The First Berserker: Khazan was an unexpected surprise of 2025. It is a fast paced action-RPG “soulslike” game featuring a tight combat system and the protagonist Khazan’s dark story. It was considered one of the best games that were launched last year, so I decided to see for myself if it is worth of praise. After playing through the game, I can confirm that yes, The First Berserker: Khazan features one of the most impeccable fighting systems out there. However, it really does not excel in any other aspects like its story and characters.
The game starts with our protagonist, Great General Khazan, badly injured and in chains. Despite being a hero of the nation for managing to defeat the dragon army, he is falsely accused of treason against the Pell Loss Empire and arrested. As he is being transported to his prison, the caravan is attacked by a specter that tries to possess Khazan’s body, however the specter’s plan backfires due to the general’s willpower. Free from his predicament, Khazan accepts to team up with the specter in order to find out who set him up as a traitor.
If you tend to play Souls games, you’ll constantly have the vibe that “hey, I’ve seen this in another game”. In fact, the entire game reminds me of Nioh, starting with Khazan himself, a blond swordsman who loves to keep his hair in a ponytail. The game’s structure of a map with a main mission and several submissions, enemies, shortcuts and such all remind me of Team Ninja’s action-RPG. While I don’t necessarily mind seeing a game structure that works, being this level of copy/paste (reskinned bosses included) made me wonder if I didn’t accidentally download the wrong game.
The mission design is mostly hit or miss. Despite the artstyle being cel-shaded, which does a great job at blending the realism with the anime theme style, most of the levels are unfortunately really bland, with a rather simple layout. You either visit a destroyed village, a cave or a castle under siege, and it starts to get boring at some point. However there’s also a few truly impressive levels, with the one level that stands out the most being The Crevice – your central hub and main base of operations. This is where you select your missions and send the rescued NPCs for safety. It looks like a demonic Firelink Shrine and it looks pretty sick.
By far the highlight of The First Berserker: Khazan is the gameplay. Despite being able to use only three weapon types – dual wield sword & axe, spear and greatsword – Khazan is an absolute monster on the battlefield. True to his fame as a great general, he has a lot of skills for each weapon, which you can unlock from a detailed skill tree. Moreover, his Phantom abilities allow him to charge special attacks, throw ranged blood javelins and even transform into a deadly specter, which further improves his damage dealing capabilities.
Khazan also has a “parry” system called Brink Guard. Both you and your enemy have a stamina meter, or a posture bar, but if you perfect time a block right when the enemy hit connects, not only do you lose minimal stamina, but you can also open the enemy to some vicious counterattacks and combos. This is indeed a fast paced game, and the main focus is chaining combos and whittle down the enemy’s health as fast as possible.
Of course, there are more intricate defensive options in the game than the Brink Guard. You can do a similar thing with dodging, called Brink Dodge, which allows you to reposition yourself out of harm’s way without losing stamina. And finally, for those who love to exploit every enemy’s weakness, there’s the Riposte special skill that let’s you deflect the enemy’s attack and inflict heavy posture damage on their stamina bar.
All three weapons have a completely different playstyle. The dual wielded sword & axe are used for quick multi-hit combos. The spear is used for ranged attacks and destroying the posture bar. Finally, the greatsword is a defensive weapon where the focus is on blocking until you find an opening for massive damage hits. The greatsword is the weapon I used the most and it was the most satisfying for me by far, it made me feel like an actual berserk warrior.
Throughout your adventures you will also be able to find armor pieces, talismans and rings that will complement your playstyle. Most armor pieces are part of sets, which offer bonuses when completed. But you must also be careful of a set’s weight, because the heavier a set is, the slower your stamina regenerates. Also, if you do not like how a set looks, you can change its appearance to suit your fashion senses.
You will face a wild menagerie of monsters in your quest for revenge. Regular soldiers, overgrown spiders, zombies, demonic fishes, specters and a wild sort of deformed mutants, the enemies in Khazan won’t let you breathe for one second. They have a variety of moves, they hit hard, and they love to harass you nonstop, especially on expert difficulty. Even the archers, as annoying as I find them in any game, are placed so strategically well that I can’t reasonably complain about them. You also really don’t want to fight more than two enemies at the same time, because they can absolutely demolish you.
But nothing compares to the bosses in Khazan, definitely the highlight of the game. The bosses are incredibly well designed, all of them having at least two phases and demanding utter perfection when facing them. Even the first boss, an angry, ice-spitting yeti, can easily overpower you in just a few attacks. And in true Dark Souls fashion, the closer to a human a boss is, the more challenging it gets. I had no issues when facing some dark spirits or monsters like Volbaino or Shactuka, but Rangkus the bandit truly tested my skills like no other.
Unlike any other game of this genre however, Khazan excels at mage bosses. They feel like true forces of nature, with one such example being Trokka the water mage, who has a huge range of spells and an unreasonably high health pool. Unlike most RPGs, this mage did not die in one hit, it proved to be one of the most intense battles I had in the game.
So yes, in terms of pure gameplay, I can confirm that The First Berserker: Khazan has no equal.
I wish I could say the same about the story, however. While usually the “man driven by revenge and wrath” trope a is good enough reason to make you slay thousands of evil monsters, I feel that this game falls flat in that regard. The world of The First Berserker: Khazan is overabundant with lore and characters, but the way the lore is presented feels incredibly generic. Most NPCs are introduced and then removed in the blink of an eye and the big twist of the game is so predictable, the final villain does not feel impactful at all, even if the boss fight itself is a true spectacle.
Speaking of impactful, this is my main issue with the bosses in this game – they just feel like roadblocks towards a goal instead of actual organic parts of the world. I had the impression of fighting random hostile NPCs that decided to visit Khazan‘s world, have a vague relationship with Khazan and boast a beefy health bar. Other than two specific bosses that were the emotional highlight of the game, for the large majority of bosses you will defeat you’ll feel good for finally learning their patterns and then probably have forgotten who they even are when an NPC mentions them at the end of the game.
And sadly, the soundtrack doesn’t help either. While it isn’t particularly bad, I can’t say I remember any of the tunes in the game, which makes it even harder to remember any significant moment in Khazan. Sure, Rangkus might have been a tough boss when I faced him, but even now I had to look up his name because I simply forgot what he was called – he is that forgettable. Again, it’s not necessarily a bad thing that Khazan decides to focus mostly on the spectacular gameplay, but with just a bit more polish and care in the story department, it could have been an unforgettable experience.
The trophy list can be challenging for someone new to the genre. Although the trophies are somewhat straightforward, for the platinum you are required to finish the game on expert difficulty, which can be a daunting task, especially since the bosses hit extra hard on this difficulty. You can’t even resort to summons, either, since that’s a requirement for another trophy. You also must consider the secret ending, achievable only after collecting 15 pages of lore, completing every sidequest and giving a specific answer to an NPC. But if you tend to thoroughly explore the areas, you won’t have many issues – other than overcoming the challenging bosses.
In the end, Khazan is a very good entry in the soulslike series, despite its somewhat lackluster story and atmosphere. It has some of the best gameplay in the genre and, when mastered, it can provide many, many hours of fun.
