Is Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty's Difficulty a Curve?

I love when video games are opinionated on how I should enjoy them. No concessions to non-intended audiences, not too many control schemes, difficulties and settings, restrictions that force a particular way of play. After all, the things that designers don’t let players do are more important than the things they let them do. It’s definition via negative space, and unless developers are working with AAA budgets, there’s always plenty of negative space.

Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty is a game that lets me know early on how I should treat it. Parries now leave a bad taste in my mouth, unless they’re crafted with Expedition 33 precision, but 3.5 years ago, they were in their prime. There’s just something primal about going Newton’s third law on tough baddies. And there’s a particular early boss fight in the game that doesn’t let me meaningfully cheat my way out as From Software would reliably allow. No, Team Ninja productions are about technical mastery. They want me to nail that timing. That timing is their game.

But once I’m past the boss, there’s a problem. The temporary relief that I’m expected to go through after a difficult fight becomes a permanent exhibition. The game just never gets tough again! When I design games, I naturally think about the steepness of difficulty spikes, so I have to remind myself that what matters even more is not how steep the spike is but how long the relief after it lasts. The relief is in itself a reward, a pacing control mechanism, an interim power fantasy. When I cut it off in time, players subconsciously crave the next challenge. When I don’t, they feel overwhelmed or bored, and I never know which one is worse.

To me, that relief is more or less the whole Fallen Dynasty experience. Even Lu Bu, the one who’s always supposed to be the biggest asshole, requires more of a step up rather than a treacherous climb. It’s not that the game is easy. It’s hard at one very particular thing that it drills in me so early that I feel like a gifted kid who skipped a few years and then repeated a few until everybody caught up. Still, I’d feel worse if Wo Long didn’t teach me to play properly with that early spike. No game is worse than a game that can’t stand up for itself against the player and just lets them mindlessly cut through. XXX, YYY. You know.