For any players who are looking for a new single-player Action RPG that offers a similar experience to Elden Ring, The First Berserker: Khazan is a new Soulslike game from Neople that’s highly worth checking out. Before jumping into The First Berserker: Khazan, players should know what to expect from this game’s difficulty and how it compares to Elden Ring.
Overall, despite having a more flexible difficulty, The First Berserker: Khazan arguably feels closer to the difficulty of Elden Ring’s controversial Shadow Of The Erdtree DLC. However, the various layered progression systems in The First Berserker: Khazan make it possible for players to periodically overcome the game’s steep difficulty curve.
In Defense of the First Berserker: Khazan’s Limited Weapon Variety
Despite only featuring three primary weapons, The First Berserker: Khazan’s limited weapon variety is still special where it matters most.
Comparing The First Berserker: Khazan’s Difficulty to Elden Ring’s Base Game and Shadow Of The Erdtree DLC
The First Berserker: Khazan’s Bosses Are as Tough as Shadow of the Erdtree’s
By no means is Elden Ring’s combat simple, considering the sheer variety of weapons, spells, and equipment players can experiment with, but players can often find success by investing in a particular weapon or playstyle until it becomes reliable in any given situation. Despite having a relatively limited variety of weapon types in The First Berserker: Khazan, players will need to familiarize themselves with various offensive and defensive abilities to take on some of the tougher enemies throughout the game because of their large health pools and the sparse opportunities for getting free attacks in.
So, unless players quickly become familiar with blending offensive and defensive abilities to create their own opportunities for counterattacks, the major enemies and bosses in The First Berserker: Khazan can arguably be just as difficult as those from Elden Ring’s Shadow of the Erdtree DLC. Admittedly, this is saying a lot, considering that the Shadow Of The Erdtree DLC’s difficulty was highly controversial even among veteran Soulsborne players. However, while the main bosses in The First Berserker: Khazan serve as hard barriers for the game’s linear quest progression, players can still find ways to improve through The First Berserker: Khazan’s generous progression systems.
Players can lower the difficulty in The First Berserker: Khazan from normal to easy, though the difference is seemingly negligible, and the easy mode is still widely considered hard compared to other Soulsborne and Soulslike games.
The First Berserker: Khazan’s Progression Systems Are Far More Generous Than Elden Ring’s Typical Soulsborne Upgrade System
Lacrima in The First Berserker: Khazan is the equivalent of Runes in Elden Ring, which is the currency used for upgrading players’ attributes. In both games, players will drop these progression currencies when they die and need to retrieve them, or else they will be lost forever. This mechanic is a staple of Soulsborne and Soulsike games’ difficulty, though The First Berserker: Khazan is a bit more forgiving with Lacrima than Elden Ring is with Runes.
When players die during boss fights in The First Berserker: Khazan, their Lacrima will be dropped outside the boss arena for easy retrieval, and additional Lacrima will be awarded based on how much health damage the boss took during the attempt. These generous QoL features allow players to slowly accumulate upgrades between failed attempts at a boss.
Beyond the typical attribute-upgrade progression system found in Elden Ring and other FromSoft games, players can also take advantage of several other, permanent progression systems in The First Berserker: Khazan. This includes various ways of upgrading players' weapons and armor, as well as the character and weapon skill trees in The First Berserker: Khazan.
When it comes to major enemies and boss fights in The First Berserker: Khazan, the early game is arguably as difficult as Elden Ring’s controversial Shadow Of The Erdtree DLC. However, as players expand their arsenal and skills with the various progression systems that can be unlocked throughout the main quests and side quests in The First Berserker: Khazan, the difficulty curve becomes much more forgiving.
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OpenCritic Reviews
- Top Critic Avg: 81 /100 Critics Rec: 83%
- Released
- March 27, 2025
- Developer(s)
- Neople
- Publisher(s)
- Nexon
