A bestseller with a crash landing. Wo Long is selling extremely well, but is being torn apart in reviews. What is going on with Steam?
Only a few hours after the release, Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty is already one of the bestsellers on Steam and has made it into the top 10 of sales. On Twitch, the game is being actively showcased, currently even ahead of games like Fortnite or Escape from Tarkov. And yet it received devastating criticism. Only 37% of the current reviews on Steam are positive, and of the over 7,000 ratings, more than 4,000 are negative. But what is the problem?
What is Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty? As a spiritual successor to Nioh and Sekiro, Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty is a representative of the “Soulslike” genre and therefore focuses on brutal action that forgives few mistakes. A dark world with sinister monsters and a fast combat system filled with all kinds of combos and tactical elements is at the forefront.
This is what the community criticizes: A look at the reviews of the game on Steam immediately reveals what stands out negatively about Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty. The implementation on PC is apparently simply failed and has many bugs that range from controlling to performance. Here are some quotes from the “best negative reviews”:
- “A good game, buried under the biggest disaster of a PC port I have ever seen. The game runs poorly for how it looks, but the biggest problems lie in the controls.”
- “I saw all the reviews saying the performance was so bad and thought: ‘It can’t be that bad’. But indeed, it is that bad.”
So anyone planning to play Wo Long with keyboard and mouse should be a bit patient. However, if you play with a gamepad, the game is quite good and is praised – as long as there are no performance issues.
The biggest problem is the “dead zone”: An obvious problem with the porting to PC is the so-called “dead zone” that exists with gamepads. This refers to the amount a stick of the controller can be pushed in one direction before it is recognized by the game.
What makes absolute sense on a gamepad, as not every micro-touch should have direct effects in the game, is fatal on PC. Because this “dead zone” has apparently also been imported for controlling with the mouse. This means that small movements are not registered by the game, and the camera does not move. This creates the impression that your mouse is broken.
As it stands, one should rather enjoy Wo Long with utmost caution – it would be better to wait for a patch and then see if the reviews improve. The developers have already announced that they will release a patch soon that should fix the most pressing issues.
Currently, most players are paying 70 € just to be frustrated – and one really needs to have very specific preferences for that.
