The First Berserker: Khazan Is An Exciting First Step For the DFO Extended Universe - Gamescom 2024

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I have a love-hate relationship with souls-like games. I love the gameplay, atmosphere, story, and visual splendor that most games exhibit, but I am nowhere near skilled enough to play them. The First Berserker: Khazan is no exception, and man did I suck at it. However, unlike most souls-likes I played, I felt compelled to keep coming back and trying again without getting frustrated at my lack of ability to kill the enemies. After my time with it at Gamescom, I loved what I played enough to get me to wishlist the game as soon as I left the appointment.

Before coming in, I did have some minor knowledge of the game our main character is coming from: Dungeon Fighter Online (DFO). I am also a sucker for when brands expand their game’s universe lore with different games that explore different stories in the universe with different gameplay than the original games. I was a huge fan of what Riot was doing with League of Legends, which made me sad when they shut down their production studios. Now, it appears NEXON is doing the same thing with DFO, and I want it to succeed.

In The First Berserker: Khazan, the story begins as Khazan is being transported and refuses Ozma, the god of chaos, 's offer to destroy the world. In my demo, I had just gotten up from the fallen-over carriage and grabbed my sword after rejecting Ozma. My goal was to get up and find my way out of the snowy landscape, which I never got to do because I kept dying to the mini-boss, but I still had a ton of fun.

The gameplay feels quite similar to Black Myth: Wukong in many ways. It is a souls-like, where you drop your picked-up experience if you die and have to pick it back up, but it feels more action-oriented instead of dodging and timing attacks. You can still dodge and will need to do so to effectively take care of enemies, but there will be a lot more attacking. The smaller/non-boss enemies tend to be easier to kill, and I wasn’t worried about dying around them, unlike other souls-likes, but the bosses were ones to be careful around.

While I wasn’t great at the game, the combat felt fantastic. It felt faster than other souls-like titles, but still had some weight to it. I enjoyed combining light attacks with heavier ones, which can be charged to do more damage, and breaking the enemy to do massive damage. It feels like a combination of the hack-and-slash combat that defined DFO mixed with more hardcore mechanics that defined games like Dark Souls.

There will be different ways to upgrade and enhance your character. Upgrading stats feels similar to games like Elden Ring, where you upgrade one stat that affects different sub-stats like attack, weight limit, and defense. But further in, you’ll be able to start using different weapon and armor combinations that will change up your play style. I didn’t get to try this out in my demo much, but it is a feature I really look forward to.

Then we had the visuals, which stunned me. They weren’t the more realistic ones in games like Black Myth and Elden Ring, but that gave them more personality and uniqueness. They reminded me of Code Vein but were more mature and evolved in some areas. It makes me look forward to seeing the rest of the settings in the full game and how they will look with this art style.

At the end of the demo, I was leaving and got stopped by the person who set this appointment up to confirm that the game will be getting Steam Deck support as well! He mentioned that testing and work would be starting soon and hopefully be done before release. I am optimistic, though; having a less-detailed souls-like will do wonders for performance. I think The First Berserker: Khazan has what it takes to hit 40 FPS, or maybe even 60 on lower settings.

I can’t wait for Khazan to be released. I enjoyed my time with it and was blown away by the visuals and how much I enjoyed playing the game. I was a bit sad when I had to leave since I had a great time with the game and wanted more to get past where I was, but alas, I had other appointments to attend. Regardless, this is going to be a title that Steam Deck users should watch out for; I know I will be.

The First Berserker: Khazan can be wishlisted now on Steam ahead of its 2025 release. It does have controller support, and will hopefully have some nice minimum specs revealed soon so we can predict how it might perform on the go.

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