The First Berserker: Khazan is a hard soulslike action game set in the long-running Dungeon & Fighter setting created by South Korean publisher Nexon. I previewed the game last year at Gamescom and, as a big fan of the genre, I’ve been anxiously awaiting its release for months. Now that I’m over a dozen hours in, and have suffered many, many deaths at the hands of the game’s tough enemies, I’ve collected a few tips that I wish I had known sooner.
Use Performance graphics
Khazan’s stunning cel-shaded art style looks incredible when paired with the game’s stylistic and particle effects. Best of all, when playing on a PlayStation 5 or Xbox Series X it looks good with either Performance or Resolution graphical options available in consoles.
As such, I recommend playing on Performance mode, where the game optimizes itself for higher frame rate at the cost of graphical fidelity. The cartoon-like art style is strong enough to look impressive at the lower fidelity, so you aren’t missing much. More importantly, soulslike games with intense, difficult action benefit greatly from the increased frame rate, which makes parrying, attacking, and the combat overall easier and feel better at the same time.
Unlock frame rate
In fact, Khazan even lets you boost the frame rate further when playing on console in the settings menu. Be careful, as the game cautions that this may reduce the overall performance. Playing on an Xbox Series X, however, I haven’t noticed any issues so far.
Grind against bosses
The best mechanic in Khazan is the lacrima system. Lacrima is the equivalent of experience points or souls and what you cash in to level up your character and boost their stats.
Typically in a soulslike game, when you get stuck on a difficult boss, your only option is to turn around and continuously replay the dungeon you just worked through in order to grind out enough points to level up a few times, making the boss fight easier. In Khazan, you can fight against a boss and still get lacrima depending on how much damage you dealt. This means you can practice against the obstacle you’re stuck on while still leveling up slowly and progressing. No more having to fight hundreds of weak enemies over and over just to move on.
Spotting enemies
Clicking in the right analog stick, R3, will lock onto an enemy in front of you. Soulslikes love hiding opponents around every corner or just above and out of sight of the player waiting in ambush. By using R3 often, the game will lock onto targets that your eye may not have picked up, which is a great way to spot hidden dangers.
However, some enemies have a prone state where the game doesn’t register them until they’ve stood up or become activated, so to speak. A good way to scan for these is by using your javelin, which is your ranged spear throw, that you aim with LT. When aiming, the reticle will form on screen and if you highlight an enemy it will turn red. This red marker will show up even if the enemy is prone or lying in wait to stand up and attack.
Next time you enter a new room, do a quick sweep of the area in front of you with the javelin out — you don’t even have to actually throw it and use up the energy, just scan everything with your reticle to make sure nothing is ahead of you.
Gear sets
Khazan’s loot economy is heavily reliant on gear sets. Almost every bit of armor you pick up will be a part of a set and you only need to equip two of them at the same time to start getting the additional benefits. Equipping more than two will grant more bonuses. Even though you may have found a stronger set of boots, keep in mind the gear combinations when deciding what to wear — and which set bonuses you’ll get up just to boost stats. It’s also convenient that the shop, where you can sell off unwanted armor, has a toggle to avoid any gear sets when mass dumping.
Back buttons
In order to use items you have to rely on the D-pad. These can be anything from throwables to healing, and as such they’re extremely important. However, using the D-pad is difficult since it means taking your thumb off the left analog stick, which is used to move around and away from danger. Trying to heal yourself while running from a difficult boss is something everyone is going to run into sooner or later.
This is a great opportunity to use the extra back-of-controller buttons if you’re playing on a pro controller, such as the DualSense Edge. With the four back buttons, you can assign each D-pad direction to one of them. This will let you heal (up) as well as scroll the item bar (left and right) and use the item (down). If you only have two back buttons I would recommend prioritizing up and down so you can heal and have at least one item always available to use easily.
