In this The First Berserker: Khazan article, I’m going to be talking about what we learned from the closed beta of The First Bersker: Khazan, including the character customization, Stats and Skills/Skill Tree. A lot of people including me have been looking forward to this game since its reveal trailer back in TGA 2023, where we got a glimpse of its stunning cel-shaded artistry within a dark fantasy soulslike world. We then got to play at Gamescom, but only for a very short amount of time. However, recently we got a code to try out the Closed Beta (thank you Neople), and got to play 3 missions which equates to about 7 hours of playtime, so today I want to go over what we learned from that Beta, along with some further impressions of the game, which could be the next big Soulslike!

The First Berserker: Khazan – Deep Dive Into Character Customization and Skills

First let’s take a look at the combat, this time with UI on to give you a better idea of what is happening, and a recap in-case you missed our last video or can’t remember it. Lets go over the basics first. On the bottom left of the HUD you a health bar, stamina bar, consumables, and healing items known as “Netherworld Energy”. You start off with a dual wielded axe and sword with light attacks, heavy attacks and charged heavy attacks. The key system of combat is exhaustion — attacking foes will deal damage to their health bar and their stamina bar, which once depleted will leave them exhausted. This opens a window to land some free hits and a “Brutal Attack” that regenerates your stamina and deals massive damage. However, enemy attacks can also damage your stamina, and if you get hit with low stamina, you’ll be exhausted for around 2 seconds. This system should be familiar to you if you’ve played Nioh, Sekiro, or even Elden Ring, as it’s quite similar to the ones found in those titles.

For defense, you want to mainly be parrying enemy attacks to deplete their stamina meter, while also mixing in some perfect dodges which can lead to empowered dodge attacks. Like Sekiro, these defensive options will still deplete your stamina, but will never exhaust you, meaning you can still be hyper aggressive with attacks if you are confident that you can parry every attack thrown at you afterwards. Enemies can also execute unblockable burst attacks, which you can counterattack with a special input, exactly like the Burst Attacks from Nioh 2.

At the start of The First Berserker: Khazan, the combat feels slow and methodical since you have to focus on managing your stamina bar. It’s once you unlock the other 2 weapons types and the weapon skill trees then combat starts to develop into a hack and slash, becoming more like Devil May Cry. The other 2 weapon types are a guts-like greatsword, and an incredibly fast spear. Both weapons get their very own light attack and heavy attack strings, as well as separate skill trees with several unique abilities and passives that gives the player many more options. Additionally, respecing was completely free in this demo, so in the full launch I believe you will be able to swap between weapons at any point in the game very easily.

The First Berserker: Khazan – Skill Trees and Skills

The Dual Wield has skills focused on complete frenzy, encouraging a ruthless and fast-paced slice and dice playstyle. Even the the resource-free skills are gnarly, like a whirlwind attack lifting the enemy into the air and chopping them up which can combo off any light attack or parry, or mobility moves that allow you to close the distance while slicing them up. The active skill Ruthless is especially awesome, really feeding into the berserker playstyle.

For the Greatsword, it starts off very slow but has upgrades to make it feel more manageable, like an unstaggerable passive and some very fast active skills, such as the Giant Hunt skill where Khazan leaps into the the air and plunges the greatsword downwards in an explosive AoE, or the defensive War Cry skill which can counter an enemy attack and enhance attack.

Lastly, the spear is the most dextrous of the 3 and my favorite, designed to chain moves together to create infinite combos until you deplete all your stamina. It has a fantastic passive move called Moonlight where you create afterimages after all your attacks if you can land a full light attack string. For active skills, the Crescent Strike skill plunges the spear into the ground for big AoE damage, and the Afterimage Thrust is a basic, but effective consecutive stab move. The main gist of the playstyle is to experiment with all the chaining moves to create some fat combos, which can be quite daunting at first, but is actually easy to get the hang of.

All in all, I think they did a really good job with the combat. The animations play a huge part in making it feel good, but the base systems are also designed in a way where they strike the balance between being difficult, while also feeling fair and fun to play. My only gripes while playing were some frustrating hitboxes against the final boss, and initial slow pace with stamina management, which made me miss my Green Turtle Talisman.

The First Berserker: Khazan – Level Design & Progression

The First Berserker: Khazan is divided into different regions with multiple checkpoints. Once you reach the end of Mission 2, you’ll unlock the “Firelink Shrine” of the game known as The Crevice. It looks like once the player reaches this point, the basic gameplay loop will be to go a region, kill the main boss, then go back to The Crevice and move on to the next region. From what i’ve seen, the game will pretty linear since each region is detached from one another, and it won’t have the connectivity of something like Dark Souls. However, the content of the regions in the game are fairly well done. I noticed a lot of verticality when I was navigating through them, as well as quite a few branching paths that would lead to chests, items or Soulstones that are used to unlock abilities. I definitely wouldn’t say the level design is fantastic, but I do think it delivers sufficient exploration to underpin the combat.

The progression of the game basically falls in line with every other soulslike, but it does take some interesting liberties. In order to level up, you defeat enemies to earn Lacrima, which you can spend at a Blade Nexus checkpoint to level up your Vitality, Endurance, Strength, Willpower or Proficiency. If you die, you lose all your lacrima and have to do the run back to pick it back up. Where this seems to deviate is when you fight bosses; If you die to a boss, the lacrima will spawn outside the boss room and you also seem to earn some lacrima for having an attempt. Additionally, skill points are earned by attacking anything with your weapons, which means you’re also earning skill points while dying to bosses. If this isn’t just a demo feature, this is a pretty big difference from other soulslikes, as your character will be constantly progressing while you spam attempts against a boss. I’m not completely sure how I feel about it, but if it is an intended feature, I’m curious to see how they implement it for the full launch.

Other than levels and skills, there is also some gear in the game that you can find in chests and from enemies. The frequency at which you get gear is similar to Dark Souls, with maybe 10 or so found per mission. However, the way that armor works is much more like Nioh; Armor dropped will have defense stats that scale with your current level, and will randomly drop between uncommon and epic rarities. You will find alot of the same gear pieces but with different rarities, and also different attrbiutes. There will always be random attributes for gear that is uncommon or greater, and some specific armor pieces will also have a fixed attribute that will always dropped.

Some pieces will also have set bonuses, but I wasnt able to try any out since the demo didnt have merchants or enemies to get a full set. From the few peices I found, they seem to be very impactful to your overall build and playstyle. The purple chest set piece I found had some insane stats, like learning a whole new skill or -500% to stamina damage when you parry, which I assume means you gain 500% of the stamina lost back.

That being said, there still isnt much build customisation in the game yet. You will probably end up getting every skill in the skill tree, so there wont be variety like you would see in the likes of Nioh. However, the depth to each weapon with passives and skills that can chain into eachother creates many possibilities to learn and master as you progress the game.

One last thing I want to touch on for the subject of gear are Time Rifts, which are basically Revenants from Nioh 2. You can summon Revenants  of Adversity from red Time Rifts to get blue Set Gear, as well as a special Lacrima of Circulation. You can use these on yellow Time Rifts before bosses to summon a Spirit of Advocacy who helps you in the boss.

Story and Setting

Lastly, I want to give some final thoughts on the story and setting now that I’ve had a proper playthrough. (be warned for spoilers). As you probably know, Khazan is a war general turned death row inmate after being accused of treason against the Pell Los Empire. The game doesn’t provide many details in the beginning, offering only a few vague lines about his conviction and the brutal torture he endured. We see him transported in a cage, bloodied and battered after they severed the tendons in both his arms, leaving him utterly powerless in the face of his impending execution.

As hes being transported, the Blade Phantom stops the transport and inhabits his body, restoring both his arms with “Netherworld Energy”, while also trying to kick him out of his own skin. Once you reach mission 2, Khazan has to face 3 divine trials in order to confront the Blade Phantom’s physical form before his body is completely taken over. In this fight, its hinted through some design choices and death voice lines thate the Blade Phantom is actually the amalgamation of several warriors. Once Khazan defeats him, he proposes an alliance; Khazan needs his arms to take revenge upon the nobles and the emperor, and the Blade Phantom needs his body to restore order to the Netherworld; so they agree to mutually coexist to accomplish eachothers goals.

Thats as far as the story really goes so far, but I think its a great foundation for what could come next in the future. The mystery behind the Emperors betrayal and the strange behaviour of the Netherworld could be related, and serve to make an interesting plot. The backstory of Khazan is told from hints in dialogue and notes you pick up, leaving it to the player to piece together his legendary fight against the Berserker Dragon as well as the setting itself. The setting seems to include the existence of mages, powerful dragons, reptilian dragonkin, senpou temple monkeys and giant yeti monsters, with room to add much more given how broad the scope of the world seems to be.

Overall, the story and setting of this dark fantasy revenge story is honestly right up my alley, being clearly inspired by Berserk with its gritty atmospheres, gorey combat and the revenge focused plot. Its also a breath of fresh air since most soulslike worlds are set after the world has collapsed from some disastrous event, whereas it looks like here we will be seeing the peak of an Empire, and maybe throwing it into anarchy. If they can continue building on the setting and can keep the plot engaging, I think it could elevate the overall experience to another level.

The First Berserker: Khazan – Final Thoughts

Graphically, Khazan stands out as having one of the best looking art styles in recent gaming history. The design in this game is simply phenomenal, with the 3D cel animation style somehow striking a great balance between realistic movements and an anime style that allows for more flashy, intense visuals. The Blade Phantom in particular stands out to me as a really memorable design, always standing out as some other wordly demonic creature with his motif of eyes. The phantom is initially shown as a bunch of creepy eyeballs at the start, and his physical manifestation from mission 2 keeps that motif with the sauron-like armor and the awesome spear move where a giant eye spawns behind him.

Overall I really enjoyed the demo for Khazan. I had been waiting for the demo ever since we played the game at Gamescom last month, and I think its delivered basically everything I wanted; a gritty and gorey revenge story set in a dark fantasy world with over the top visuals, and fast paced hack and slash combat. The game is not in perfect state, with some performance issues like micro-stutters, but the game comes out in Early 2025, so hopefully there is time to fix this before release. It will be tough to compete with the other 15 games coming out in that time period, but from the quality I’ve seen in the beta, you should definitely keep this on your radar as it could shape up to be the best soulslike we’ve gotten since Lies of P.