Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty Complete Edition review for PC, Xbox, PlayStation

It’s a sign of how packed last year was that a game like Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty was basically forgotten by the end of the year. It got decent reviews, but it was pretty much absent from any GOTY discussions. Now that the game has returned as Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty Complete Edition, is it worth revisiting it and maybe giving it some more praise?

It depends. If you missed it last year – and particularly if you missed it as a PC gamer, for reasons I’ll get into in a bit – then it’s absolutely worth checking out. Tyler covered the game on its initial release, and even if he had some couched and qualified praise, I think it’s still worth playing if you’re fond of games like Nioh and Sekiro and somehow missed this one. Wo Long may have received some criticism for not quite reaching the highs of those games, but at the same time, if you’re fond of parrying and deflecting attacks, this game gives you ample opportunity to do that – along with a host of fun magical attacks, as well as a very satisfying sneak attack from above.

I’ll also note that even if you’re terrible at Souls-like games (which I very clearly am), Wo Long still isn’t a game you should dismiss out of hand. It’s built around a morale system that enables dynamic difficulty, which means that the better you are, the tougher it gets – and the more you die, the more it will try to adjust down a little. I’m not saying it’s easy (definitely not saying that given how Souls-like fans act at the very idea of a game going easy on you), and I still died constantly, but by tying your progress to banners raised in each zone, Wo Long makes progressing and improving and learning wholly doable.

This Complete Edition is also worthwhile if you’re after all the DLC that’s been released over the last 11 months. Admittedly, the three DLC packs – Upheaval in Jingxiang, Battle of Zhongyuan, and Conqueror of Jiangdong – aren’t super-long, nor do they break any new ground, but if you played the base game and want another 5-10 hours of the game, you get that here.

The biggest reason to check out Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty Complete Edition, though, is if you were put off by the horror stories about the game’s performance on PC. If I’m being honest, that insane amount of negativity was kind of what drew me to this version of the game – seeing that even after more than 18,000 reviews on Steam, the game was still getting ripped to shreds. I saw those reviews and I saw that the game was Steam Deck verified, and I suddenly wanted to see for myself how those two things could be compatible with each other.

With the caveat that I played the game on the ROG Ally rather than the Steam Deck…Wo Long on PC seems to be completely fine? True, I turned down the graphics settings, but save for a brief stutter during a cutscene or two, I never really ran into issues. Given how quickly this game can move, you’d think there’d be some issues if PC performance were still as abysmal as it was last year, but generally speaking, all that seems to have been addressed. What’s more, even on lower settings, the game still looked fairly nice on the Ally, which seems like a good argument for PC gamers to finally give the game a chance.

Does this mean you need to double-dip on the game if you played it a year and forgot about it? Probably not. But if you’re after a fun Souls-like and missed it last time around – especially on PC! – Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty Complete Edition gives you a chance to rectify that.

Koei Tecmo provided us with a Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty Complete Edition PC code for review purposes.