die 20+ times to boss, manage to finally defeat boss with 5% hp left, cutscene plays and the boss gets angry, begin phase 2 with full health bar... ah shit, here we go again.. 10/10

I wish I liked this gamed, it has a lot going for it. I think the vast majority of people that enjoyed Nioh will feel right at home with this game. But for me, the further I made it through this game, the more I felt annoyed rather than challenged. I loved the game all the way up through the 1st main area (first act or whatever it's called), but it fell off hard after that. The game moves from having engaging fights with well crafted enemies to all the types of difficulty I do not find fun in games like these. The combat is great, the graphics and performance are amazing, but this game does more to frustrate you than challenge you. Examples are: Enemies hidden around corners constantly or obscured from vision Invisible enemies that you can only see foot prints, that then become visible right before command grab Enemies disguised as non combatants that will attack, or sometimes command grab you Enemies disguised as items that grab and throw you off ledges Enemies that fly out of range shooting crap at you, that if grabbed, will throw you off a ledge Treasure chests that explode while looting Bats placed solely to knock you off ledges or high beams you're walking across Rivers of poison or some other BS you have to wade through afflicting you enemies that leave behind self guided missiles once they die enemies leaving pools of acid type shit around after dying Battle constantly fought on ledges, or on beams you're walking across Holes that open up in the floor unexpectedly for you to fall to your death snipers inconveniently located in most fights to pepper you while you try to fight Water that kills you if past your knees The list goes on and on.. I wouldn't mind if these situations popped up every once in a while like most games in this genre, however this game seems to take all that to a new level, and then some. The amount of times the above type situations come into play become more and more frequent the further into the game you get. The game more often seems to seek anxiety engaging moments rather than engaging combat, at least for me. Here is the progression of the game: 1st act, fight all new types of enemies and have engaging boss fights. 2nd act, reuse all enemies from 1st act, except put the fights on a ledge, and put a few snipers on other side of ledge to pepper you while fighting a dude trying to knock you off, keeping you from engaging snipers. Then after fight, place a few spots on the ground that will break if you walk on them so they can do it all over again. 3rd act. more of the same, but some great boss fights. That being said, the game has a lot of positive things to mention that other reviews will praise the game for I'm sure, and I likely agree with a lot of it. I think I am likely in the minority when I say this game just wasn't for me, even though I do enjoy similar games. I would suggest picking up the demo and if you like it, maybe you won't have the same frustrations I did as the game goes on.

big respect to this game for including easy mode so losers like me can play

Just like many others have pointed out: the first half is kinda fun, but the second half is straight-up dog poopoo. I get that the game is supposed to be hard, and I’m up for a challenge — but there’s a difference between fair difficulty and an absurd level of cuckold masochism where you just suffer until the boss decides to let you chip away 0.01% of its HP. The endless invincibility phases and magic spam aren’t fun. Imagine me, running a slow greatsword parry build, unable to parry most attacks because they still apply debuffs even when perfectly blocked — despite resist buffs. And even when I do parry everything, I can’t punish the boss because mid-combo, it goes "Nah, I’m out 🤙", instantly regens all its stamina, and teleports across the arena to spam more nonsense. Sometimes bosses ignore reflected brutal attacks; other times, I stunlock them to death from full HP. Huh? Every single boss in the second half leaves me exhausted and disappointed. A few are genuinely cool and fun, but that’s it. Smaller bosses have weird telegraphing, especially when they attack in erratic patterns, feint, or delay strikes awkwardly. Oh, and the crafting system sucks huge ass. You grind bosses for set parts or materials, only to realize you can’t upgrade their rarity. So, you either re-grind or randomly stumble on the full set lying around (I did both). Or maybe you hunt down dozens of jarlings — except that doesn’t help either. Most side quests are just copy-pasted from main locations and bosses. I can live with that — it’s better than nothing — but it’s worth mentioning. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Not being able to fast-travel between save points is annoying too. I really wanted to like this game and give it a positive review. It’s a rare example of a good parry-focused game (instead of rolling around like a clown), but I just couldn’t. I grew tired of grinding every boss and enduring their nonsense, so I had to drop it at one of the endgame bosses. And that honestly breaks my heart.

Hard as balls, and almost as hard as me when i finally beat that boss after 20 attempts. Didn't expect this to be so good.

i literally just rolled credits. this is the hardest game ive ever played. i will now proceed to uninstall and never touch it again so help me God. this game ruined my life. i was seeing and hearing things in my sleep. i am victory. (amazing game)

can't pause a single player game, because f** you, you paid 80 dollars for a game and if your controller disconnects you have to redo a long ass difficult boss fight when you were finally about to beat a boss after 100 attempts, apparently pausing a game is too advanced of a technology in 2025

another 50 bucks flushed down the shitter...makes it seem like the game is going to be easy, then the 3rd boss suddenly has 2 iterations where it constantly switches up fast a slow attacks in the same arc of attacks...even on EASY MODE the boss "Viper" is stupid hard...they need to fix this game and MAYBE, JUST MAYBE ill give it a thumbs up.. ALSO, if you switch to easy mode, you cant go back to normal mode...which is stupid af...will they change that?? hell no, because the ppl they want playing this are for hardcore veterans of SOULS LIKE games (not "action" games like they say)...THIS IS A SOULS LIKE GAME, and while yes, it has some features that make it easier than a standard souls like, this means the casual gamers cant just enjoy the game without ripping out their hair and having stress attacks (same with all other souls like games) how about make it FOR EVERYONE, and if you still want a challenge HAVE THAT, but give the casual gamer a fkin chance once in a while

Hard nope, refunded after 32mins, combat is absolutely flawed and needs to be redesigned. Playing Darksouls blindfolded would be more fair in terms of combat. I get my money back and free points to spend, thanks.

I defended their product against the comments from pirates who are furious about Denuvo and are insulting everyone around them. I wrote one comment and got banned for a month... for defending the game against piracy. This is going too far. The game could be the best in the world, but with behavior like this towards honest players—who not only buy the game in the most expensive edition during pre-order but also defend their product despite the publisher's terrible reputation—I won't forgive it. For behavior like this, an immediate negative review is deserved. You defend thieves who insult your product just because they can't pirate it? I hope someone pirates your product soon. You deserve it. No regards.

If you like Dark Souls, Sekiro, Wukong, God of War, etc, you will like this game.

Purchases the deluxe edition and am constantly getting kicked out with a black screen when launching. Been trying for 7 hours... Reinstalled numerous times, downloaded newest driver, did some experimenting. Still nothing.

Shitty game difficulty needs to be turned down.

As a 50+ year old father with diminishing hand-eye coordination and limited playing time...thank you so much for easy mode. Fun game!

Overall the developers deserve praise for putting out a good game with excellent combat and pretty good controls--a game that works really well on day 1, which is not the norm these days. The graphics, setting and mood set the stage for a revenge tale with a twist and I enjoyed the look and feel of Khazan a lot. The stark difficulty between the levels and the bosses, especially a number of bosses towards the endgame made me loose enjoyment in the game immensely. This, combined with small things that made me feel like the developers were intentionally trying to frustrate and anger the player just made me lose interest. After a while, I never looked forward to the boss fights because I knew they would take a lot of time due to their huge health pools, healing both of HP and stamina, and mage fights where they would teleport to the other side of the arena on a whim. I also felt like the frequent $%&t talking on the part of bosses and your blade phantom when you die really didn't add to things and felt like extra salt rubbed in when you're on try #20 of a boss. After defeating most of the bosses after Maluca I didn't feel any sense of achievement but more of a feeling of, "I'm glad I get to move on... why am I doing this again"? Many are quick to point out that you can't play this game like a souls game--duh--many of us have beat NG++ playthroughs in Nioh and other difficult action games. We know how to play these games and I can beat a lot of the bosses in less than 2 minutes with unending spear combos and well tweaked combinations of gear. It felt like the developers felt they had something to prove and went all out on the boss difficulty--and for this player, it really affected how fun the game was. Although I never did, a lot of people switched to easy and came to the realization that it only slightly changed the difficulty. A big part of the problem is for many people they get stuck on a boss and you really can't progress until it's over... I love challenging fights but I don't want to have to spend 20 tries memorizing patterns that don't translate to anything else, only to have to memorize more patterns for the next boss and so on. I want to gain skill in fights, not spend time memorizing because there is no way to get past the 1/4 million hit point dragon unless you do. Outside of the boss combat and general combat, there is not a ton to really pull me in to this game--the story is good but not gripping--the level design is only about a 6/10, and the graphics can get overly gray and monotone after a while, lacking the sparkle and grandiosity of other action games. The loot system is heavily influenced by Nioh 2 but lacks the same intricacy and stimulus to keep grinding... overall good, but not phenomenal. Props to the developers for making a game with some awesome combat that blends many different elements and lets the player choose if they will be more parry focused, dodge focused, or even higher risk reward reflection focused. Although there are only 3 weapon types, each one is really flushed out and well thought out--personally I tend to pick 1 weapon for a playthrough anyway so I don't need 400 weapons. You can't have everything in a game but I did get a lot of enjoyment out of Khazan and am glad I bought it... I just wouldn't recommend it to most gamers because of the difficulty. I put almost 60 hours into Khazan and I would say that 50% of it was fighting bosses. In contrast I have 300 hours each into Elden Ring and Nioh 2 plus all their DLC's, and about 80 hours into Lords of the Fallen.

This games difficulty always felt artificial to me. Any time a boss was hard they just had some gimmick that made them difficult to understand. Examples... Maluca why would parrying his 3rd sheathe dash attack make him lose posture. What exactly indicates that will happen if parried? He heals himself seemingly more frequent then other human type bosses with white stamina, and on top of that you can't hit him very consistently if you don't decide after dying many times that you're going to try and parry his dash attacks. Ranguk is the most unnaturally flowing fight i've experienced in this game. one of his hardest hitting moves doesn't have a noticeable wind up. It felt like he would just suddenly teleport into the air and blast me with a flamethrower in 2-3 frames. Other than that the boss was relatively fair i suppose but flowed horribly, and why ruin the boss with a unfairly difficult move like that. Elamein wasn't hard she just has a gimmick that isn't easy to work out. Dodge every thing and pepper her with your quickest attack if she doesn't break posture then dodge away. if she does keep attacking. unfortunately you will probably keep activating her gimmick and having a very hard but fun fight on your hands and suddenly your progression crawls to a halt when her health bar is at about 30%. don't know why the fight changes around that time but it certainly does. Maybe by that point she begins catching you with a block more. honestly that stretch of the game is just very weak boss wise. But these non boss enemies are absurd. UTTERLY ABSURD. The decision to make fully clearing levels damn near mandatory was one of the worst decisions you could have made. Especially when you decide upon consistently annoying enemy placements. Its common place for this game to toss ranged behind a fast moving 3rd tier enemy. Think of 1st tier like hollows in DS. Its constant. getting hit by ranged attacks while you're trying to dodge or parry some other enemy happens THROUGH THE WHOLE GAME! No area is actually varied in enemy types except the spider area because spiders can't carry bows. Good luck just dodging past the first enemy he's still right on top of you no matter how far you ran. Good luck killing the ranged attacker in time. Good luck feeling challenged fairly in this game. every difficulty does not stem from a well designed moveset. It stems from ONE (3rd sheathe attack, Leaping fire shot, Random shield blocks.) move that you can't figure out. This game has malenia disease all over it.

I decided to refund the game. The reason is that I dislike when boss fights are designed more around getting a timing right rather than reaction speed. When a boss engages in a jump attack its natural to think "let me get out of the way of that" so you dodge and run away only for the boss to track you perfectly mid jump. Instead you need to go against the instinctively correct move and just stand still and time your dodge perfectly. This isn't difficult to do once you start looking for the timing. If other people like that type of gameplay that's completely fine, I just don't really enjoy that so its not for me. Other than that it seems like a really cool game though. I like the badass hot MC and the Japanese Voiceover is awesome.

Absolute worse souls-like i ever played in my life. This game contain EVERYTHING that was falsy implied on souls games. There's no sense of adventure. You need to memorize EVERY timing of EVERY combo of EVERY boss - otherwise you wont beat em. EVERY boss has around 10 different combos with delayed swings and timings of attacks. It's not souls-like - this is like playing guitar hero on max difficulty. Ah yeah, and ofc tons of garbage loot and trash modifiers like +5%dmg to your left hand at critical health.

This is unexpectedly smooth as butter. very fluid game play with a lot of different varieties of play styles and builds that are all viable. I'm Bezerking my Khazan rn

Even on easy mode this game is too hard. Ive played and completed lords of the fallen & Elden Ring both of which were difficult but still manageable. I gave up on this game and requested a refund…

The game is extremely difficult making progress in the game nearly impossible because you are sent back to your last spawn point every time you die. I brought these issues up to the Steam Group and requested a refund but they refused to refund me my money because I played more than 2 hours. Well, it takes forever to progress in this game. Have any of you played it? Besides, it's not like I ate half a steak and refused the pay the check. How many games have I bought thru your website Steam? Really?

For those considering the Digital Deluxe or pre-order bonus for the armor and weapon skins, they've locked them behind NG+. You don't even have access to the cosmetics until you've completed the entire game. They're just glorified dust collectors in your inventory. Apparently changing the appearance of your armor and weapon in your initial adventure sounded like too much fun to the developers, so you must finish the entire 50+ hour game before unlocking the ability to change your character appearance. Why? Trying to wrap my head around their thought process almost causes vertigo. This might be the most indefensible and confusing design choice I've seen for any game of this genre. Just let me use the cosmetics that I've paid for, and for pre-ordering the game. It's not complicated.

Normal is definitely not for experienced players, you can check my catalog to see what type of games I play. But this is definitely a hellishly difficult "normal" experience. For whatever it's worth i shouldn't have to feel like I need to switch to easy to get a respectable experience... the elite boss Viper you can't even beat unless you 0 damage it on normal. I'm not a bone head. I'm not a jerk off. And I'm definitely not a sadistic idiot. I'll open this review up to comments.

At current game market game is great if it was released like 8 years ago it would be just average. Technical state of game is overaly good had no technical issues or whatevere. But at the end of day it's nothing but Nioh series ripoff. And of course it has much less of content quality and quanity then Nioh series . My main negative gripe: 1.As always at current state of gaming overpriced real price should be around 40$. 2.Poor balance usual enemies and elites pose no threat at all while bosses only hard due to bloated HP. 3.No creativity devs took DFO franchise and implemented it over Nioh series gameplay and as I mentioned this implementation has less content.