We had seen clips of this game on various game events such as gamescom and Playstation did release a trailer of the game around the start of August with an release window of early 2025. This game is being developed by Neople which is under its parent company Nexon, they also own Embark Studios the makers of The Finals and the upcoming ARC raiders. It will be available on all platforms except the Switch next year.
If Nioh And Elden Ring Had A Baby
The First Berserker: Khazan is an upcoming action RPG that has its foundations in Neople’s DNF Duel, the action fighting game similar to Capcom’s Guilty Gear at least in terms of the artstyle. In terms of everything else, it has its own originality, the combat looks fluid, fast-paced with a much more blood spill and gore when fighting enemies or bosses.
The animation has this charm of making the player feel every hit or skill they dish out to the enemy, every attack has a certain weight to it, making it feel all the more natural and seamless.
The combat system does follow the general soulslike formula of having a stamina bar and a health bar but no mana bar, with the player deciding in a moment to moment nature whether to let loose with his or her special skills or conserve for a more opportune chance.
Speaking of skills, they seem reminiscent of Team Ninja’s Nioh games, either being skills that affect the area around your character or skills that involve jumping and repositioning yourself behind your enemy or skills that dish out multiple concentrated attacks.
It is unclear whether there will button combos for our protagonist like how it is in Nioh or Capcom’s DMC series, the embargo for reviewers to capture and show their own footage of the game hasn’t been lifted and it also isn’t clear if this game will release a demo of the game ahead of its intended release date.
The parry mechanic seems to be something akin to how it is in Lies of P where the player will have to block at the right time which would lead to the enemy losing more stamina than usual and this leads to short times where the player can hit and do some damage.
In terms of equipment, there are various kinds of equipment variety but again it is unclear whether there will be full fledged armor sets to wear that give passive bonuses or they are there to just provide the defense and look cool, weapons seems to either be swords, axes or halberds with the bosses wielding unique versions of the aforementioned weapons.
A Combination Between Cell Shade And Anime Artstyle
The art style has this look similar to Genshin Impact or the more recent Visions of Mana but with an overlay of cell shade coloring, giving the characters more of an outline, this helps in making sure that the character is always visible regardless of whatever is happening or however many enemies there are on screen.
The blood spatter and sparks that fly on each hit with an enemy seems so satisfying which kind of begs to keep the attack chain going, the character movement seems to be smooth and fluid especially with their dodge mechanic, a perfect dodge shows our character almost fading to the side when executed properly.
A Closed Beta Test May Help In Deciding
A lot of reviewers and souls veterans have played this at various gaming events and they are all echoing the same praise for this game from its combat system, art style all the way to its consistent level design.
If multiple outlets are speaking its praises then it is safe to say the game will be well worth the assumed 60 dollars, we should give these journalists their due credit since almost every single one practically smelled the incoming death for another game, Concord.
All Nexon and Neople need to do is market this game properly and they’ll have a golden goose on their hands. There will be a closed technical beta test from October 11th, which people can register for at their website and they may get selected for the tests and hopefully an open beta test will follow.
