The First Berserker: Khazan is an excellent action-focused Soulslike. You are the great general Khazan, betrayed by your Emperor and left maimed and sent to be executed. A freak avalanche sets you free, and you’re off to the races with a Phantom fusing into your body to heal your wounds. This epic, long, insanely difficult title surprised the hell out of me. Blending some of the most difficult boss fights I’ve ever experienced with a mildly intriguing story, and a damned cool look, Khazan is up there with Lies of P. It may not hit that game’s lofty story heights, but its combat is even more satisfying.
Khazan’s (and my) Backstory
I didn’t beat this game, I got really f’ing close but with only 2 ½ days between getting the code and this embargo, I just couldn’t make it. I put in nearly 40 hours in that time and saw the last fight before running out of time. This game is shockingly large, despite not being “open world” at all. Each level is a mission, and there are 16 main ones in total. Numerous side quests are available as well, with certain tasks being needed for a “true ending”.
The game begins with Khazan imprisoned with his arm tendons severed. An avalanche “saves” him, though the true intention is for the Blade Phantom that caused it to get his body. Things are off in the Netherworld and the Blade Phantom is tasked with fixing it. To do so he and Khazan eventually make a pact, healing Khazan’s body while they work together to fix the world’s issues and get Khazan his revenge.
The story is, fine. There’s nothing wrong with it and the English VO does a solid job. This is a grim, dark, angry world, with misery and death all around. Khazan was the “great general”, suddenly declared a traitor by his King. Throughout the 16 main missions and numerous side quests, you’ll find out what happened, save who you can, and murder the ever-loving shit out of anyone that gets in your way.
Chaotic Combat
Khazan has three weapon types to master: Dual blades, Great Swords, and Spears. I found the Dual-Blades to be my favorite, with their blend of speed, power, and movement. The first thing I would do is change the control scheme to Type B. It moves dodge from A to B and your main attacks to the bumpers. It felt far more comfortable and familiar as a Souls veteran. Your left bumper and b buttons will be getting a ton of workout as perfect parries and dodges are a requirement, not a recommendation.
While this game has all the trappings of a From Software title, it’s far more action-oriented and fast-paced. It’s also, perhaps, the hardest game I’ve ever played. By the end of my playthrough, I gave in and swapped to Easy mode for the last few hours, only to find it marginally less difficult. I haven’t struggled with bosses this much since pre-nerf Lies of P. I don’t mean the public one, a day -1 patch just before launch made that game significantly easier.
Khazan’s combat is a dance of trying to stagger without being staggered. With the dual-blades and spear, you can be lightning quick. As you’d imagine the Greatswords cause the most poise damage but are lumbering in comparison. The game will slowly teach you its systems, like slow walking behind enemies to sneak in a free brutal attack (by pressing X), or how the perfect guard/dodge system works.
All of that is augmented by a decent if familiar gear setup. You’ll have white, blue, purple, and magenta gear items (if there are higher I hadn’t found them before running out of time). You can craft items, level up what you have, reforge them, and more but all of that is tied behind a decent amount of story progression and side missions.
Every mission in The First Berserker is a linear path through a mission with various ways to go. One way finds you things, like the rare but extremely powerful and permanent extra heal. The other way takes you further to the next bonf… blood sword checkpoint. It’s all exceedingly familiar, but so well done that it felt like inspiration instead of theft.
The leveling system in the game is tied to mastery, as you use items you’ll gain skill points. As you kill enemies, you’ll gain Lacrima (aka souls/runes). I had reached the high 90s in my level and could easily run through earlier missions without breaking a sweat as I found the various upgrade items that were hidden throughout them.
I needed to be as powerful as possible to beat the end-of-main mission bosses, as each one was more difficult than the last. I spent upwards of 4 or 5 hours on some of them, but I got stronger as I did because this game is SMRT. As you fight and die to a boss the game will award you with bonus leveling upgrade material for “completing a boss challenge”. This means that you can constantly level up and unlock skill points as you learn the game’s insanely difficult fights.
Most of the side missions end with a re-used boss fight with a different coat of paint. The giant goat man might use lightning attacks instead of fire this time, etc. It’s a smart way to add more content, reusing textures, and mechanics liberally as you constantly reward players with loot, upgrade items, and more story beats.
CHAOS
I cannot talk enough about how good and insanely difficult the game’s boss fights are. Neople found the right balance in the mission structure where I never felt stuck in one until I reached that boss. It could be hard to get from checkpoint to checkpoint and I died a fair amount, it just rarely felt cheap. The bosses though, my lord are they amazing and terrifying.
There are a lot of different status effects you can be hit with or put on your enemies. Finding the right balance of resistance potions and effect-causing throwables was key to beating most of the later bosses I faced. When the water witch gets hit with certain types of damage, she doesn’t like it. Farming up a gear to make a set that could deal with frost attacks took a while but made her fight possible.
I do not recommend doing what I did and trying to beat this game in 2 ½ days. It isn’t the publisher’s fault as I didn’t know who to contact until the very end to get the review code. This is a massive game that I can see taking 40, 50, maybe 60 hours on normal difficulty. Because normal difficulty would be considered above hard for most games. When I tried out an easy, irreversible process, it was still incredibly difficult.
As you progress you’ll get a base where you can set up your gear and empower various parts of your repertoire. In every mission are red floating orbs, activate it and fight a phantom. Defeat them and get some items, including a special orb that lets you summon a friendly phantom to help in boss fights. Without those friendly phantoms, I don’t know how doable this game is for the average player. Even with them, it’s hard to overstate how hard it can be. Those orbs can also be used to empower the friendly phantom, which I highly recommend.
Cel-Shaded Beauty
The First Berserker: Khazan utilizes cel-shading for its character models, and it is a damned good-looking game. Some level designs like the mines are a bit boring, and enemy designs are fairly standard for the genre. The bosses and some of the early and late areas though can be stunning.
The game runs at a 30 or 60 fps target and you can unlock the framerate. It seemed to run well above 60 the majority of the time when I did, and with a VRR-enabled 120hz TV performance was excellent on my Xbox Series X.
The outfits are a bit boring looking early on, for Khazan. He’s beaten up and mostly in rags or bandages. As you get a few hours in you can find and craft some slicker-looking outfits, with some of the later boss-farm-required outfits fitting right in with a Dark Souls Title. This is an anime game though, with Dungeon Fighter Online being full on uWu. Khazan doesn’t go in that direction, but you can tell where the IP originated.
The music is suitably epic, full of choirs and orchestras that swell as you reach the end of each mission. Bosses require strict timing on dodges and parries. The sound effects to indicate what is going on work well so that even when the screen is full of effects I knew what was going on. Hitting 10 or more perfect dodges and/or parries in a row when both the boss and I had no health left, there’s nothing else like it.
As far as bugs go I only had a few crashes while using Quick Resume in offline mode. Speaking of which, as far as I remember this game is only single-player. The summons are just NPC’s and I saw nothing indicating any type of online interactions so I’m not sure why that option is there. The only other gripe I have is how often the camera got me stuck in a corner and I had to rely on said excellent audio to figure out what was going on. Also, there’s no HDR on console which was a bummer, given how colorful this title is.
Wrapping Things Up
The First Berserker: Khazan wears its inspiration on its sleeve and lives up to those past titles. It’s a gorgeous, brutal action-focused Soulslike that brings the DFO universe into an incredibly dark place. At least at launch, this is one of the hardest games I have played recently. I blasted through Elden Ring and its DLC with far less of an issue than I did here. It’s Sekiro levels of ‘git gud’ and god damn if it isn’t fun doing so.
The First Berserker: Khazan is out in early access on March 24th and for all on March 27th, 2025.
Review code provided by the game’s PR Company.
The First Berserker: Khazan
Played on
Xbox Series X
PROS
- Cel-Shaded Prettiness
- Fantastic Music
- Numerous fleshed out systems
- Frenetic Combat
CONS
- Camera gets in the way occasionally
- Predictable story
