Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty is a game I was really looking forward to. And, when KOEI Tecmo reached us so they could provide us with a review code, I was kind of hopeful. Surely the PC version would be in a better state than other KOEI Tecmo games, right? Well, Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty is a mess on PC at launch for K&M gamers.
In order to give you an idea, we informed KOEI Tecmo about the following issues on February 18th. This basically means that Team Ninja had half a month in order to resolve these PC issues. Not only that, but a lot of PC gamers have listed the following issues on Steam’s forums after trying the PC demo. And instead of fixing them, Team Ninja did nothing. So, at this point, we do have to wonder why PC gamers should be paying KOEI Tecmo 70 euros if they are treated as second-class citizens. Again, the team was fully aware of these issues for a couple of weeks. The fact that it did nothing to fix any of them is worrisome, to say the least.
For starters, the game still has shader compilation stutters. Say whatever you want about The Callisto Protocol, but at least Striking Distance Studios resolved most of the game’s shader compilation stutters in just a day. The game also has some traversal stutters. Thankfully, though, they are few and won’t annoy most of you.
Then we have the ridiculous graphics settings. I mean, come on now, what the hell is “Best Performance“? This is a console setting and has no place in a PC version. At least the game does offer custom graphics settings to adjust them.
The game is also unable to automatically detect the Keyboard and Mouse. In order to play with K&M, you’ll have to go to the Control settings, and select the “Mouse Enabled” setting for Control Type.
The aforementioned issues, while annoying, are not game-breaking issues. The biggest offender, as the title implies, is the awful mouse deadzone issues. The mouse movement is completely broken, and there is seriously no way to play the game with K&M. And no, there is no excuse for something like that. Third-person games play wonderfully with K&M so let’s not start with the “this game is for controllers“. This is a mere excuse and nothing more.
Seriously, imagine if a publisher released a first-person shooter on consoles in which you could not move the camera with the sticks or any of the gamepad arrows/buttons and showed K&M icons. Would people defend it and say “this game is for K&M, buy one“? Ridiculous, right? Well, the same applies to PC games that do not have proper K&M controls. There is no excuse for a PC game in 2023 to emulate a stick and have mouse deadzone issues. All we simply need is raw input for the mouse and on-screen prompts K&M. And nothing more. We don’t want any special K&M tweaks. This is laughable, to say the least.
All in all, Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty on PC is an awful port from the consoles. Now if the game was at 30 euros, I’d definitely cut KOEI Tecmo some slack. However, for a game that costs 70 euros, we demand a better PC product. And, until Team Ninja fixes the aforementioned issues and starts treating PC gamers as first-class citizens, we suggest staying away from it!
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
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