The First Berserker: Khazan Review – A Brutal, Beautiful, and Familiar Ride

The First Berserker: Khazan Review

If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then The First Berserker: Khazan flatters the hell out of Dark Souls and From Software. But like a Quiet Riot cover band playing Come on Feel the Noize at a different tempo and in a different key, the biggest question is: does it still rock? In the case of The First Berserker: Khazan the answer is yes, yes it does. Especially when it comes to combat and boss fights, the game rocks. Hard.

At this point, calling an action RPG a Soulslike is redundant. Fitting into the FromSoft formula is definitely now the rule and not the exception. The First Berserker: Khazan goes one further and pulls ideas from recent copycats as well. The obvious borrowing includes checkpoints and retrievable “souls” outside the boss door like in Lies of P, a spectral form a bit similar to that in Lords of the Fallenl, or a boss rush structure like Wo Long.  The First Berserker: Khazan also has a few of its own mechanics that will most certainly — and hopefully — find their way into other Soulslikes as well.

Metal as Hell

The First Berserker: Khazan aesthetic and narrative are best described as Gothic metal anime. It’s like the love child of Code Vein and Conan the Barbarian. You play as General Khazan of the Pel Los Empire. Khazan is unfairly accused of treason, tortured and sent through snowy mountains to be exiled. A sudden avalanche buries the party but Khazan is spared, thanks to the intercession of powerful, malevolent demon-like figure. The narrative becomes a dual tale of revenge in both the earthly and supernatural realms. Khazan is the angel of retribution for both.

Khazan’s story is much more explicit than in FromSoft games like Elden Ring. That doesn’t make it — or its cast of characters — necessarily compelling or comprehensible. The quest giver and vendor NPCs are fairly generic, and now and then you’ll meet new ones along the way. I couldn’t tell you most of their names. Eventually, most of them end up in The Crevice. The Crevice is The First Berserker: Khazan’s labyrinthine hub area, poised between the natural and supernatural worlds.

The First Berserker: Khazan’s visual direction is very often fantastic. Not everyone will love a Soulslike with detailed, cel shaded art, but I did. It gives Khazan a look that is unique and it works especially well in boss design and combat effects. Some of the game’s cut scenes went for a more traditional anime approach and felt out of place in the grim dark world.

Clash of Titans

By definition, Soulslikes are derivative. In terms of combat and mechanics, The First Berserker: Khazan’s playlist is familiar. Heavy and light attacks, dodges, parries and perfect paries, stamina management all work as expected. Add to the list bonfire-like checkpoints, lacrima (souls), elemental-based consumables and enemies and levels designed around gauntlets and shortcuts.

Combat in The First Berserker: Khazan circles around three weapon archetypes: dual wield, a heavy great sword and a spear, with multi-faceted skill trees for each. The relative paucity of weapon types is offset by having dozens of variations, each with — sometimes small — stat differences. The idea is that each of the game’s bosses are weak to particular approaches. There is no item requirement for reconfiguring the skill tree, so players can, for example, push skill points into the fast dual wield for one boss, then reset for another enemy. Add to this weapons and armor sets that boost one particular stat and you see where the variety comes from. Additionally, once past the first handful of bosses, players can upgrade weapons and armor and craft consumables, adding more options.

The First Berserker: Khazan is a little underwhelming when it comes to its basic enemies and even elite world enemies. They’re satisfying to fight but never terribly original. However, the game excels in its boss battles. The bosses are typically multi-phase enemies that often have deadly elemental aspects like fire or lightning. Unlike some of FromSoftware’s bosses, they rarely if ever rely on a gimmick. The First Berserker: Khazan rewards players for multiple attempts at a boss by giving them a token amount of lacrima for each failed fight. So, instead of grinding for levels, players can add skill points simply by hitting their head over and over against a boss.

Never Not Fun

Thanks to that reward mechanic, retrievable lacrima and checkpoints outside the boss gate, it was far less frustrating to spend time overcoming a boss. It’s a lesson FromSoft began to learn in Elden Ring, to its advantage. Making players run a progress-blocking BS gauntlet over and over to get to a boss is never a good time. It allows the game to make the bosses themselves more challenging.

Khazan is a single-player game, but like in Elden Ring, there is a summonable NPC ally called a Spirit of Assistance. Calling one requires consumable items gained by repeatedly fighting and defeating a Spirit of Challenge, which also drops loot and lacrima. It’s a smart system because it gives players the opportunity to fight against a variety of weapons, but it also raises their own stats in the process of gaining additional summons.

Although its combat is undeniably punchy, visceral, and rewarding — definitely the most important part of a Soulslike — The First Berserker: Khazan comes up slightly short in a few places. The level designs pay homage to both the best and worst ideas that Miyazaki has brought to the genre. For example, the FromSoft auteur loves poison swamps. Players hate them, so of course Khazan has to have one. Now and then there’s the feeling that The First Berserker: Khazan draws from FromSoft’s playbook a little to literally. Finally, thanks to the focus on a small number of weapons and build differences that will be more subtle than dramatic, The First Berserker: Khazan might lose some steam over repeated playthroughs.

Soulslike Players, Rejoice Once More

For a long time, any game that dared copy FromSoftware came up short. To date, no developer has matched or bested FromSoft in the areas of level or boss design, character progression, or haunting narrative. However, many games are starting to unlock the secrets to FromSoft’s special sauce when it comes to combat, including Khazan.

Derivative though it most certainly is, The First Berserker: Khazan is still incredibly fun to play because combat is so satisfying. The gothic anime visuals look great, and the game manages to sneak a few new and smart mechanics into the formula. The First Berserker: Khazan may be a familiar experience, but it’s probably a must-play for fans of hardcore action games and Soulslikes.

***PC code provided by the publisher for review***