us to 5-star gems such as Lies of P, Nine Sols, and now Khazan. Instead of following in the footsteps of From Software’s design of slow and tactical gameplay with open-ended build-variety that can be broken in more ways than one, we now are seeing tightly-designed faster-paced action games that have an intended experience of challenging melee but with a fully-developed kit that empowers the player to truly feel like they are getting good. It’s this growing trend that has made me appreciate what Khazan managed to accomplish, despite some flaws I can point out. The mechanical depth is the star of the show here, and it is a marvel just how unbelievably fluid and tight everything feels in this game. While you only have three weapon archtypes to focus on, their playstyles and numerous options will leave you with a desire to keep refining your combos and options from beginning to end. It was very smart to allow skill-respecs on the fly, because you will oftentimes find powerful skills that should be great on paper, but end up not giving you the edge you, personally, need. So? You swap and try other skills until you find that sweet-spot that allows you to dominate in your preferred fashion. Defensive options are greatly packed, as you are actively rewarded for both dodging, blocking, counter-attacks, and reflection-parrying; I want to say that I never cared much for this game’s reflection-parry option, but the other options are dopamine-overdoses to consistently pull off during the many boss fights within the game. Speaking of, there’s a pretty fun roster of bosses. Each one feels like it is doing its best to out-do the previous boss, and this momentum lasts all the way to the very final showdown, which might possibly now be my favorite final boss fight in the genre next to the likes of Nine Sol’s final boss and P’s DLC finale. Khazan falls into the same trap Elden Ring has of having recycled boss encounters during its side-missions. I’ll give credit and say that I was more forgiving of the repetition in Khazan than I was in Elden Ring, and it mostly just comes down to one factor: All of the bosses in Khazan are just more fun to fight. Every time I got to a side-boss door, I wasn’t thinking, “Bleh, gotta fight this guy again...” I was thinking “Sick, I get to now wreck this guy with my new combo I discovered!” Audio deserves some mention, because while the sound-track was hype-enough during its boss encounters, I want to highlight the ambient tracks for the stages, themselves, as they did a great job setting the atmosphere. Khazan isn’t telling the most original story or setting, but I was getting great vibes throughout thanks to the ambience of the visuals combined with the audio. The ultimate showcase of the audio, however, comes from the impact-feedback of the combat. Whoever provided the audio cues for the brink dodge/blocks/counterattacks, as well as the sounds of the clashes and enemy guard-breaks should given a dramatic salary bonus, because those cues helped really sell the feedback of the combat. The audio-cues even help in many ways during combat, as some of the hardest attacks to avoid can be easily avoided thanks to subtle audio-telegraphs. The shortcomings are there, but I’m quick to forgive them on this. The story is what I’d call: Satisfactory. Not incredible, but not boring. It’s your typical revenge-mission, cranked up to 11 with the sheer amount of obstacles thrown at your protagonist. There are some moments that punch higher in the writing department than the total experience, but I’d say it never became bad. Voice talent definitely makes up for it, with Ben Starr of FF16 and E33 fame leading the charge with the usual gusto he provides. The other real shortcoming is the repetition through side-missions, which effectively take previous stages and re-arrange them into bite-sized chunks of content. I was never bored during these thanks to the combat, but I was never excited to do them, either. I have to wonder if I would have been happier if they didn’t exist, opting to, instead, concentrate on making main missions as polished as possible. The overall experience left me more than satisfied. I even went out of my way to immediately do a full playthrough of the recently-added Hardcore difficulty after finishing my first Expert playthrough, and I have to celebrate this addition, as it actually made the game even more fun for me with the added tension of the restricted camera and hidden health/stamina of the enemies, which really tests you to know the game inside-out; special shout-out to the high-risk high-reward element of the enemies not only doing more damage, but also you doing more damage to make fights that much more intense. There were a [i]few[/i] boss encounters I can think of where the Hardcore camera was rough to deal with, but it was such a neat addition that I was happy enough to do a full second playthrough with it. If you are a fan of this action-driven take on Soulslikes in the vein of Sekiro and the above-mentioned, you absolutely should play Khazan.

[url=https://steamcommunity.com:/linkfilter/?url=https://raventargaryen.carrd.co/]Raven's 2025 Video Games Ranked[/url] Review After 100% Achievements. Approximate amount of time to platinum/100% in achievements 40-60 hours; It all depends on if you are a decent soulslike player or not! Since the expert difficulty is a challenge along with the 3 phase ozma final fight! It took me 41 hours. I bought this game on launch and ended up grinding it till the very end then took a 4 month break due to the Ozma 3 phase final boss fight giving me a headache. It was hard and it was challenging, especially on expert difficulty. So I decided to come back today and after 2 hours or so back playing this game, I finally defeated Ozma! His 3 phase fight was a challenge to say the least! Since you get the ozma 3 phase if you do certain things for the true Berserker ending. This has to be my favourite soulslike released this year to be honest, alongside; AI LIMIT and Wuchang Fallen Feathers! The gameplay is fun and the story while forgettable was engaging for the time spent playing through this game. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3538746461 "The First Berserker: Khazan" is a solid entry towards the soulslike genre! With well executed combat and satisfying gameplay. While the story is engaging for the time spent playing through the game, it does get forgettable once you finish the game and after you have a few months break from the game just like I did. This is not to say the story wasn't good since it was decent enough to keep me engaged but it's just rather forgettable once you finish the game or have a break and come back to it. The boss fights were also well designed and executed. Each boss fight felt not only unique but it felt like each of the bosses had their own "aesthetic" going for themselves. Along with each of the boss fights being; visually stunning, colorful and well designed despite some of their moves getting a little repetitive, typical for a soulslike though. You could clearly see that the creators did put a lot of passion and creativity into the designs of each boss fight! The animation style and graphics were well also well executed and I loved how this felt like an "anime soulslike" which I really fell in love with! Especially since I am a massive weeb. The story does provide the engagement factor while playing through the game, it just ended up feeling rather forgettable once I got towards the end and with taking a few months off from the game. But from the time being spent playing through the game it was engaging and I did love it's story telling, just wish it wasn't as forgettable as it was! With the story showing us that Khazan was once a celebrated general of the Pell Los Empire but got betrayed and exiled was an intriguing plot for me. And seeing each boss fight uncover more and more of what actually happened to Khazan had me engaged and curious to see what happened next with each boss that we met. Like I stated beforehand though, after coming back to this game the story was rather forgettable and I think it's fine for the time being spent playing through the game! https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3538746050 The gameplay, combat and boss fights truly carried this game, since the story is mostly forgettable. With it being well executed and providing gameplay that felt satisfying with the anime themed type animation. I ended up playing a spear built and it was truly fun! It also has a difficulty lowering setting for people that weren't good at soulslike games. With each boss fight each providing some uniqueness with each fight and you can clearly see that the developers of this game ended up putting a lot of effort, passion and creativity into each boss and their character design! My favourite boss fights; Blade Pnantom, Rangkus, Trokka, Bellerian, Princess Ilyna, Reese and 3 phase Ozma. The Ozma fight carries though! He was the BEST boss fight during the game and the developers really COOKED with his 3 phase! There is only really 3 achievements that WILL be difficult for people that aren't that good at soulslike games. The 2 acheivements are; "The Expert’s Journey - Beating the game on Expert difficulty." "Standing Alone - Reached the ending without summoning a Spirit of Advocacy." And "THE FIRST BERSERKER - Basically the TRUE ending" And I say The First Berserker achievement being hard due to ozma having a 3rd phase instead of 2 phases. But the rest of the achievements are pretty easy besides the 3 that I just mentioned! https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3538745870 Conclusion I really enjoyed the time I spent with this game despite the ozma 3 phase making me have a few months break before beating him! And the story being mostly forgettable once I returned. The rest of the game was great and it became my favourite soulslike that released this year along with; AI LIMIT and Wuchang Fallen Feathers! The combat was well executed, the gameplay was satisfying, the boss fights were well designed, and the animation/visuals looked great! Just wish the story was a little better though! But hey, it's a souslike after all so least it tried with an alright story that has it's engagement factor for the time you spend playing through the game! Overall "The First Berserker: Khazan" was a fun entry towards the souslike genre! I would suggest it to not only souslike players but also people that aren't into the soulslike genre, since the game is fun and it does favour itself to nooby players with it's difficulty lowering setting! And not to mention any weeb will automatically love this game!

The games provider retroactively changed the ToS and does not offer a way to opt out of these changes (which is illegal) - while claiming in their blog post about it, that they do offer said opt out.

What an epic game! The story is great, and the combat is solid as hell. Highly recommended!

Don't get me wrong, this is a 10/10 game and I absolutely love it. The combat is a 10/10 and most of the bosses are the perfect souls-like types (even if the side missions are just reskinned versions of main story mission areas and bosses). I would absolutely recommend this game to anyone who is looking for another good souls-like. So why am I leaving a negative review? It is because of the notice that the publisher just recently released saying that later this month they are updating their terms of service to say that if you continue to play their games, then you will be agreeing to waive your right to arbitration with them. Have a dispute with them over a transaction? You gotta sit there for 60 days before you can even take it to a small claims court. So good luck. Oh but you can opt out of the terms..... by physically mailing a letter. What?? Why??? Khazan, at least as far as I know while writing this review, does not have any microtransactions and no apparent need for third-party system/account setups or logins. So while this notice may be more applicable to their other games, changing their terms to apply to ALL of their published games is not a good thing. If you have disputes, you should be able to address it within reasonable time frames and means, and I think their update is meant to prevent that. So in all fairness, great game, but I cannot with good conscience recommend anyone purchase it unless they are willing to agree to their terms.