Team Ninja Explains Why Wo Long Has Only One Difficulty Level, Says It’s Not an Easy Game

wo long fallen dynasty update 1.03

If you’re looking to play Team Ninja’s upcoming action game Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty on “easy” mode, that’s not an option, as the game only has one difficulty level, and Team Ninja explains why.

This was revealed by Producer Masaaki Yamagiwa  in an interview with MP1st (via NextGen Player who conducted the interview at TGS 2022).

MP1st: A lot of fans of Souls-like experiences enjoy them for their high difficulty – they love the challenge and the satisfaction we get from beating a tough stage or boss. But there are also gamers who are interested in playing, but feel these games are too hard. Are there things the team is looking at, that don’t necessarily make the game more easier, but more accessible? For example, the way FromSoftware approached Elden Ring – it’s a very tough game, but they added new mechanics like calling spirit helpers that made it more “approachable” for new players.

Yamagiwa-san: We’re thinking it’s ‘good’ to have one set difficulty so that everyone has the same experience of overcoming a really intense obstacle and they all have that feeling of achievement, like I did it. But the caveat there is giving players all different ways that they can do that. So you could talk to your friends and say hey I beat this boss and this is how I did it, you want to talk to people and go online because you really want to have communication with them. It’s really important to keep the challenge the same and giving players different ways to overcome it. Wo Long is not an easy game by any means but we’re working to give players as much freedom and agency to play it as they want, overcome obstacles in their own way. One thing that comes to mind is the morale system. You have a morale rank and as you keep increasing it you get stronger and you can use that to choose which enemies to fight, or raise it up so you can take on a harder enemy and maybe they’ll be a little bit easier now that you’re stronger. You can also level up your character like a traditional action RPG and get stronger that way. There’s multiplayer as well, so you can get online with your friends, two other people so a total of three online and then take on bosses as a group. We’re really giving players their own ways to be able to tackle all these things, that’s really important to Wo Long’s game design.

If you’re interested just how hard Wo Long is, you can do so — provided you have a PS5 or Xbox Series X|S — as a demo has been released.

Wo Long Fallen Dynasty is scheduled for release in 2023 for the PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S and PC. 

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