Try Team Ninja's Next PS5 Action RPG, Wo Long 2, Six Months Early with New Playable Demo

Say it with me folks:

We 👏 need 👏 more 👏 demos!

the OG Wo Long was such a great game, hearing good things about the sequel.

It's great to see demos becoming more and more popular nowadays (at least in comparison with the PS3 and PS4 generation).

With that said, this seems a very odd time to release a demo. Wo Long is great, but the second game is months away, and they're releasing a demo TODAY in the middle of an extremely busy period for games.

GTA 6 is the main concern, but don't forget about about Ace Combat 8, Control and Fire Emblem too.

Team Ninja's release frequency is pretty insane. Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty in 2023, Rise of the Ronin in 2024, Ninja Gaiden 4 in 2025, Nioh 3 in 2026 and now Wo Long 2: Wings of Ember in 2027. That schedule would've been impressive 2 decades ago but in the modern industry it's almost unthinkable. And while they're not the most AAA studio, it's not like those games are lacking in quality.

Definitely a studio to treasure, I'm certainly a big fan. I hope they find all the success they deserve.

I thought Wo Long was under appreciated compared to the Nioh series. I am more excited for this than I was for Nioh 3. It’ll be a day 1 for me.

@Ainu20 Team Ninja reuse a lot of their animations and graphical assets in a really smart way. I also suspect that their staff retention is pretty high too, so everyone on the team is likely on the same page with a clear direction on how their games are developed.

Though I will say I believe Ninja Gaiden 4 was mostly a Platinum Games effort (though it is still one of my favourite games from this gen).

@ShadowRJ Ninja Gaiden 4 was a joint effort so it's bit hard to gauge who did most of the work. Co-directed between the two studios, on Platinum's engine but traditionally a Team Ninja series.

In all honesty I just wanted to include it so the streak wasn't broken!

@Oram77 I was coming here to say is the demo on a disc, but there you go.

Hopefully they keep their trend - if you beat the demos endboss you get a +xp helmet (or a trinket) when the game releases. Nice to level a little faster and usually helmets don't drop before level 10 so I like getting one from the start

@Oram77
@JohnnyShoulder

I got you both covered.

You're going to need more hours in the day though.

Dear Team Ninja, I adore the action gameplay you make, but please, please let go of Diablo loot system. I can only stomach so much.

Is this game a third party PlayStation exclusive? If not, will the demo appear on steam?

I'm currently 50% thru the Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty and loving it!
Bring on Wings of Ember!!!

How to make your consumer do your job of debugging your product...
Marvelous... 😒

@QuantumCipher_69 I would say, not really. It's structured like one (Connecting Levels, overflowing loot etc.) but it is more "forgiving" than a Soulslike' and plays more like a straightforward action title. If your having a problem clearing a Boss, you can summon help from multiple characters or even Co-Op. I'm halfway thru the 1st one and it's been a blast so far!

@Neither_scene It is not exclusive and is releasing on Playstation, Xbox, Switch 2 and Steam.

The demo is available on steam

And just like the original Wo Long, Wo long 2 will release day 1 on gamepass

@QuantumCipher_69 contrary to previous comment, I'd say it more-so is. More action combat oriented, than slower paced, but it is pretty tricky and you lose currency on death. Levelling up isn't as important as gear/ equipment, mind and there are ways to raise your power level in each stage (at least, in the 1st there was.) But it's still very much a masocore game that will throw all manner of tricky level design, traps and b*stard enemies your way to end you.

It runs way worse than nioh 3 did lol but its been so fun so far. Im assuming its open world like nioh 3 cuz it seems extremely open and spacious with lots of different directions to turn to rather than just towards the objective. Really excited for this but im gonna play through Wo Long 1 first

Sick to death of "Samurai" style soulslike games.

Every game should have a demo! It would make life so much easier for gamers! Game trials are nice but they always start the player at the tutorial stage which eats up a good amount of the 2-hour window.

For obvious reasons, I'm very excited for this release.

@Ainu20
I think that's part of their problem though - and this is coming from someone who has played a lot of their games.

They really need to slow down a bit and look at their quality.

They have never been known for top of the line visuals, but they need to improve in this area. Having played the Nioh 3 demo, I would never have bought the game, if not for PSSR2 being released, which does a LOT of 'heavy lifting'.
They have in the past been good on the performance side of things however, but RotR had some really rough sections, and Nioh3 was OK on Pro apart from a few limited sections which struggled, but a clear downgrade from Nioh2, and again I wouldn't have bought Nioh3 if I didn't have a Pro (having seen the data).

From a structure/ gameplay perspective I know they were trying something different with both games, and with Nioh3 I think it kind of worked. But more 'time in the oven' would have been beneficial, and again I felt like there was a downgrade from Nioh2.

The trouble is that I hear/read complaints like this all the time now, not to mention the complaints related to fatigue (whether fair or not), and I would have to think hard before buying another of their games.
There is reputational damage here, even within their fanbase to a degree.
The best thing, in my opinion, would be for them to slow down just a bit, knowing that a higher quality could lead to higher hype and sales.

Wo Long was my favorite Team Ninja game. Something about the combat—I think that super-fun parry mechanic—really delivered the power fantasy. Excited to try the new demo!

@Rich33 Fair enough, I haven't played Nioh 3 yet so if the quality of their recent games is dipping, that's unfortunate. That wasn't my experience with their earlier games. Maybe them dropping the pace a bit wouldn't be the worst idea, that way I might actually catch up one day.

@GirlVersusGame I must have spent many an hour playing those demo discs, seeing as back then I didn't have much disposable income to buy that many games.

Made a mistake pre ordering Wo Long... ended up not liking it as much as i thought (coming from 3 digits hours of Nioh 2)

I might play it once it gets a complete edition or something but i dont have a lot of expectations this time around, sadly.

@JohnnyShoulder I'm having a blast trying them all and took them out of their plastic cases/shuffled them up so I can Forrest Gump my way through and never know what's on the disc until I see the menu. They even featured unique music, it must have been a big effort for whoever put them together. I went all the way back to the Official Playstation UK number one. It was only three games, Novastorm, Discworld and Lemmings. I'm playing the actual game of Discworld on PS1 too. You're money definitely went far because some of those demos are really long. I've never even played a demo on Plus+ just those CD ones. It's taking months. I've started collecting old Sony and Nintendo VHS promo tapes too, way back before Youtube.

I genuinely didn't know it wa salready getting a sequel lol didn't we already get Nioh 3 recently? 😭

@GirlVersusGame the thing I love about old demo discs is noticing how everything is changed for the final release. I love CTR, and I finally played the demo of it this year, and I noticed all the track design differences between the demo and the final release.

@ShadowRJ I did wonder if that was a thing but I've no real way of knowing for sure, so they must have had some early builds on there too. That makes me like them even more.

@QuantumCipher_69 If you didn't get on with Nioh, I don't imagine you'd be so into this. It's the same team, and a very similar style of game, but with a bit more free-form combat and tied to Chinese, rather than Japanese, mythology.

The deflect mechanic had me hooked but I didn’t actually finish the game was really a soulsy piece of jank. Not much will have changed the sequel isn’t worth top tier pricing, team ninja need to reevaluate