Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty has a lot of great ideas, but its tutorial boss Zhang Liang fails when compared to Dark Souls' Asylum Demon. While the latter is effective at introducing the player to the nature of the game's boss fights, Zhang Liang is more likely to frustrate new players than teach them. It's clear the boss is meant to play a similar role to the Asylum Demon, but his fight in Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty takes that dynamic in the wrong direction.
Zhang Liang is the first proper boss that players will face during Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty's runtime, waiting at the end of the tutorial section. Before facing him, players will be trained in basic combat mechanics, as well as the Battle Flags and Marking Flags that will show the player's progress. Village of Calamity is Wo Long's counterpart to the Undead Asylum from Dark Souls, being a dark location with creepy atmosphere despite serving as the player's training ground. Even the bosses of both the Village and Asylum share a surprising amount of similarities, just executed at different levels.
Wo Long's Zhang Liang Is Too Hard for a Tutorial Boss
Dark Souls' Asylum Demon and Wo Long's Zhang Liang are the largest enemies that players face up to that point, and in another connection between Wo Long and Dark Souls, both wield large hammers. Although they can kill the player in just a couple of hits, their patterns are simple enough for even newcomers to learn and defeat them. However, after Zhang Liang is defeated, he transforms and continues to fight. In his second form, he has far more health, hits harder, and has attacks that are harder to deflect thanks to their speed and odd pauses.
This second phase is far too difficult for the point at which Zhang Liang's boss fight in Wo Long shows up. It's true that players will need to learn how to deal with enemies who have ranged attacks or strange timing, but most players will have less than an hour of experience by the time they face Zhang Liang. He's much too challenging a boss for new players, which presents a problem when he's the final part of the game's tutorial.
Zhang Liang's placement means that he blocks off most of its content, including most of Wo Long's most interesting features. Zhang Liang's fight throw off Wo Long's boss difficulty curve, and ends up making the game feel less welcoming to players who don't already have a high skill level from playing other Souls-adjacent titles. It's a shame that players have to work so hard to experience everything Wo Long has to offer.
Rather than being a test for what the player has learned, Zhang Liang is a brick wall that blocks off a vast majority of the game's content. Since Wo Long was added to Xbox Game Pass, there is also the risk of players giving up on the experience before buying it because such a difficult fight takes place so early on. While the Asylum Demon effectively prepared players for Dark Souls, Zhang Liang's fight instead makes Wo Long less accessible.
Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty is available now for PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.