The First Berserker: Khazan is an action game in the style of Nioh. That’s an important distinction because, while it does have all the classic elements of Souls-like design, Khazan follows closely in the footsteps of Team Ninja’s work. It has a level-based structure instead of a continuous world. Enemy stamina is visible under their health and you deal damage to that just as much as their actual health. There are skill trees for each weapon that open up new attacks and combos. It even has the same awful loot system!
The Nioh inspiration is notable and even welcome because the specific take on the Souls formula Team Ninja created hasn’t been explored much outside their studio. Most games in this space draw from From Software heavily. Even with whatever tweaks they make to set themselves apart, the influence tends to borrow from From Software more often than not. The First Berserker: Khazan is an uncommon case of a studio building off a different branch of the Souls lineage (at least on a big-budget scale). It’s good to see! Team Ninja’s been rapidly iterating on their own formula for a while, as seen in the evolution from Nioh to Stranger of Paradise to Wo Long, each game building off each other to refine their formula further and further. Khazan isn’t iterating on that formula – it’s merely playing in the same space – but to see another studio taking inspiration from those games is a nice change of pace.
Khazan leans harder into the action-side of its design, de-emphasizing the RPG elements to the point of feeling vestigial. You’re not crafting complex character builds but merely pumping points into your five stats as needed to get stronger. Focusing on certain stats may give you a slight boost to your attack power per level depending on your weapon of choice, but going all in on any one stat at the cost of others doesn’t provide any tangible benefits. I ended up being pretty broad with how I spent my levels eventually and it ultimately didn’t change much if anything compared to when I focused on those my weapon (a spear) scaled best with. It’s not like Nioh where you are encouraged to specialize to some degree since it has so many more stats and weapons available.
The greater focus on action pays off. Combat in The First Berserker feels great. It is fast and stylish, striking a fine balance between being technical and simple. This leads to fights that are high on spectacle, allowing you to pull off sick combos and decimate foes with style while still keeping the execution required simple. Perfect guards are the most technical thing Khazan asks of you, but the window is generous enough to make it doable without feeling overly punishing. It’s not explicitly necessary, per se – you can still get through fights by just dodging and blocking as normal – but the deflections do deal significant stamina damage to your opponent at the cost of no stamina on your part.
The game’s use of stamina works for how it intentionally limits your offense. Khazan is a game that encourages you to go all-out whenever the chance presents itself as wearing the opponent down is consistently one of the strongest options available. Limiting that potential by adding a stamina meter forces a degree of consideration regarding how far to push lest you end up unable to dodge at a critical moment, let alone enough to block without being left wide open until you’ve regained enough stamina to move again. Classic Souls-like design, sure, but it is also to prevent you from snowballing the opponent too hard, something you can do very easily if given the chance.
Most fights come down to finding those moments where you can swing momentum in your favor and maintain it for as long as possible. Some make this easy by forcing them to block and wearing down their stamina. A lot of enemies can be beaten this way once you have enough stamina to maintain constant pressure. Nioh did something similar with its ki pulse system that allowed you to instantly recover a certain portion of stamina instantly, but Khazan forces you to be constantly aware of your stamina instead in classic Souls-like fashion. This dynamic isn’t unheard of – many games in this genre have taken cracks at it following Bloodborne – but Khazan’s particular approach works because it blends the particulars well to create a more rushdown style of play that suits the game’s style.
Action games have been converging on a focus on parries and deflections in recent years (Sekiro casts a large shadow), such that it starts to feel stale unless done really well. Khazan finds a nice balance by making deflections merely a tool in your arsenal than the core component, instead focusing on raw offense and how that interacts with the restrictions of a stamina meter. It’s a thrilling game, especially during boss battles where you’re pushed to really make the most of the mechanics.
One of Khazan’s flaws, however, much like Nioh, is that it is simply too long. For as great as the action is, levels often overstay their welcome. A main mission generally takes a little over or under an hour on average. Khazan does an admirable job of keeping each level fresh with plenty of enemy variety and good encounter design generally, but they quickly overstay their welcome. As much as I enjoy playing Khazan, fatigue became a regular companion as the game went on. It’s the same problem facing every modern game made at a certain scale. No matter how good everything is, how much fun it is to play, it’s hard to keep momentum up after a certain point. Inertia can only carry you so long.
Callum Rakestraw is the Reviews Editor at Entertainum. You can find him on Bluesky, Mastodon, and his blog.
