YMMV / Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty

• Anti-Climax Boss: The second round against Lu Bu where he's a demon. It's not easy, but compared to the first time, he's a relative pushover; not only are some of his attacks slower and easier to deflect, he also goes down quicker in comparison.
• Breather Boss: Taotie, the boss of the eighth mission, is a horrifying monstrosity that looks like it will take forever to beat. However, it’s size means its attacks are easily telegraphed. Any successful deflection of its attacks will knock off huge chunks of its spirit gauge and it only needs two successful grapples to take it down. It comes back to life one more time after its first form is defeated, but all it needs is one easy deflect and one more grapple to put Taotie down for good.
• Broken Base: The game has garnered divided reactions from existing fans of Team Ninja. Some praise the combat as a fun hybrid of Sekiro and Nioh, enjoying the more streamlined nature of it compared to the latter and saying that's largely up to par with other Team Ninja games. Others deride it as shallow and simplistic compared to Nioh, saying that it relies too much on parrying at the detriment of other defensive options without making it deep enough to warrant it. Then there's the third camp that agrees with a lot of the criticisms of the second, but still feel that it's a fun game in its own right.
• Catharsis Factor: Complaints about its easiness aside, it's easy to be overpowered by Soulslike standards. By reading his attack patterns, you can overpower Yu Ji (both forms) when you fight him after a few deaths. And seeing how much of a despicable, smug bastard he is with a significant amount crimes commited, the lessened difficulty can be excused to deliver beatdown on this monstrous old fart.
• Complacent Gaming Syndrome: A common leveling setup is to have a primary virtue and a second one covering the main virtue's weakness. For example, if Fire is the main virtue, then Earth needs to be the second, as Earth counters against Water, Fire's weakness.
• Complete Monster:
  • Yu Ji, the Taoist in Black, is a wicked sorcerer dedicated to his hunt for immortality. Inspiring the Yellow Turban Rebellion that ravages the countryside and annihilates villages, Yu Ji uses it to harvest Qi from the slaughtered populace to create Elixirs and corrupt the guardian dragon Yinglong into Xielong. Using demons to exacerbate the wars in China and backing Dong Zhuo's bloody campaigns, Yu Ji kidnaps Da Qiao, the wife of Sun Ce to lure in the Sun family heirs while turning Sun Jian into a demon that must be put down by those he loves. Yu Ji later has Sun Ce murdered to increase the bloodshed of the Three Kingdoms' civil war. With his evil soul surviving physical death to possess the Blindfolded Boy, Yu Ji decides to annihilate all that lives so that he can live forever.
  • Dong Zhuo is a would-be tyrant who places the young Emperor under his power before launching a brutal campaign of slaughter and bloodshed. Using demons to make the horrors of war even worse, Dong Zhuo commits one of the most awful crimes of the era in setting the Capital ablaze with countless lives lost and attracting more demons in the process. When cornered, Dong Zhuo takes Diao Chan hostage with intent to turn her into a demon just for a quick Human Shield.
• Demonic Spiders:
  • Early on, Demonized Officers are this. They're durable, hits hard and have a decently long chain of attacks that have varying durations and tempos.
  • The Corpse Demon are considered even worse versions of the Officers, as they have all the damage and durability of the demonized officers, plus an array of fire attacks with some nasty AOE. It's a real mercy that they're generally alone, at least.
  • The Chang Gui, demonized tigers, are rightfully treated as mini-bosses early on due to their speed and strength.
  • Assassins, which are Lightning Bruisers that avert the usual stereotype, that hits hard and are unpredictable in their attacks, making them dangerous in packs. It doesn't help that the first time you run into them, a duo of them ambush you with no warning.
  • Suan Yu are large birds that pack lighting attacks and are incredibly durable. They also love to appear out of nowhere and at just the wrong times simply to make your life that much more difficult. You basically have to stay ultra aggressive against a Suan Yu at all times, lest you get shocked to death. Because they tend to go up into the air a lot, this can cause camera disorientation. The game seems to acknowledge their difficulty, as they rarely appear with other enemies nearby.
  • Huodou, introduced in the Battle of Zhongyuan, are lanky beasts filled with fire or poison that move lightning-fast. Their attacks are fast, frenetic, and they like to jump around often, occasionally trying to surprise you with a fire/poison spitball after that travels very fast, they can be surprisingly durable.
• Difficulty Spike: The first DLC, Battle of Zhongyuan, brings its A-game twofold with the missions themselves introducing some tough boss fights and a new Demonic Spider, the Huodou, as well as the next difficulty of New Game Plus, Path of the Soaring Dragon. For reference, Path of the Crouching Dragon, the game's initial difficulty ends at a recommended Level of 100, with the next difficulty, Rising Dragon, stopping at the initial game's level cap, 150. Soaring Dragon? That ends at a recommended level of 300. Bosses gain even more buffs and morale over players' baseline Fortitude, and players will be forced to hunt some dangerous minibosses far out of their morale to earn some extra Fortitude. Team Ninja expects players to memorize these bosses' attacks inside out or you'll likely die even at full health. Even if you do survive, getting hit by Critical Blows on Soaring and beyond will temporarily sap the player's Fortitude until they either wait out the debuff or land a Fatal Strike themselves. None of this is even getting into the fights in the DLC itself. Conqueror of Jiangdong escalates even further with its boss fights.
• Game-Breaker:
  • Under the right circumstances, Barbed Nightmare, a Wood Phase spell, can heal the caster a lot, saving them dragon cure pots when used on mobs. While its single target damage and heal aren't great, the fact that it can heal and is one of the only spells that can do so while damaging mobs can make this a good spell for Wood builds.
  • Engulfing Inferno, a Fire phase spell. It hits hard, can be casted really quickly and does decent AOE damage While it does come out slowly, it stacks with repeated casts, making this a go-to spell on a downed enemy.
  • Imposing Slab, an Earth Phase spell. It uses the same animation as Engulfing Inferno but can be obtained during the early parts of the game. What puts it here, is that it deals decent damage for what should be a defensive spell on enemy contact.
  • Venom Snare, a Metal phase spell, is the defacto poison spell, as it has good tracking and does solid damage over time on top of its poison effect.
  • Ominous Chill, a Water Phase spell. While not as fast as Engulfing Inferno as well as being slightly more expensive, it compensates for it with its superior AOE damage against larger foes.
  • Thunderous Impact, the unique Martial Art for Guding Blade. It deals a ludicrous amount of spirit damage (to the point that just one or two uses of it is often enough to knock an enemy off balance for a Fatal Strike) combined with much better tracking than most other Martial Arts.
  • Soaring Phoenix, the unique Martial Art for Azure Dragon Crescent Glaive. With a good positive spirit, its essentially a spammable attack that does great damage and has little cooldown.
• Goddamned Bats:
  • The Huo Shu are small fire rats that may remind some people of their icy counterparts in Dark Souls II. Fortunately, this is not the case as they are not lethal to the touch and are even more fragile. Even the bigger versions are only slightly more durable. Just run away after you kill them if they were on fire, as they'll do an explosion afterwards.
  • Bronze Soldiers. While slow and weak to Wood phase spells and critical blows, they can take forever to kill without them, as you will deal chip damage at best otherwise.
  • Warlocks are long ranged magic users with far better eyesight than every other enemy in the game. While they go down easily with an arrow to the head, they make focusing on stealth much more tedious with them firing magic at you from a full screen away.
• Goddamned Boss:
  • Zhang Bao teleports everywhere and forces you to constantly chase him around. What puts him here is that he throws about one or two attacks before doing this again, making him more annoying and unpredictable than difficult.
  • Zhang Rang abuses the hell out of Me's a Crowd. When you're taking care of one clone, the other clones will often gang up on or disturb you from places not caught in the camera. The lock on feature will also home-in to the real Zhang Rang first after you kill a clone. And the real Zhang Rang can even deal massive damage to the point of one-hit kill if you somehow get close to him. And taking out all of his clones will make Zhang Rang unlock more powerful attacks temporarily before he re-summons them with better AI. He's more manageable if you keep some clones alive, but you need to get used to the annoyingness of his clones.
• Good Bad Bugs: The "Fate of the Entertainer" Side Mission had a Shitieshou right next to a Battle Flag that would reset itself after resting at the flag even if players had already fed it an item, allowing players to quickly and easily reroll powerful accessories on New Game Plus. This was later patched away in Version 1.04.
• It's Easy, So It Sucks!: The game can hardly be called easy from a wider perspective, but a common complaint from seasoned action game players is just how much the Morale and Fortitude system can snowball a player into a force of nature. On paper, Morale exists to incentivize exploration for Battle and Marking Flags, while guiding the player around certain higher ranked encounters and creating a layer of accessibility that Nioh may have lacked. By countering enemies' Critical Blows and avoiding death, it is not uncommon for a player to end up +8 ranks above the enemies around them and their Fortitude rank until they cap at rank 25 even without killing the same enemies repeatedly, at which point only intentional recklessness could kill them before reaching a boss. By default, the main bosses of Main Battlefields match the maximum Fortitude rank of the player if they find every flag, so players who are able to sweep battlefields without dying or resting won't have to backtrack through enemies, but a player who is really struggling and realizes they need to double back to hunt for that last hidden Marking Flag will have to avoid getting killed on the way.
• Moral Event Horizon:
  • Yu Ji had already established himself as a villain, but it's when he turns Sun Jian into a demon for refusing to obey the former’s demands, then taunts him and the Sun family for refusing that cements him as pure evil. It then becomes personal for Sun Ce and Sun Quan.
  • Yuan Shao crosses this the moment he turns Liu Bei into a demon.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • Common Martial Arts cannot be changed on weapons, meaning if they aren't the desired combination, it forces one to grind for one that is. This especially hurts for weapons that belong to a boss who's not easy to get to in the first place.
  • Like Nioh, finishing the story unlocks a new equipment rarity. Unlike Divine equipment in Nioh, 5-star equipment is extremely scarce and much rarer, even on Path of the Rising Dragon. Furthermore, while 5-star and even 4-star gear can come with Grace sets like Nioh, it is also not guaranteed either. All of this comes to a head because there is no equipment crafting system, so completing one of these Grace sets will take a great amount of time. The game is supposed to be more streamlined than Nioh, but offers many of the same customization options while taking out many of the avenues for reaching those options.
  • The game's loot system in general has attracted considerable criticism. Instead of having a loot system similar to what was done in Nioh, the game opts for a weird hybrid between Nioh's loot system and Dark Souls loot system, combining the worst aspects of both. Unlike Nioh, gear doesn't have a traditional level, instead having an upgrade level similar to Dark Souls, with the highest upgrade level being 9 (at least for the base game). This means that once you find a weapon with scaling you like, there's almost no reason to look at anything else, because what you pick up is almost never going to be better than what you have. Thus there's very little feeling that you and your equipment are getting stronger throughout the game. Conversely, the amount of loot you get is on par with Nioh, meaning you'll still be spending a lot of time sifting through your inventory, dismantling or selling gear you don't need.
• That One Boss:
  • Zhang Liang, the first boss, tests your skill almost immediately, being a hard hitting menace that's also durable. More specifically, its his second form, as he has both faster and delayed attacks that punish you for panic-button mashing. It's worth noting that his difficulty was nerfed in Version 1.05 following complaints about being far too difficult for what should be a Warm-Up Boss.
  • The Aoye is a large cow-like octopus which has a lot of health, and its huge mass of tangled hair makes its attacks hard to read. It also has a nasty critical charge that comes out very fast and does a ton of damage if you don't nail the deflect timing. It becomes worse if you don't have good water resistance as halfway through, it does an AOE ice attack that falls on the ground and if you started as a fire build you're in for a bad time, since the first time you fight it, you don't have access to the ability to reallocate your stats yet.
  • Lu Bu, as per his reputation. While he isn't too bad to deal with on horseback, he has an arsenal of large chains of attacks that do not let up and like Zhang Liang before him, he has many delayed critical blows. The fact that he's incredibly durable as well means you're in for a nasty war of attrition, as you will straight up lose to him if you try to pursue him due to his superior offensive prowess.
  • Zhang Liao, like his superior, is a tough duelist in his own right. He's already a Lightning Bruiser, but he starts the fight off using his divine beast, giving him a long, electrocuted blade that also hits hard and comes fast, with many of his attacks looking like something that would make Genichiro proud.
  • Xiahou Dun as a demon is no joke, as he tends to fly around and come at you aggressively. The real issue is how he also has spells that sets the ground on fire, doing decent damage over time and inflicting the burn status on top of that.
  • Liu Bei, also as a demon. Not only is he far more aggressive in his attacks than Xiahou Dun on both the ground and in the air, he also casts spells that hit the ground, but these force you to shift attention to both the boss itself and the bombs that explode and he does this a lot.
  • Among the game's optional fights, the Tiger's Loyal Subjects is widely considered to be the hardest and most unfair. The fight pitches you against Huang Gai, Cheng Pu and Han Dang at the same time and the three of them are all too happy to throw Mook Chivalry off the window and rush you with a barrage of unending attacks, barely leaving you any openings to strike back. Even if you manage to stagger one of them, the pressure from the other two might just cause you to miss the window for a fatal strike and even putting a distance between you and the group to heal is difficult as Cheng Pu and Han Dang will just pelt you at range with fire pots and arrows instead.
  • Gan Ning is Lightning Bruiser incarnate, with a mixing of Combat Pragmatist. His fists have much less discerning tells than bladed weapons and a good half of his Critical Blows come out absurdly quick. He's also one of the few enemies who can actually deflect your attacks if you swing at him recklessly, which you shouldn't, because he's Immune to Flinching even without being blessed by a Divine Beast. Without relying on a Divine Beast or any specific element, he appropriately lacks an element you can counter him with unlike some other bosses. On Soaring Dragon and above, he gains an absolute slew of buffs that make him very tanky, turning the fight into a battle of attrition and reflex. Those signature bells on his waist don't mark his reputation as The Dreaded for nothing.
  • Demonized Taishi Ci is an absolutely grueling Marathon Boss with a healthy mix of quick combos which occasionally get extended to keep you on your toes which can leave you in a very difficult position to actually mount your offense against him due to how much distance he can put between you in a moment. When you finally cut him down... He gets back up again, but now his timings have entirely changed, and his weapon is permanently enchanted with the water element, so any non-deflected attacks will deal Scratch Damage unless you have the appropriate special effect on your weapon to negate it (though it won't negate Chill build-up). For good measure, he also gains even more attacks on top it. Did we mention you have to clear both forms in one try? Because if you lose, it's back to the start. If you find him as a boss in the Thousand-Mile Journey, you'll have to clear both forms, even if you only have 3 cure pots.
• That One Level:
  • The seventh mission, “The Battle of Hulaoguan Pass,” is a long level where you storm a fortress. Getting to there is filled with very durable soldiers placed on the only path forward, necessitating taking on multiple enemies at once. Assassins are always waiting in the wing just to keep you on your toes. It doesn’t get better when you actually get to the fortress, where undead soldiers pop up to harass you while soldiers use turrets to lop off huge chunks of health. Those who go through the level more or less normally will also find the area filled with enemies with way higher morale than them. To even stand a chance against the sub-boss, Hua Xiong, they at least need to gather up to 20 Morale first. And to top it all off, Lu Bu is waiting for those who can make it through Dong Zhuo’s forces.
  • The following mission "Centuries of Glory Burned Away" isn’t much better, even with Liu Bei to help out. It too is an absolute gauntlet in a burning city, meaning you will take fire damage at some point. Early on, Xielong will harass you by shooting lighting bolts that deal huge damage or knock your spirit gauge out if blocked. And just because Xielong is shooting lightning at you doesn’t mean other enemies aren’t just going to let you progress freely. It doesn’t get much better even after you get out of Xielong’s field of view, as the city's layout is confusing, and enemies are around every corner. Thankfully, Taotie, the level boss is a total pushover, even for a poorly built character.
  • "Behold the Glaive of Righteousness" a Marathon Level that could be split up into three different levels and still feel long. The first part in the forest is pretty easy, but goes downhill after the first battle flag is raised. Fog of War is in effect, making it hard to find where enemies are lurking and just making the map difficult to maneuver around. It doesn't help that there are several annoying combinations of bad guys around here, including many Warlocks, Assassins and multiple Chang Gui. Making out of the foggy forest leads you to a nasty Dual Boss with Wen Chou and Yan Liang. That's just the halfway part of the level. Guan Yu and Zhang Fei then joins you for some extra firepower which helps. The three of you go into a dark dungeon that has many hidden passages, lots of bad guys and a vicious demon called a Leishi. There's one more push outside the dungeon before the boss. And your reward for all of that? A dance with Liu Bei as a demon.
• Tough Act to Follow: Though Team Ninja has been making an effort to continuously improve the game, and many players still find the game enjoyable, they still find it comes short to Nioh 2, which refined much of the original Nioh's strengths and turned it into an Even Better Sequel. Wo Long often falls short in praise when compared to the former. Not helping matters is that the latter's attempt to reach a middle ground to fans of the more mainstream Souls-like RPG games wasn't quite as successful because the existence of Randomly Generated Loot turned them away, but the changes to the loot systems and streamlined gameplay have alienated parts of their Nioh fanbase as well.
• The Woobie: Daqiao here is somehow even more miserable than her Dynasty Warriors counterpart. In this continuity, she has to live with the fact that she's the indirect cause of the death of her father-in-law Sun Jian because she's kidnapped by Yu Ji to lure him into a trap, and unlike in Dynasty Warriors, she had no way to fight back. She'll have to deal with how her husband Sun Ce will die later (by the same kidnapper, no less!), and there is no Xiaoqiao to cheer her up.