The First Berserker: Khazan opens with its hero already broken. General Khazan, the man who saved the Pell Los Empire from the Berserk Dragon Hismar and the Dragon Legion, is dragged through Mount Heinmach with his tendons severed and exiled as a traitor. He was branded a traitor along with his best friend, the mage Ozma. That is the setup Neople hands you, and it is a smart one: no training montage, no chosen-one preamble, just a great general reduced to a body that barely works.
The game launched March 27, 2025, for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S and PC. A deluxe edition arrived three days earlier, on March 24, ahead of the regular release. It carries a Metacritic score of 8.4 out of 10 on PC. That number is about right, and this review explains why.
Trailer, via The First Berserker: Khazan.
A Ghost, an Avalanche and a Truce
Khazan’s escape is not his own doing. As Pell Los soldiers escort him through the mountain range, a ghost looking for a host to exist in the mortal world picks him. The ghost causes an avalanche, breaks Khazan’s chains, and possesses him. His wounds heal. His body stops being entirely his.
He fights wildlife and Pell Los soldiers while wrestling for control of himself, then passes out from exhaustion. Quimuk, an elderly shaman of the Bantu Tribe, finds him and takes him to an ancient warrior’s trial, where Khazan meets the ghost face to face. It calls itself the Blade Phantom, an aggregation of warriors who died in combat.
Khazan beats it.
Then he does something more interesting than winning: he offers a truce instead of expelling the dead warriors, trading the Phantom’s powers for the warriors’ help. The Phantom explains the stakes. Souls are entering the Netherworld out of balance, and their master Charon sent them to find and stop the cause. Khazan gets revenge; the dead get order restored.
Fighting With an Empty Stamina Bar
Combat runs on stamina, and stamina runs out. Attacking and defending both drain it. Empty the bar and you are temporarily helpless — not staggered, not punished, just useless. Enemies carry their own stamina bars, and draining theirs staggers them in a way that will feel familiar to anyone who played Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice. The game wants you aggressive, because a passive player lets enemies recover.
Blocking mitigates most incoming damage. Perfect blocks, parries and reflections do better than mitigate — they cut enemy health and stamina. Spirit points build during a fight and pay for weapon skills that cost no stamina, which gives you something to spend when the bar is dry.
Healing is scarce. Checkpoints hand it out, exploration unlocks more, and that is the whole supply. Three weapons cover the range: a well-balanced dual-wield axe and short-sword, a slow heavy great sword, and an agile long-range spear.
| Weapon | Speed | Range | Best For |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dual-wield axe and short-sword | Balanced | Close | Players who want no clear weakness |
| Great sword | Slow, heavy | Close | Players who accept risk for damage |
| Spear | Agile | Long | Players who want space to breathe |
Gold, Lacrima and the Walk Back
Loot is random. Equipment upgrades drop from levels, defeated enemies and chests. Individual weapons and armor carry rarity levels, random damage and defense values, and bonus attributes like stat bonuses. Matching a full set of gear unlocks predetermined set bonuses, which gives the random drops a target to chase.
Two currencies run the economy. Gold buys consumables and new equipment. Lacrima levels up character stats. Die and you lose every unspent Lacrima — unless you walk back to where you died and pick it up without dying again, the standard Soulslike bargain. Boss fights soften the blow: die to a boss and the game awards bonus Lacrima based on how much damage you dealt before losing.
The Cel-Shaded Empire and Its Allies
The First Berserker: Khazan is set in a fictional European-inspired medieval fantasy world inside the Dungeon & Fighter universe, rendered in a 3D cel-shaded, anime-inspired style. It is a third-person, single-player action RPG with hack-and-slash bones.
Khazan does not travel alone. His former soldier Tristan joins him, along with shield maiden Elamein, blacksmith Qazumaka and Netherworld messenger Daphrona. The plot eventually confirms that Ozma was executed, which reframes the revenge story: the friend Khazan was branded a traitor beside is already gone.
The Blade Phantom arrangement is the narrative engine. Khazan hunts the people who betrayed him across the Pell Los Empire while fighting supernatural creatures that do not belong in the mortal world. The two goals — his revenge, the Phantom’s balance — pull in the same direction, which keeps the campaign from feeling like two stories stapled together.
Where the Difficulty Actually Lives
The stamina system is the whole game, and it is a better idea than a damage number. When attacking costs the same resource as defending, every fight becomes a budget. The aggressive approach the game encourages is not a style preference; it is the mechanically correct answer, because a recovering enemy is a longer fight, and a longer fight is more chances to run dry.
That said, the scarcity of healing is the sharper edge. Checkpoints and exploration are the only sources, and exploration is not always an option when a boss is standing in front of you. The bonus Lacrima for boss damage is a thoughtful mercy — it means a failed attempt still moves your character forward — but it does not make the attempts themselves kinder.
The random loot is the weakest part. Rarity levels, random damage values and bonus attributes on individual pieces mean your build depends partly on drops, and set bonuses pull against that randomness by rewarding a full matching set. It works, but it asks you to care about gear rolls in a game whose best moments are about stamina discipline.
What the Truce Costs
Khazan offering the Blade Phantom a deal instead of expelling the dead warriors is the best writing in the game. He is a general who lost everything to a treason charge he did not earn, and his first act of freedom is a negotiation with something that wants to use his body. The Phantom gets a host; Khazan gets power he did not earn and cannot fully control. Neither side pretends otherwise.
The alliance also gives the campaign a second clock. Charon sent the warriors to find why souls are piling up in the wrong place, and that mystery sits alongside the revenge list. The allies Khazan collects — Tristan, Elamein, Qazumaka, Daphrona — join him on that journey.
If there is a complaint, it is that the revenge thread and the cosmic thread do not always share scenes. Khazan’s personal betrayers and the supernatural creatures that do not belong in the mortal world are separate problems for long stretches, and the game is more compelling when they collide.
The Verdict on The First Berserker: Khazan
The First Berserker: Khazan understands that difficulty is a design choice, not a personality. Stamina management gives every fight a shape, the three weapons genuinely change how you approach that shape, and the Blade Phantom truce gives the violence a reason beyond revenge. The cel-shaded look holds up, the Dungeon & Fighter setting gives Neople a deep well to draw from, and the boss-fight Lacrima bonus is the kind of small mercy more games in this genre should copy.
The random loot and the split narrative keep it short of greatness. Gear rolls undercut a combat system that is otherwise about player discipline, and the revenge plot and the Netherworld plot take too long to braid together. Still, this is a hardcore action RPG that trusts its players to manage a resource instead of memorizing a pattern, and that trust pays off across the campaign’s length.
The First Berserker: Khazan earns an 8.4 out of 10. It is a punishing, well-built game with a clear idea of what it wants from you, and it mostly delivers on that idea.
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