The First Berserker: Khazan (2025)

This otherwise promising game has some bewildering design decisions that reflect something more than just organizational incompetence on behalf of the developer and publisher, and are indicative of a long-time issue with the souls-like genre as a whole; the die-hard souls-like community are some of the dumbest, least self-aware consumers in the videogame space and yet companies still try to design their games poorly to accommodate this communities terrible philosophies.

I know its a competitive race to the bottom when it comes to bad fanbases in video games, and there are far more insidious communities, but boy does the souls-like communities most enthusiastic members consistently embarrass themselves (with developers then amplifying this idiocy by accommodating them for.. reasons?).

• This completely single player game (no coop, no temporary PvP multiplayer, no online elements of any kind) does not have a pause button. There is no explanation for this at all.

• This game does not have button remapping, with 2 deeply flawed default control options. They have a dedicated face button solely for critical hit/ripostes, something the industry solved 15 years ago, an impossibly unnecessary and bad design.

• The difficulty mode options are locked behind a boss at the end of the first level of the demo that anyone who needs the easier difficulty will not be able to beat. The devs apparently know how braindead this is as they are allegedly changing this option in the final version, but anyone who was vaguely interested in the game and not a sweat has already been turned away. They presented this terrible demo design decision under the pretense of wanting to force people to experience the developers intended vision first e.g. the same dumb arguments loser souls elitists have been parroting forever to defend poorly designed accessibility in the past, just to make sure you knew this was a deliberately bad developer choice.

There are a lot of people in the souls-like community who derive some element of their identity via gatekeeping others from the genre. They derived enjoyment from overcoming a souls-like challenge, and they unironically believe their achievement is less valuable if other people also enjoy that similar experience. You will see the same tired arguments over and over.

• "Not every game has to be made for everyone"
• "The developers intended artistic experience should be respected, even if it means that experience is inaccessible to a lot of people"
• "This lazy or time-wasting design is actually brilliant friction, which is an essential part of the experience"

Every, and I mean every, enthusiast of the genre knows that every souls game has levers the player can OPT INTO to make the experience more difficult, and potentially more fun or satisfying. You can choose not to level up at all, you can choose a deliberately unoptimized class and build, you can play without companions, you can choose not to parry against Gwyn, you can play no kuro charm, demon bell, no leveling, no tools, no hit. You can play no palico, no AI companions or coop, no armor and keep getting one shot by rathalos fireballs. You can spend 10 hours on RL1, no scadu fragment Messmer. Its literally the players choice to opt into a harder version of the game, A PLAYSTYLE OF THE GAME THE DEVELOPER DID NOT INTEND OR DESIGN FOR.

What players cannot do, and are completely reliant on developers for, is provide accessibility options so the baseline experience is available to as many players as possible. This does not change the intended experience at all. Better companies, who make harder games, like team ninja, have included story and god-modes so that literally anyone can playthrough and beat Ninja Gaiden or rise of the ronin. I guarantee, with 1000% confidence, that path of the ninja in ninja gaiden is exponentially harder than khazan. Beating ninja gaiden 2 on path of the ninja isn't somehow easier or less satisfying because someone with arthritic fingers and a love for ryu hayabusa also got to beat the game on a god-mode difficulty where they can't die.

The people in the Khazan communities out there celebrating no pause and lamenting that they added an 'easy mode' (which still isn't easy enough) as if this is the developers caving and ruining the game, you are the reason why the souls-like genre, one of the best in gaming, is filled with garbage copy cat games that rarely breakthrough to the mainstream or innovate.

Khazan isn't some brutal hardcore challenge that is a return to the core identity of the souls genre. It has a tremendous number of features to baby the player that are completely foreign to the OG design philosophies of the genre; the parry window is hilariously long and overly-charitable, the dodge i-frame and distance are equally overtuned, the default stamina regen is incredibly fast and the game has a number of quality of life features that radically reduce friction (you get exp on failed boss attempts, your exp and currency are decoupled- the most sacred design philosophy of souslikes btw, your skills progression is independent of your EXP, cannot be lost and can be reset at any time, etc).

Its funny how this game gets rid of boss runs, a defining trait of the genre that the souls community adamantly defended to the death as a necessary piece of friction in line with the developers artistic vision, with hardly a whimper, yet accessibility options would somehow be an unforgivable deviation from the core ethos of the genre.

But yea.. congrats.. even though there are a bunch of features to baby players that the same community would have mocked years ago, you can still claim its hardcore and only for true soulslike fans because you can't pause, the controls are jank and a lot of people who'd like to buy and play it won't because the baseline is too difficult. Hooray.