Legacy of Immortals is arguably one of the most visually distinctive Soulslike games in recent years.
Of course, I'm not just referring to its unique art style combining flesh mutation with the Napoleonic era, but also its distinctive "first-person Soulslike" gameplay label.
Since the game trailer was released, voices questioning "how to make a Soulslike in first-person" have been common in player communities. Such questions are understandable—most current Soulslike games use 2D side-scrolling or third-person perspectives, which better allow players to gather information and control distance, enabling more precise execution of actions during punishing labyrinthine exploration and combat. First-person perspective not only compresses the player's field of view but can also cause dizziness during rapid dodging and parrying, thereby restricting action interactions during combat.
However, the development team behind Legacy of Immortals is One More Level, creators of the Ghostrunner series, who clearly have accumulated experience in first-person high-speed action gameplay. This gives them an inherent advantage in creating a Soulslike game within a first-person action framework.
After being invited to preview two chapters of the game, I feel One More Level has effectively leveraged their experience from Ghostrunner—the first-person perspective hasn't hindered design but instead given Legacy of Immortals unique advantages distinct from other Soulslike games.
Within the familiar Soulslike combat mechanics revolving around stamina management for "attack," "dodge," and "parry," the greatest advantage of the first-person perspective is its immense immersion. From this viewpoint, you can see up close how monsters' flesh mutates and swells into grotesque lumps, sometimes half-encasing architectural fragments; when clashing blades with monsters, the blade seems to sweep past your cheek, with sparks from weapon collisions bursting directly out of the screen. Especially in elite and boss fights, the massive size of monsters, requiring you to look up, further amplifies the pressure brought by the first-person perspective.
But if the first-person perspective were only used to highlight immersion and pressure, Legacy of Immortals wouldn't be considered truly unique.
Legacy of Immortals is set during the Napoleonic Wars, a period when weapon systems centered on flintlock guns and smoothbore cannons had dominated European battlefields for over a century. However, limitations in firearm rate of fire and accuracy meant cold weapons still held decisive tactical value on the battlefield. This era of mixed cold and hot weapons provides the perfect backdrop for gameplay that combines shooting and melee offense and defense.
But this doesn't mean you can shout "Times have changed, my lord" at enemies in Legacy of Immortals and then pull off an American-style quick-draw.
Ammunition obtained during labyrinthine exploration is limited, and weapons using regular ammo don't deal high damage, so firearms cannot serve as the primary output method. Firearms only deal significant damage when shooting one-time weak points on monsters. This numerical design prevents turning the Soulslike experience into an FPS—at least in the test demo. Legacy of Immortals also features the almost essential level-up attribute system found in Soulslike games. Since the subsequent talent tree isn't open yet, I can't currently judge how much impact attribute choices in the full version will have on firearm output capability.
Meanwhile, destroying weak points offers high damage, high posture break, and drops "Nether Protein" (mana recovery pickups). Moreover, before obtaining specific melee weapons, weak points can only be destroyed through shooting.
Therefore, shooting mechanics in Legacy of Immortals are designed more as part of resource management and combat decision-making. Players can control the timing of breaking weak points through shooting to actively manage combat pace, especially during boss fights.
When a monster's toughness bar is nearly depleted, destroying its weak point can instantly stagger it into an executable state. When mana is exhausted, destroying weak points restores spellcasting resources, and you can even break them prematurely when mana is full, leaving recovery items on the ground to serve as "supply points" for planning your positioning during combat.
During labyrinthine exploration, shooting mechanics also introduce new environmental interactions, or rather, bring many common interaction methods from shooter games. Shortcuts aren't opened by pulling levers but through shooting. Environmental traps are similarly triggered by bullets, with powder kegs frequently appearing near enemies and carriages occasionally parked on slopes—one shot can cause large-scale explosions or crushing damage.
As for information acquisition issues during first-person combat, especially when surrounded by multiple enemies, Legacy of Immortals adopts industry-standard solutions—target locking, hostility indicators, and clear attack sound cues. Even when surrounded by multiple enemies, you can quickly determine the intentions of off-screen enemies through audio cues and indicators, allowing precise dodging or blocking reactions.
There are also some subtly handled details, small clever touches that aren't easily noticed: the larger the enemy, the longer their arms, and melee attacks generally have some knockback effect. But this knockback isn't a punishment; it serves to regulate engagement distance—when players block or get hit, they're pushed back a short distance, maintaining an appropriate position where they can clearly observe all enemy movements without being too far to counterattack. In my actual gameplay, the engagement distance between player and enemy naturally stayed within a range convenient for gathering information and interacting.
However, after integrating various gameplay elements, Legacy of Immortals' combat system faces one issue—too many actions lead to cramped key assignments.
Taking keyboard and mouse controls as an example, the movement system includes sprinting, dodging, and jumping; the melee system has blocking; and the shooting and spellcasting systems involve aiming, reloading, and weapon switching. In addition, there are multiple actions such as healing, environmental interaction, and quick item slots that need key bindings. As a result, actions that players are accustomed to mapping to the same key often conflict in key assignment.
For instance, since the quick item slot occupies number keys, single-handed weapons (spells) for left and right hands and two-handed weapons are placed in the same weapon wheel. To equip a specific weapon or cast a spell, players can't switch with a single key press but must cycle through preset orders in the weapon wheel. Additionally, commonly used combat interactions like "block" and "dodge" are assigned to Ctrl and Alt, which are inconvenient to press. For a Soulslike game requiring rapid correct responses within tight reaction windows under severe punishment, such key assignments are quite uncomfortable. Fortunately, the game offers customizable key bindings, allowing players to rearrange keys according to their habits, alleviating the key assignment issue to some extent. After assigning sprint and block to mouse side buttons, I found it sufficient.
As for the demo I played, Legacy of Immortals still has some rough edges. Enemy attack range detection occasionally deviates, causing some attacks that should hit or be parried to miss unexpectedly. Performance and optimization are also unstable, with noticeable frame rate fluctuations in certain areas. However, considering this is still a demo test version and there's time before the official release, the development team has ample opportunity to optimize and adjust.
But setting aside these technical flaws, Legacy of Immortals demonstrates a solid foundation and has formed a self-consistent gameplay system.
In recent years, with the surge of Soulslike titles, we've seen too many reskinned works. I'm not saying it's bad to follow a mature framework and deliver a product that meets standard expectations. However, people always enjoy things that defy expectations. After seeing and playing the same things over and over, fatigue is inevitable, and so is the desire for something fresh.
With its unique combination of first-person perspective and mixed cold/hot weapons, Legacy of Immortals brings something new to traditional Soulslike gameplay—although what it offers may not necessarily be better than the old ways, it rebelliously climbs over the wall to see different scenery.