When you think you’ve hit a wall early in the game, or in the case of Crouching Dragon: Fallen Dynasty, at the end of its tutorial missions, there’s always a reason to worry. Thrown straight into China’s turbulent Three Kingdoms era during the Yellow Turban Rebellion, you find yourself up against a powerful leader whose powers have been enhanced by a cursed elixir of life. Surely this is a scam boss you should lose, like in Sekiro? Or there must be an easy loophole right under your nose, like Dark Souls’ Taurus demon? Fortunately, after nearly an hour of struggling, I realized it was the latter, the price of turning on the Chinese audio for authenticity but not watching the subtitles during the heat of the fight.
It’s a rather brutal first hurdle before you, perhaps characteristic of Team Ninja’s “masocore” sensibilities, but almost an outlier for the rest of the marathon ahead of you. After ditching the Nioh series set in the Sengoku period of Japan, the studio has introduced new mechanics and features that actually make Crouching Dragon one of the most approachable Souls games I’ve played in years , rather than just leaving it in simple mode.
Koei Tecmo is no stranger to the Three Kingdoms era, having spent 20 years deciphering and hacking this historical timeline in the Three Kingdoms Warriors series. The translation from musou to Soulslike takes on a dark fantasy angle, as the mysterious elixir is turning all those exposed to it into demonic creatures, including warlords fighting to gain its power for themselves. Given the number of legendary heroes who have been all but mythologized not only in the Wushuang games but in countless other Chinese adaptations, it seems fitting that these characters should also fight alongside you. If you’ve played Nioh 2, you might remember being occasionally accompanied by an AI-controlled companion during several missions. In Crouching Dragon, which is pretty much the default, an ally (sometimes two) will accompany you from the beginning of the mission to the end of the boss fight, while you can also summon another from your cumulative roster.
That’s not to say that legendary characters like Zhao Yun, Cao Cao, or Liu Bei will fight for you, though rooting for them does make them more proactive. I treated them almost like a security blanket, so knowing I had my back gave me the confidence to charge in more recklessly, even though it was the vastly improved and smoother combat system that made me want to take on the challenge myself.
Some of this is due to some of Nioh’s more forgiving changes. For example, falling into water or falling off a cliff is not instant death, and running or even basic attacks don’t drain stamina. You don’t even lose all of your Qi, WoLong’s equivalent of boosting your character’s soul when killed, though you’ll have to exact revenge on enemies who knocked you down to get back whatever you’ve lost. Movement is also vastly improved thanks to a dedicated jump button, including a double jump that makes it easier to jump to higher places, which in turn gives you the chance to jump down for a sudden knockdown. Stealth plays an equally important role, so that you can slowly walk up to enemies and perform backstabs. A crouch button would be welcome, but it helps that your enemies also tend to be very short-sighted.
But let’s get back to combat, which is the stamina system — or rather, your mental gauge, in Wolong’s parlance. An evolution of Nioh’s Ki meter, with a meter that can now flow in both negative and positive directions, represented by an orange-red bar, the former moving to the left, and the blue bar moving to the right, indicating the latter. In fact, you’ll rarely encounter blue, as you’ll be using the spirit a lot, whether it’s performing stronger attacks, magic spells, or martial arts with your weapon. However, normal attacks don’t use spirit, so these attacks and deflect attacks will keep you from losing spirit.
The deflection is where things get interesting. Soullike veterans will understand that blocking is a less effective form of defense compared to dodging, and Bloodborne (which shares producer with Masaaki Yamaki’s Crouching Dragon) does away with shields entirely. Deflection in Crouching Dragon might seem counterintuitive at first, since it’s actually the same button used for dodging, but in practice it’s a bit of genius. My instinct was already to dodge the oncoming attack, but when the time came, dodge turned into deflection. Instead of a separate parry but ton, you wish you had enough time to avoid the brutal punishment, it felt like I could still try to dodge but was lucky to deflect at times too, and before long I was basically ready to “dodge” the attack myself to make it deflection. It quickly becomes crucial, not just because it throws your opponent off balance and allows you to fight back, but because it also helps restore that all-important spirit. It’s also not as strict as Sekiro’s very precise and demanding parry, because the game is also a fighting game in a way, you also need to know when to skip a sweep or dodge a grab, in crouching dragon you can block anything – I mean nothing.
Especially when an enemy’s unstoppable critical strike is visibly telegraphed with a clockwork animation and a diabolical red aura, in which case you either screw up and get serious, or turn things around and greatly reduce the opponent’s spirit. The point where they stagger and prepare to deliver the coup de grace. I actually found myself looking forward to and even tempting to bait these attacks, especially since deflecting critical strikes looks so stylish. It was very rewarding to have the camera zoom in quickly, cinematically, when I was following up on a critical hit, accompanied by the same crackling sound you get after hitting a bowling ball.
The critical strike is also how the game gets easier due to its connection to Crouching Dragon’s morale system. Shown as numbers above enemies’ heads, morale in Crouching Dragon is like an RPG enemy’s level, which you can use to gauge whether you should give it a shot or keep them at bay. The difference is that the values can go up or down, so hitting an enemy with a critical strike will lower their morale and you’ll gain it, and vice versa, like moving a weight from one side of a scale to the other Same. Keep it in good shape, and you’ll find yourself a heavyweight who can confidently go head-to-head with whatever fiendish foe lurks around the corner. You can’t get too cocky, but you also lose any gained morale if you die, which adds to a really tense risk/reward factor.
If that punishment sounds harsh, this is where flags come in handy, not only as checkpoints, but in keeping with the Three Kingdoms theme, they also represent your dominance over the battlefield. The more flags you plant, the higher your grit rating, which is the lowest baseline value your morale can drop to. Stepped on by a boss with morale 20? Then plant all the flags on that level so that your default morale matches theirs. Skilled players who are unscathed find that they can boost morale even beyond this figure, and unlike the way you interact with other downed players, you can donate a healing potion in exchange for higher morale. It’s almost like a dynamic difficulty setting, which in turn encourages you to explore each level thoroughly.
It will certainly offer more incentive to interact with the environment, like Nioh before it, with little to spark the imagination beyond the typical locked doors, blocked paths, and shortcuts back, even if the visual Things end up being different than just plain ransacked villages and cavernous mountains. It’s also curious that Team Ninja hasn’t seen loot systems revamped in such an overabundant amount – due to the legacy functionality of Nioh’s original design, its gear has limited durability – the only reasonable and valid response is to only equip any The one with the largest quantity sells the rest. Knowing that you’ll likely find better gear on the next quest, it’s no wonder I’m hesitant to go to the smithy to upgrade anything until the very end of the game.
A new setting could mean a new chapter, but I’d almost prefer to call Crouching Dragon something like Nioh, or rather the sequel to what Nioh 2 was supposed to be, further refining its systems and customization, reducing some if not all Bloat, and add exciting evolutions to its base, making its masocore challenge more approachable in its own way. It’s certainly more comfortable to ride with allies, but when you can stop a demon-possessed warrior twice your size, fire back with a jabbing spear from above, and minimize his morale in the process When the satisfaction is all yours.
