The First Berserker: Khazan is a tough soulslike motion sport set within the long-running Dungeon & Fighter setting created by South Korean writer Nexon. I previewed the sport final 12 months at Gamescom and, as a giant fan of the style, I’ve been anxiously awaiting its launch for months. Now that I’m over a dozen hours in, and have suffered many, many deaths by the hands of the sport’s powerful enemies, I’ve collected just a few ideas that I want I had recognized sooner.
Use Performance graphics
Khazan’s beautiful cel-shaded artwork fashion appears unbelievable when paired with the sport’s stylistic and particle results. Best of all, when taking part in on a PlayStation 5 or Xbox Series X it appears good with both Performance or Resolution graphical choices out there in consoles.
As such, I like to recommend taking part in on Performance mode, the place the sport optimizes itself for greater body charge at the price of graphical constancy. The cartoon-like artwork fashion is powerful sufficient to look spectacular on the decrease constancy, so you are not lacking a lot. More importantly, soulslike video games with intense, tough motion profit enormously from the elevated body charge, which makes parrying, attacking, and the fight total simpler and really feel higher on the identical time.
Turn on efficiency mode and set the body charge restrict to off in settings.
Unlock body charge
In truth, Khazan even enables you to increase the body charge additional when taking part in on console within the settings menu. Be cautious, as the sport cautions that this may occasionally scale back the general efficiency. Playing on an Xbox Series X, nonetheless, I have not seen any points to this point.
Grind in opposition to bosses
The finest mechanic in Khazan is the lacrima system. Lacrima is the equal of expertise factors or souls and what you money in to stage up your character and increase their stats.
Typically in a soulslike sport, while you get caught on a tough boss, your solely possibility is to show round and constantly replay the dungeon you simply labored by way of in an effort to grind out sufficient factors to stage up just a few occasions, making the boss battle simpler. In Khazan, you’ll be able to battle in opposition to a boss and nonetheless get lacrima relying on how a lot injury you dealt. This means you’ll be able to follow in opposition to the impediment you are caught on whereas nonetheless leveling up slowly and progressing. No extra having to battle lots of of weak enemies again and again simply to maneuver on.
Spotting enemies
Clicking in the proper analog stick, R3, will lock onto an enemy in entrance of you. Soulslikes love hiding opponents round each nook or simply above and out of sight of the participant ready in ambush. By utilizing R3 usually, the sport will lock onto targets that your eye could not have picked up, which is a good way to identify hidden risks.
However, some enemies have a inclined state the place the sport does not register them till they’ve stood up or turn out to be activated, so to talk. A great way to scan for these is by utilizing your javelin, which is your ranged spear throw, that you just intention with LT. When aiming, the reticle will type on display and in the event you spotlight an enemy it’s going to flip purple. This purple marker will present up even when the enemy is inclined or mendacity in wait to face up and assault.
Next time you enter a brand new room, do a fast sweep of the world in entrance of you with the javelin out — you do not even have to really throw it and burn up the vitality, simply scan the whole lot along with your reticle to verify nothing is forward of you.
Gear units
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Khazan’s loot economic system is closely reliant on gear units. Almost each little bit of armor you decide up can be part of a set and also you solely must equip two of them on the identical time to begin getting the extra advantages. Equipping greater than two will grant extra bonuses. Even although you’ll have discovered a stronger set of shoes, consider the gear mixtures when deciding what to put on — and which set bonuses you may rise up simply to spice up stats. It’s additionally handy that the store, the place you’ll be able to unload undesirable armor, has a toggle to keep away from any gear units when mass dumping.
Back buttons
Dualsense Edge with customizable again buttons.
In order to make use of objects you need to depend on the D-pad. These will be something from throwables to therapeutic, and as such they’re extraordinarily necessary. However, utilizing the D-pad is tough because it means taking your thumb off the left analog stick, which is used to maneuver round and away from hazard. Trying to heal your self whereas working from a tough boss is one thing everybody goes to run into eventually.
This is a good alternative to make use of the additional back-of-controller buttons in the event you’re taking part in on a professional controller, such because the DualSense Edge. With the 4 again buttons, you’ll be able to assign every D-pad route to certainly one of them. This will allow you to heal (up) in addition to scroll the merchandise bar (left and proper) and use the merchandise (down). If you solely have two again buttons I might suggest prioritizing up and down so you’ll be able to heal and have a minimum of one merchandise at all times out there to make use of simply.
