In recent years, the long-running Dungeon & Fighter franchise has been breaking into new genres—first with the fighting game DnF Duel and now with The First Berserker: Khazan. The First Berserker is an action-heavy soulslike. Expect labyrinthine dungeons, massive castles, burned-out cities, and, of course, poison swamps with save points and shortcuts placed just far enough apart to push you and your resources to the limit without feeling unfair (beyond a few specific enemy combinations and environmental hazards, anyway).

In action, it feels like the fast-paced combat of Bloodborne mixed with the parrying mechanic of Sekiro. In practice, this means the game has a rather defensive play style where the enemies often take the lead and you are tasked with reacting to their attacks correctly. When enemies are attacking, rather than simply blocking or dodging (both of which massively eat away at your limited stamina bar), the trick is to time your block to the moment of impact which results in a parry that does little to no damage to your stamina. At the same time, these parries (along with your general attacks) damage the opponent's stamina bar (and a bit of their life bar). When the enemy stamina bar is fully depleted, the enemy is left defenseless for several seconds, allowing you to get in some direct damage to their life-bar followed up by a critical attack.

Combat becomes a bit more complicated once unblockable attacks (which can be counterattacked or dodged but not parried or blocked) and grabs (which can only be dodged) enter the mix, but the basic flow of combat is generally the same: parry when the enemy attacks and use attacks, skills, and combos during the short windows when they are not.

While the combat is smooth and responsive, it does little to offset the game's biggest problem: the difficulty spikes in boss fights. Each area in the game, be it a main story mission or side mission, ends in a boss fight. Yet, rather than a slow and steady increase in difficulty, every three or four main bosses, you'll face a boss that is far more powerful than the bosses before or after. These often sport two forms (with different attack patterns and timing) and have a full life bar for each. While most bosses may take anywhere between 1 and 5 tries to beat, these “super bosses” can easily take 20 or more times to conquer.

To be clear, I am not objecting to their difficulty in general. These super boss battles are the most well-built and entertaining fights in the game—and you feel a real sense of accomplishment when you finally take each one down. However, they wreck the pacing of the game. If you are invested in the story and/or can't wait to see what the next area of the game has in store for you, it's like hitting a wall at full speed.

More than once during my playthrough, I was tempted to switch to easy mode to progress the game. There was just one problem: while you can switch to easy mode at any time, you can never switch back to normal mode once you do. And to me, the difficulty outside the super bosses—namely inside the dungeons and against the normal bosses—felt perfect. Making the whole game permanently “too easy” just to pass a single boss really seemed like a waste—and so I powered through on normal each time.

All that said, there is also an upside to these “super bosses.” While it is entirely possible to simply “get gud” by memorizing each of their dozen attack patterns perfectly and parrying like a god, that's not the only thing you can do to tilt the odds in your favor.

There are many different systems in this game for making your character stronger. There are hundreds of weapons and armor to collect—and several ways to improve them. Through combat, you level up and can invest points into various stats, gain skill points to unlock new moves and abilities and strengthen the various aspects of the Blade Phantom. Doing side missions gains you points which you can use to do things like power up your overall damage while killing summon-able, player-like opponents gets you items that not only allow you to summon an AI helper for bosses but can be used to level them up as well.

Each time I hit a super boss roadblock, I delved into one or another of these, maximizing their effect as best I could until it was enough to defeat said boss. If nothing else, I can say the game forced me to utilize all the tools it was providing me—and that's a compliment. But I am not going to lie, even then, I still needed to spend a sizable chunk of time memorizing each super boss' attack patterns to attain victory.

Ironically, all this makes the first dozen hours or so of the game more difficult than the later game in many cases. For the first few super bosses, you don't have access to the vast majority of the game's power-granting systems—or can only level them up to a certain point. This effectively soft-caps your power level and means that, on some level, you do have to just “get gud” or give up—and that's not the best way to start off a game with so much to offer.

While it is possible to play only the main story, each time you clear an area, you unlock a few side missions. Rather than completely new areas to explore, they are remixed (and often truncated) versions of previous levels. Most often, the game changes the lighting and have you move through the stage backward while forcing you to fight different kinds of enemies than on your first time through. Meanwhile, the bosses are almost always re-skinned repeats from a previous main stage. While they are not completely new, they don't feel optional. The rewards you get from them include things increasing your maximum amount of heals between save points and upgrades to the Blade Phantom's various aspects. In other words, you're dramatically weaker if you don't do them—and that's without even mentioning the parts of the story you'd end up missing out on.

The First Berserker is more story-heavy than many soulslikes. While I admit to being completely ignorant when it comes to Dungeon & Fighter lore, I never found that to be an issue when it came to following what was going on. I'm sure those who know the ins and outs of Dungeon & Fighter will get far more out of the story, characters, and setting than I did, but that doesn't mean I wasn't invested in the story.

On its surface, this game is a revenge story, pure and simple. However, within it are numerous characters with their own fleshed-out tales—with many of them influenced by Khazan's. Of course, given The First Berserker's grimdark world, many of these end in tragedy. Yet, through them, you get to decide whether Khazan is a rage-driven monster or a hero in a world where it's more than difficult to act like one.

It also helps that the character design in this game is fantastic. Each character is instantly recognizable—bosses or allies—and you instantly want to know more about them. This gets you invested in them from the moment you meet them and eager to squeeze out every detail of their backstories.

Beyond cutscenes and talking with your companion characters in the game's hub area, defeating bosses and collecting items in normal stages and side missions grants you additional bits of lore. This, in turn, promotes exploring every nook and cranny of the game—and it's surprisingly effective.

Before wrapping things up, I feel that one other aspect of the game that should be addressed: the Deluxe Edition. Like many games, The First Berserker: Khazan has several editions to choose from—the more expensive ones having things like artbooks or in-game costumes. In the case of the Deluxe Edition, among other things, you get the Hero's Armor Set.

Far from a simple cosmetic item, this set is not only rare (meaning it has higher defense than anything in the early game), but it also gives you +5 to every stat. This is the equivalent of 30 levels (i.e., hours upon hours of gameplay) just by putting it on. Being that you get this armor right as the hub area is unlocked, it leaves you massively overpowered. It's not until you reach the first super boss that you will face any challenge—and I shudder to think how much longer it would have taken me to beat that boss without it. To put it another way, the Hero's Armor is so powerful that it was the best equipment I had for over a fourth of the entire game. This feels very much pay-to-win and I greatly dislike seeing things like this in a single-player game.

All in all, I had a great time with The First Berserker: Khazan. As a person with a long list of Soulsbornes and soulslikes under my belt, I found the game challenging and fun. The level design is creative and promotes exploration and the game does a good job of introducing new enemies even into the game's final act. And while I hated how the super bosses slammed the breaks on the game each time they appeared, this is more a testament to how invested I was in the story, world, and characters than the quality of those fights. The game looks great, plays smoothly, and is a solid introduction to the world of Dungeon & Fighter. It doesn't reinvent the wheel, but it's certainly worth taking for a spin.