Play the First Berserker Khazan at Vocari Hub

The next meeting will take place pretty soon on March 29th again at Vocari Hub. I should have announced it last week, but I was delayed writing this, but in retrospect I should have just announced both March meetings at the same time. The party starts 1 PM and continues until 10 PM, but you don’t have to stay the whole time and can come and go as you please. The featured game is the First Berserker Khazan which will be playable on at least one PlayStation 5 and two Xbox Series X systems at the event. It’s a single player action game that’s very tough and there’s a free demo of Khazan you can try out now on the Steam, PlayStation or Xbox stores. I will also provide four pizzas, cola and bottled water for guests to eat at the party. Keep in mind that everyone doesn’t have play Khazan at the party. You can play anything I have installed on a current or retro game system that is setup on one of the eight monitors in the room.

The story of the First Berserker Khazan is somehow linked to the Dungeon Fighter Online series, but Khazan is a prequel and set hundreds of years before the main plot of Dungeon Fighter and the only one I played was the game for the Xbox 360. Anyway Khazan and his friend Ozma were generals in the army of the Pelos Empire. Then for some unknown reason the Emperor turns against Khazan and Ozma and accuses them of treason. Khazan is captured and transported through the Heinmach mountains. Then an avalanche frees Khazan but he then becomes possessed by a group of vengeful sprits who want him to go on a crusade against the empire and it’s imperial soldiers.

The First Berserker Khazan is an absolutely shameless Dark Souls rip-off. It even goes as far as telling the player that when they die they will drop a larcrima which the game then tells you is a collection of souls. That being said I thought the combat in Khazan was really fun and I put nearly twenty hours into the demo, although it would probably only be two hours if I didn’t die so much. Every weapon Khazan uses has a quick but weak and a slow but powerful attack, the game refers to them as swift and potent attacks. I really liked how the basic weapon the short sword and axe dual wield felt, powerful and precise. There’s also a spear and a two handed Cloud Strife style giant sword that you acquire in the second level of the demo. The safest way to engage in combat is to continuously block, wait for the enemy combo to finish and then perform a combo yourself. Unfortunately attacking, blocking, and dodging all require stamina which is quickly depleted and was the main hindrance to my success early on in the demo. I could run away from attacks, but not be able to defend myself. I could block a string of attacks, but then lack the stamina to follow up with my own. I got to the boss of the first stage when I was level five, but I didn’t have enough stamina to beat it until I was level thirty two. I grinded it out and farmed souls to level up by fighting the two normal size yetis and the bear in the cave right before the main boss. I’m not sure if I’m terrible at Khazan or if it’s ridiculously hard. Eventually I beat the giant yeti and the games asks if I want to continue playing on Normal difficulty or lower it to Easy, and I picked Easy but there was a warning that I couldn’t raise it later unless I restarted the whole game. The second level gives you a limited six shot javelin to throw and there were some new enemies like wolves and a wild boar but I had the most trouble fighting another giant bear. The game says that you can perform perfect dodges and parry attacks and maybe if I did that more I would have had an easier time getting through the first level.

The second level introduces a skill tree, a general one for Khazan and then a separate skill trees for each of the three weapons in the demo. I’m not sure how many weapons are in the full game but I would guess at least ten. You level up weapons by using them, even just blocking, but you can also boost Khazan’s stats by collecting souls from dead monsters and soldiers. At the save point the Blade Nexus you can trade souls to increase Khaan’s vitality, endurance, strength, willpower, and proficiency. Vitality increases the health bar and willpower increases the stamina bar, while proficiency makes both bars deplete less and makes stamina replenish much faster. Endurance increases Khazan’s defense and strength increases attack power but weirdly not as much as willpower does. Willpower definitely seems like the most useful stat to level up, and strength might just be a dummy stat designed to make you waste resources. What I also find strange is you can’t redistribute stats assigned to Khazan, but you can respec his weapon skills whenever you like which is an unseal design choice.