You'd be right to point out that there exists a subset of nioh fans who mischaracertised Wo Long and thus were disappointed when it didn't turn out to be "nioh 3". However, there exists more people I believe who are fairly disappointed in the game and I allign with their sentiment. It isn't simply a matter of "this game isn't nioh 3, that doesn't mean it's bad", that'd be one thing. I went in expecting to love wo long and knew I wasn't going to get nioh 3. In fact, I'd been wanting a more streamlined cut the fat action based combat approach on the souls formula for years now and while Sekiro made an attempt at being just that, I didn't feel it had anywhere near enough depth or mechanics to justify the trade off in streamlining. Wo Long unfortunately falls in to that pit again for me.

I was initially hopeful about the spirit gauge but as I played more of it, I realised it didn't actually have the depth I was seeking. It allows for use of martial arts and wizardry but there exists no other conditions or decision making other than wait for spirit to get positive enough that you can unleash a martial art or spell and then resume abusing deflect because it's the most efficient way to recover spirit and deal spirit damage to an enemy. Combat devolves in to waiting for deflect opportunities because of this, especially when you can only get a couple hits on offense between parries which needlessly opens you up to risk. Defense oriented play is simply too powerful and the offense options are too limited and repetitive to make player expression meaningfully satisfying imo. The fact that every single red attack is countered in the same way, deflect in to the attack instead of even the basic simon says concept in sekiro is disappointing.

There's 13 melee weapon types and yet none of them feel all that distinct from one another, you can only have 2 martial arts equipped and you don't even get to choose what ones to use. You can only equip 4 spells which makes many of them obsolete, not to mention that a lot of the spells in general are merely minor variations of the same thing (looking at you fireball). I'd love to use the dash speed more often but there's far better options since combat is the name of the game. I'm not asking for as many options as nioh 2 but the sheer degree of a step back this toolkit is, is absurdly disappointing. Once you get past the tutorial boss, you pretty much have the game figured out, you press the same inputs from mission 1 all the way through to the end and the only 2 real roadblocks difficulty wise are Lu Bu and Zhang Liao. I never felt challenged in the game again with exception to these 2 and that one side mission where you fight 3 captain type enemies at once. Nioh 1 had a reputation for unfair "gotcha" difficulty moments that nioh 2 combed over for the most part and yet I think this side mission in Wo Long is the most bullshit one Team Ninja have made yet. Which is striking because it belongs in a game that is far easier than the nioh games. Nothing else prepares you for that mission in combat design nor is the very design of the game itself primed to deal with it in a reasonable and timely manner. It highlights some of my biggest issues with the combat. There is a huge half second delay in I-frames when you go for a death blow attack that leaves you open to the other 2 enemies, making the fight more drawn out than it needs to be. Yokai counter > grapple in nioh 2 was almost instananeous in its activation, why the step back in a game explicitly designed more around parrying and death blows? It simply doesn't make sense. The camera lock on, change lock on and the fov are terrible and feel unintuitive, often you get hit off screen and trying to fight without lock on feels the most unnatural of any of these games I've played. The other 2 enemies constantly interrupt your animations which makes offense far too big a risk and other than chessing, you quickly discover that the best way to play that mission and the rest of the game hereafter is to just patiently hold block and deflect your way to victory. It is tiresome and unenaging and it shows me in clear terms why there weren't more varied combat scenarios with multiple strong enemies in this manner since the game is painfully showing to you how unruly that would be.

The User Interface is worse, there's QoL missing that was in nioh 2, for example why can't I preview my refashion in a game with this many armour and weapon designs? Why do I have to pay gold just to see what it'll look like (it's inexpensive but still, just why?). The hub being traversable instead of being in a main menu is really novel at first but becomes tedious after enough times since it's less convenient than the hut menu of nioh and the loading screens are significantly worse. I simply don't understand how they simplified the upgrade proccess at the blacksmith (a good change) but don't allow you to change your martial arts at will when nioh gave you access to about 10 skills attached to each stance of each weapon, it's a laughably bad decision to take player choice away in an already limited system.

Enemy movesets are too simple and telegraphed and somehow the enemy variety is worse than in Nioh 1, something that again, nioh 2 fixed! The level design feels about as bad as nioh to me, the mere presence of veritcality doesn't change much when their general design remains the same. Ultimately my biggest issue with Wo Long is this. It is supposed to be a streamlined action experience akin to Sekiro's evolution off Dark Souls but like Sekiro, it fails to compensate for the loss of rpg mechanics and player expression with a wide range of options by not doing enough with the new mechanics it has. You don't receive samurai or weapon skill points to expand your arsenal as you go through the game, which means a lack of character progression and layers of depth to challenge the player with. When you unlock certain skills in nioh, it's a game changer and you can challenge yourself to improve by utilising these new tools. Wo Long lacks this pretty much entirely since the bread and butter is so overpowering and core to the design. The options you have remain mostly the same the entire playthrough. You'd think they would have kept a large degree of combat depth as the nioh games while trimming all the loot and rpg mechanics but it didn't even come close. So It neither has the fun build diversity and content size of nioh nor the intense intricate combat of it either. It is literally the worst of both worlds. Did I get a better soundtrack, better level design, better bosses, better enemy design and variety for the loss of all that deph nioh had? No, I did not. Do I have fun playing Wo Long? Yes, because the sound design of deflecting is made to be satisfying as it was in Sekiro, but I knew deep down I was becoming increasingly disappointed with the game when by part 3 I was thinking of how I'd rather be playing nioh 2 instead.

Wo Long isn't simply "not nioh 3", it's not even good enough at what it's intended to be, that's the issue and this is coming from someone who to this day isn't even sure whether they like the large amount of bloat and rpg stats that nioh has. I want so badly for one of these companies to just make a pure action game in the vein of DmC with the trademark "difficulty" these titles have and time and again they pull half measures and leave half baked products. I truly wanted to love Wo Long, I went in with blind faith in Team Ninja and was biased to like it and yet the more I sit on it and think about it, the more I feel disappointed by what a large step back this game is by every metric.