announced in June 2022, Crouching Dragon: Fall of Kingdom is Team Ninja’s next character action game. Set in China’s Three Kingdoms period, it has the same feisty and attractive design as the developer’s previous title, Nioh. It’s hard not to compare at a glance, as both games feature highly stylized action and demonic and undead enemies lurking through the ruins of long-abandoned battlefields. However, Crouching Dragon couldn’t be more different.
While it may be easy to wash Crouching Dragon: Fall of Kingdom in the same layer of pain as Nioh series, it feels completely different. This is thanks to a combination of several different systems specific to this new character action game. One of them is spiritual. Morale is a factor in how easy encounters are, which encourages exploration to find spots on the map where you can place your banner. This increases your overall morale, allowing you to deal more damage to enemies based on your morale difference. The higher your morale, the more damage you deal, which can make encounters that were once challenging now significantly easier.
For example, when I deal with the boss in the preview, which is a giant wild boar (give or take some demon growth), my sanity is at around seven. Because of this, I did significantly more damage to the enemy with my basic attacks, heavy attacks, and perfect counter attacks. What can be a challenging battle like a walk through the park, like Crouching Dragon facilitated ways to make this fight a lot easier through this mental system. That said, demoralization is as simple as dying, which will take away some of the morale you’ve accumulated through erecting banners and killing enemies.
For the purposes of the trial, I was allowed to choose from five different “phases” or ways of building the player, linked to the key elements in the game. Crouching Dragon. These are fire, earth, wood, metal, and water. Each of these builds has specific attributes, with fire being more offensive and wood more supportive for both player and allies. These are two stages I decided to try and find both interesting enough on their own merits.
Fire is simpler, since I am equipped with offensive spells that are naturally directed towards fire. Wood, on the other hand, allows me to heal myself through the ability to heal, attack, and even throw lightning at my enemies from afar. Each of these presets also comes with their own weapons, with flames for me to equip a longsword and wood with a spear. All in all, I’m not a huge fan of extreme guns in character action games, as I find them often a lot slower than other existing weapons, but in Crouching Dragon which feels insignificant. Unlike Nioh where there is a bit of wind for spear or sword attacks, Crouching Dragon allowing the player to be agile, even with bulky weapons. The spear attack is not as fast as the long sword, don’t get me wrong, but I can still dodge and attack in a certain rhythm without feeling cumbersome.
I can easily dodge and even dodge enemy attacks, causing them to widen their field of view with my spear. And when it breaks the enemy’s balance, you’ll enjoy a stylish animation with whatever weapon you’re equipped with. This always feels really rewarding and extremely satisfying, especially against tougher enemies. Even the movement feels more graceful, as you can scale certain walls with ease, helping to maintain the flow of combat and exploration at a nice, steady pace.
Regarding character building, Crouching Dragon closes into the five factors I mentioned before. Similar to rock-paper-scissors, each element has its own strengths and weaknesses. And that’s something to consider when equipping weapons (since each has their own elemental properties) and spells. Alike Nioh, players can equip spells to throw at enemies, strengthen their own attacks, or heal teammates. However, you are not limited to the number of uses per spell until you take a break. Instead, as long as you give yourself enough time between casts (as it consumes your stamina and poise), you can cast the spell almost indefinitely. This is a really nice change and allows me to be a bit more adventurous as I can heal myself without having to worry about using up my spells before meeting the boss. Of course, this can get more complicated later on, since you’re actually giving up some of your stamina to cast spells, but with the right balance I can see this creating feel more fluid for Crouching Dragonfight.
The player can also summon Divine Beasts in battle, with each Divine Beast having its own unique ability. Instead, Qinglong will heal teammates after being summoned and at sanity level 10 has the ability to revive defeated teammates. While Baihu will fight by your side as a summoned beast, the time it can stay on the battlefield increases once you have at least 10 spirits. As you can see, the mental system mentioned earlier adds a lot of depth to the game, not just in regards to your damage.
When Crouching Dragon: Fall of Kingdom seems to be a different flavor of Team Ninja Nioh at a glance it’s by far a more mechanically complicated game. The mental system alone got me excited to see how the game would continue to use it for more difficult encounters and what else this might affect. Fighting and moving are as graceful as ever, and strengthening poise and stamina as a sole resource keeps me agile. Overall, I’m super excited about the full release of Crouching Dragon will hold, as it is already different enough from other character action games to make something interesting.
Crouching Dragon: Fall of Kingdom will be released on March 3, 2023 for PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X and Windows PC.
