The First Berserker: Khazan Preview: A slightly more forgiving Souls-like clone?

I find it increasingly difficult to get excited about new action-RPG titles. Over the years, we've seen more and more Souls-like clones, and as has been the case with battle royales, roguelikes, and any other design fad, it's reaching a point of no return for me. But that doesn't mean there aren't a few promising upcoming projects to keep an eye out for and Neople's The First Berserker: Khazan seems to be one such example.

For starters, if you've played a Souls-like before, you don't really need to know much more about how this game functions and operates. You play as a warrior-type character that uses powerful weapons and skills to tear through devastating and brutal enemies while working through a level structure that, while offering a few ways to venture off the beaten path to find secrets and alternative opportunities, does have quite a linear setup. The action is quite slow and sluggish and is defined by tight and often quite frustratingly hard dodge and parry mechanics, and the only way to ensure you keep progressing forward and maintain the necessary consumable health potions is to find and interact with glowing red souls that serve the exact same purpose as that of bonfires. The bones of this game are familiar and similar, which is why it's a very good thing that the art direction and story standout in a way that other ARPGs tend to stumble.

The First Berserker: Khazan is part of the wider Dungeon & Fighter franchise except it's set hundreds of years before the narrative that many recognise. It follows Khazan as he is accused of treason and forced into exile following the saving of the Pell Los Empire, and sees him embracing a darkness and using its powers to exact revenge on those that betrayed and looked to defame his legacy. Admittedly, it's quite a rudimentary revenge story powering this core but I will add that this is often more than a lot of ARPG's bring to the table, as this is a genre that is notoriously known for excellent gameplay and mechanics and middling or even nearly non-existent story. Cough, cough... Elden Ring.

As for the art direction, while The First Berserker: Khazan is a very dark and macabre game, the sort of experience you expect of an ARPG, it uses a cel-shaded style that makes it more closely resemble Tales of Arise or a Dragon Quest game. So, while there's a lot, perhaps even too much familiarity at times here, the art style does at least make the game stand out and even wow at times when you reach set piece locations at the top of a snowy mountain overlooking a moonlit valley, for example.

But anyway, back to the combat and action, the meat on the bones of this dish. From what I got to test at Gamescom it seemed as though while this game is demanding it isn't as punishing and cruel as some of its competitors. The hack and slash action is just responsive enough to not feel frustratingly hard to master and the enemy variety and level design is offered up in such a way that you can overcome and even avoid minor challenges between 'bonfires' without too much hassle. The bosses and larger enemies will still prove a big task to overcome, but they are manageable even after only a brief taste of the combat and mechanics.

The First Berserker: Khazan does buy into a few ARPG trends that to this day annoy me a tad. You still find and gather all manner of weird and mostly unexplained resources and materials. You still have to do the sad and demoralising walk back to where you died to reclaim your 'not-souls-but-souls' currency, something which is amplified if you fall to your death and aren't slain in glorious combat. And - I'm truly, truly hoping this was just part of the demo I tested and not something that will creep into the main build - whenever you enter the pause menu, the game doesn't pause... It just brings up the menu UI while action continues to unfold behind it. Essentially, if you find that the ARPG category has been in need of an evolution or a change, The First Berserker: Khazan is not the game to achieve such a feat.

But it's difficult to knock a game because of the faults (or predictability) of the genre. The sins of the father and all that jazz... As far as an ARPG goes, The First Berserker: Khazan seems to tick all the right boxes, and in a way that will probably be more appealing to the masses and even to those that still feel that Elden Ring and its Shadow of the Erdtree expansion went a step too far on the difficulty scale. Time will tell where this game fits in the category, but with launch planned for early 2025, we're already counting down the days to getting our hands on the game in its entirety.