The First Berserker: Khazan (2025)

Khazan is a game.

It's certainly not a souls-like and makes basically no effort to be despite its marketing (lacking the iconic elements such as an interconnected world, rich but passive lore delivery, emphasis on exploration and RPG build and character options, obscure quest design, memorable and iconic music and locations, etc.).

I think it could be best described as a puerile version of Nioh; it speeds up (at times) and dumbs down the combat by expanding boss movesets but removing the players, and emulates the otherwise unimaginative level designs, kodomas and loot systems of Nioh without the historically grounded narrative of the Nioh titles, with the dreadful addition of inescapable, constant colored volumetric haze and a film grain like effect on all of its de-saturated environments.

It's also not DMC or Ninja Gaiden. It has the flash, but not the pacing, combos, depth or player expression, of true action game titles. One of the truly shocking revelations about this game's boss designs is how much down-time there is in its otherwise great fights. The fights are long, and feel long, because the devs gave the player some really overpowered tools, defensive options and mobility, so the difficulty comes from endurance most of the time.

• As a side note, this could have been improved easily. Having chip damage through block, tightening the incredibly charitable parry window and reducing the dodge distance and i frames, along with combining reflection and counter and putting a heavy spirit cost (2 or 3) on reflection, would have made the bosses harder, requiring more precise mechanical execution, without the need for tediously long marathon fights where you are constantly chasing them around.

To continue, bosses have a ton of health but do little damage. Bosses dash, teleport or float away after combos, or have a massive, delayed AOE to discourage immediate counter-attacks. Fights last much longer than most souls games and part of that is because the game is designed to stall out fights from a design level. It's very noticeable due the generally faster speed of combat in the game. I just don't gel with this philosophy; I'd much rather many attempts at a more lethal, unforgiving boss than the bizarre endurance challenges that remind of an MMO raid I often encountered in this game.

Almost all of it's boss encounters really lean on a you-go-I-go design that feels really out-dated given the tremendous mobility tools and flashy animations in the game. Basically every boss has a common combo that, if you perfect parry the last attack, breaks their stance temporarily so you can unload a bunch of burst damage. This, along with the extreme devaluation of basic attacks and charge attacks, which are replaced entirely with one of two flashier combo skills almost immediately, means its almost never worth it to try and steal some damage by poking in between enemy combos. Just sit on your stamina so you can spam your damage combo during the frequent poise break chainstuns. Very reactive gameplay which worked for a game like lies of P (with its harsh stamina management, need for weapon repair, chip damage though blocking, slower movements and longer attack commits) but feels bizarrely frustrating with Khazan which appears to play faster and flashier. What's the point of zooming around with flashy attacks if you have to constantly sit around waiting for the bosses to float back into range, or stop guarding, begin their next combo, or whatever. Those precious seconds of reprieve you need to drink a mana flask, or resummon, or recast buffs, repair your weapon, etc. make sense in slower paced souls games but here it just frustratingly boring.

This game is also desperately missing the spacing and relative positioning of Nioh, but that's an entire separate discussion that effects any game with a dedicated parry playstyle. The dodge roll will always end up feeling like just a different form of parry, which happens in this game as well with bosses sliding and teleporting to always be a threat with their attacks. Where you dodge doesn't tend to matter, only when, due the tracking necessary to legitimize and force parrying.

I don't think much needs to be said about how unimpressive the story, music, world-building, level design, etc. of the game; basically all aspects of the game except great boss design range from sub-par to genuinely bad, something that is easier to excuse for indie devs and smaller projects but harder to overlook given the publisher of Khazan and apparent budget. The voice acting seems pretty good, but pairing quality voice acting with boring and unremarkable characters tends to sour both. The game also feels a bit unfinished; the repeated bosses, the inclusion of weapon scaling that doesn't matter and the copy/pasted demon-souls-hub base that has many bizarrely empty sections all speak to this.

I think a true TLDR is that this game has good bosses, and little else. I would argue it truly showcases to the souls-community that challenging bosses are not the most important element of souls-like games. Devoid of narrative meaning and creativity, and missing the beautiful arenas, art design and score we've been spoiled with by other developers, complicated bosses with diverse movesets but no proverbial soul just don't fulfill the same experience.