The First Berserker: Khazan vs. AI Limit: Double Demo Impressions

2025 has had a relentless video game release schedule, and on March 27th we have not one but TWO Soulslikes dropping head-to-head on the same day. But (luckily for me), both have released demos ahead of launch and are offering some unique enough experiences that I feel compelled to sit down and write about how they measure up.

The Soulslikes in question are The First Berserker: Khazan and AI Limit.

Khazan is set in the Dungeon & Fighter universe, coming from developer Neople and Nexon for PC, PS5, and Xbox Series. Regardless of the DNF connection, the game’s trailers have managed to stir up a buzz at a Keighley event here or there when dropping some fast, flashy looking gameplay. Plus, the demo seems to have lit a fire for pre-orders as well.

AI Limit is likely the lesser known of the two, coming from an indie developer (Sense Games) under Sony’s China Hero Project publishing label. Unsurprisingly, that means the game is hitting PC and PS5, but not Xbox.

While both of these games fall under the ever-widening umbrella of the Soulslike genre, they offer two pretty distinct flavors of Souls. After playing through the roughly 2-hour demos, here’s a breakdown of my impressions for each.

Up first: AI Limit

Let’s start with how AI Limit both follows and puts a “twist” on the Soulslike formula. Of course, to even be a Soulslike, it has a “souls” mechanic (meaning you accrue experience, but don’t level up until you rest at a save point and allocate said experience into various stats). However, in this game you don’t drop all your XP at a grave that you can recover after death. Rather, you permanently lose a set portion of your XP when you die.

For combat, it has your standard light and heavy attacks with options for dodging and guarding, albeit not governed by stamina in this case. Your attack patterns and animations depend on your weapon type or class (think longswords, great swords, dual blades, etc.).

But where it changes things up is in its “Sync rate” system. Above your health bar, you’ll see a “sync” gauge, ranging from 0-100%. Your sync rate will increase as you deal damage, but decrease as you take it. You’ll also need to spend your sync rate to use any special attacks or spells that you unlock and equip.

It’s pretty easy to build up sync from attacking, and your strikes will get stronger the higher your sync rate goes. However, if you get hit enough and your sync rate drops, you’ll take more damage and you won’t be able to use your spells or abilities since it’s essentially acting as your mana pool.

Unfortunately, that means since AI Limit treats things like a parry as a special ability, your window to use anything beyond basic attacks and dodges is governed by how well you manage to hit vs. get hit. If done right, the balance can work – but if off by even a little bit, a system like this can frustrate players by putting a resource cost on essential pieces of your combat kit like a parry or a block that would greatly aid in the balance of dealing vs. mitigating damage.

In my time with the demo, I opted not to mess with the parry too much – which is very uncharacteristic for me. I typically lean hard into parry builds. The window felt too niche to be reliable as it’s a bit slow to activate and possibly hard to aim properly. I did mess with some ranged spells, but mostly focused on a block ability where – so long as your sync rate is high enough – you won’t take damage, but your shield will charge up after a few hits and let you eventually double tap the block button for a recoil blast attack.

Moving on from the combat for a minute, let’s talk world design and level layout. Visually, this game immediately reminds me of Code Vein. It’s black, white, and red all over with a dark anime aesthetic. Levels are mostly linear, with the occasional “must open from the other side” door that you’ll loop back around to and unlock as a short cut to a branch (aka bonfire) later.

You’ll come across some other obstacles that are a bit more dangerous than a locked door, but I’ll leave those as a surprise for people to discover on their own. (Warning: some of them bite. Or have giant lasers.)

During the demo, you’re in an abandoned, underground industrial building complete with dank dead-end locker rooms and sewers full of mystery goo. Enemies are dotted throughout, just about where you’d expect them to be if you’ve played any Souls-y games, and here’s where I made an observation that kind of sets the tone for how I came away from the demo:

The enemy design is extremely generic. Think Monster A from Grungy Industrial Plant B in Apocalyptic Wasteland C. None of them are going to be the kind of thing you remember after beating the game.

To be fair, the demo only featured one boss – so at least maybe some of the boss designs could stand out more later in the game. But my general impression is that they’re not going to be the most memorable things in the world.

And that kind of sums up what I was feeling when the demo ended. AI Limit is a “good enough” or “decent” Soulslike. Again, to bring up the Code Vein comparison, it feels like a mid-tier Soulslike experience – the kind of thing you can have fun with if it’s what you’re in the mood for and enjoy, but it’s probably not going to do enough to stand out.

Especially in a genre as increasingly crowded as this, having a really strong, unique, and instantly recognizable identity is important. And I just don’t know that this will have that for all but the most hardcore fans of niche Soulslikes.

You also really need to nail that gameplay feel. And while the Sync rate system seems like a cool twist, I don’t know that it actually added to the fun factor, at least for me. Putting a resource on things as fundamental as a parry or a block is always a risky gambit, and the speed of combat felt halfway between OG Dark Souls and more modern experiences like Lies of P, let alone something like Nioh or Nioh 2, which is to say it’s a bit slower and more methodically paced.

That isn’t inherently a bad thing, but as someone who cut their teeth with Nioh first, gameplay speed is something that always sticks out to me in Soulslike and even Soulslite experiences. Not everything needs to be super fast and twitchy all the time, but I have developed a preference for things that are maybe at least a half step faster than what AI Limit was serving in this demo.

One last thing I haven’t commented on yet is the game’s story. Again, I don’t know how memorable or compelling this aspect of the game is going to be. At least from what I played, it’s a serviceable “main character has no memory/doesn’t know what’s going on, the world has gone to hell, there are void monsters running around making chances of survival next to nil, and there’s a shrine maiden ghost lady who says go on the hero’s journey cause you hit start game, right?”

Wrapping things up, I don’t want to come down too harshly on AI Limit. For a small new team, making a game like this is way more impressive than most any privileged gamer is going to stop and admit. Even with backing from the China Hero Project, it’s no small feat to put together a challenging Soulslike experience with systems that will likely jive for a good number of its players.

And let me double click on that for a second – AI Limit is certainly challenging. Like, potentially quite a bit more so than the other Soulslike I’m about to discuss here in a minute. Your character does not feel like a tanky, resilient badass in this apocalypse. Rather, you are a vulnerable young girl in a very dangerous world, and that world has TEETH.

What’s more, with the lack of visibility and what will likely be a relatively small player base for AI Limit, I don’t foresee a lot of comprehensive guides being available to help players navigate these dark waters. Just consider this a quick warning on how approachable this Soulslike experience will be, especially for relative newcomers in the genre.

My final, final note though is one last thing in AI Limit’s favor: the price point. It’s going for $35 USD rather than a full $60-70 and I think that more than fairly represents the potential scope and depth of what’s on offer here.

So in that regard, it’s less of a steep uphill recommendation for anyone still interested in checking it out. Personally, I enjoyed the demo and have played many a “good, not great” Soulslike while still finding plenty of satisfaction in the experience. It all comes down to how you want to spend your time and money.

Onto the next: The First Berserker: Khazan

I’m gonna be honest: when we first saw the reveal trailer for Khazan, I thought it was a Team Ninja game. And when we found out that it wasn’t, I thought it was ripping off a Team Ninja game – but my defensive inner Nioh stan needed to calm down a bit. First impressions from a couple minutes of a gameplay trailer do not a whole game make.

That said, Khazan does fundamentally build itself around a lot of the Nioh DNA – albeit with some streamlining and simplifying in some areas, with some bits of iteration in others. Let me break it down.

Khazan is borderline Soulslite vs. Soulslike. It has a core “souls” mechanic in that you gather XP but don’t level up until you stop at a save spot and spend it on your stats. You will even drop your XP (or “Lacrima” in this case) when you die, leaving a grave behind that you can try to recoup. So it checks that essential risk/reward Souls RPG system box.

But much like the Nioh games, Khazan is almost half Souls and half character action game. What this means is that in addition to your core stats, you also have skill trees for all areas of your combat kit across each of the game’s weapon types. Some of these skills act as passive buffs, but a lot of them give you new moves and abilities, helping you build towards different types of combo strings.

Khazan’s gear system is also very Nioh-like. You’ll pick up loot pretty frequently for each of the game’s weapon types, armor slots, and accessories. Similar to most Soulslikes, weapons will scale better or worse with different stats and the weight of each piece of gear will add up to diminish your agility beyond a certain capacity.

However, if you’ve played Nioh, the gear menus will look extremely familiar as each piece of gear has the potential to have additional attributes like +6 frontal assault damage or +10% stamina recovery. Some of the armor you find will even belong to gear sets, wherein equipping more pieces of gear from the same set will grant you additional passive buffs.

Gear will also have both a level and a rarity, meaning that two versions of the same helmet can be better or worse depending on their level/rarity. I don’t know how much loot will be dropping in the full version of the game, but from the demo, signs point towards a potential gear-palooza. Hopefully, inventory management is generous and streamlined since that’s one of my major critiques for the original Nioh games themselves.

But that’s enough about menuing for now – let’s talk about that gameplay feel though.

Remember what I said earlier about AI Limit being that more mid-speed Soulslike action? Khazan is that one step faster that I am always personally looking for. It’s not quite as fast and twitchy as Nioh, but it’s got that good snap to it.

Per usual, you’ve got a light and heavy attack, with dodge and block/parry options all governed by a stamina bar. If your stamina fully depletes, you become temporarily exhausted and vulnerable. Progressing through the demo, you start with a dual wielding kit but eventually undergo trials to unlock other weapon types like a great sword and a spear, but personally I stuck to the dual wield – that’s generally my personal preference.

I also leveled and built around block and parry abilities more so than enhancing my dodge. My approach focused on timed blocks to decrease enemy stagger gauges, combined with some nasty strong/charged attack abilities that further punished their stamina. Once an enemy’s stance is broken, they become open to a brutal (aka visceral/riposte) attack for significant damage.

That said, you could take wholly different paths than I did – unlocking different combos or favoring different weapon types. While the Lacrima you spend to level up your stats is a permanent upgrade, you can reset any and all of your skill point allocations in the skill trees to mess around with the different techniques to see what suits your style.

I’ll quickly mention a couple other mechanics before I move on: in addition to your melee, you also unlock a javelin-style ranged weapon to help with stealth kills when creeping up for a backstab isn’t feasible amidst a mob.

Plus, on top of the standard block/parry abilities, Khazan has a burst counter mechanic that’s similar to the one in Nioh 2 where a red warning will flash with an audio cue, signaling you to time an additional button press in your parry or get wrecked by an otherwise unblockable attack.

Some notable differences rather than similarities to Nioh that I’ll point out are the absence of stance and ki pulse mechanics. In the Nioh games, you have low, mid, and high stances which change your movement speed and attack patterns. Plus you can time a button press to “ki pulse” and recover your stamina, even as you transition between stances mid-combo.

While those systems sing for me in Nioh, their absence here not only gives Khazan its own identity, it also simplifies the combat a bit since there’s a few less things to manage. That may make this a more approachable entry point for some players.

One other super random thing that I want to mention in relation to approachability is that it seems like even when you die, you may still accrue additional Lacrima. I didn’t die outside of a boss fight so I haven’t fully tested it, but when I picked up my Lacrima after dying to a boss, I found that the amount of XP had increased. I even gained skill points between boss attempts. This means that you can practice a boss fight without having to go grind trash mobs to still make progress on your build and I like that twist.

But speaking of the mobs, let’s talk about the level design I saw in the demo. Overall, I’d say it’s pretty akin to what you’d see in a Nioh or a Wo Long Fallen Dynasty, which is to say fairly linear but with a few twists and turns that double back around with some one-ways here and a ladder you can’t reach quite yet there. It’s not as widely linear as a FromSoft game, but it gets the job done for exploration.

Enemy placement and variety is pretty standard for the genre, with some human soldiers of the sword and bow carrying varieties, as well as some beasts ranging from poop-slinging monkeys to bears, boars, and WOW THAT’S A BIG GORILLA.

Given that Khazan is on the run after escaping a prison escort in the game’s opening scene, everyone and everything is out to kill you and your demon-possessed ass. I won’t delve too deep into the story bits, but again this is pretty standard Soulslike-fare, and I was able to follow along despite not knowing anything about DNF lore.

One cool note is that the titular Khazan is voiced by Ben Starr (aka Clive from Final Fantasy XVI) and this is a very different performance for him. It’s definitely something I’m keen to see more of, even if the story itself doesn’t ever grip me emotionally.

Looping back to the game design for a moment, I want to comment on Khazan’s overall aesthetics and visuals. Its character animations and effects are what initially evoked that strong Nioh impression for me in the trailers, but the game has this layer of cell-shading and almost dark comic book style to it that sets it apart.

Graphically, it ran fine on my base PS5 but it’s also not trying to do something as high fidelity as an Elden Ring or a Black Myth Wukong. There are fewer individual textures given the comic book-ish-ness of the art style, and things like the snow you’re walking on – while it does react to your character – it’s a more blocky, less precise impression in the environment.

While some may point to that as a sign of Khazan having a smaller scope or budget than some of the visual stunners we’ve seen in the Soulslike genre of late, it really doesn’t bother me personally. Give me a steady frame rate and whatever art style you want to create, and I’m happy. Not everything has to be or can be Lies of P (but like, also, can we still just pause and appreciate what a looker that game is).

Actually, I think that pause is a good place to wrap this up because I want to pose a somewhat related question: will Khazan be able to leave a lasting impact the way that Lies of P did? Personally, I don’t think so. It is so very hard to stand out in this genre, and do the gameplay loop significantly better than other Soulslikes – let alone actual Soulsborne games.

Another question: since I’m calling it even more of a “Niohlike” than just a Soulslike, could Khazan at least be to Nioh what Lies of P is to Bloodborne? (That is to say, a “next best thing” from not the original devs?)

Based solely on the demo and early impressions I’ve seen from others so far, I’m leaning towards no, not likely.

BUT.

Damn did I have fun with the demo and I can’t stop thinking about it. I got that tug. That desire to go back and kick ass even better than I did before. To push further with my build and see what nasty shenanigans I can get up to. I don’t expect a new Lies of PEAK with Khazan, but I do anticipate a “very good” to maybe even “pretty great” action game.

(The end of the demo also said the magic words: Your save data and progress will carry over to the final product.)

Conclusion

All said and done, those are just MY impressions from playing the demos for these two games. While I walked away from AI Limit going “alright, I see what you’re going for” and Khazan going “More. Now. Please and thanks.” – you may have a totally different experience. Both have the potential to be good, very good, or maybe even great games depending on what you like in your Soulslikes.

I’ll also just add a quick reminder that while demos are great and I wish more games had them, these are still just 1-2 hour slices of each game. I can’t tell you how the things I described will play out in the full games, not only because I don’t know the full content of the final products, but because the games themselves could’ve been retuned between the making of the demo and the release of the full game.

Case in point: the Lies of P demo scaled way more harshly on players, feeling quite a bit harder than it did come launch day. They also hadn’t quite perfected the dodge mechanic or something along those lines as I recall, making a small but significant change that made the day one version of the game feel significantly better to play.

But I’m starting to go on a tangent so I’ll stop it there and turn it over to you. Are you interested in either of these games? Have you played either of the demos? Are you diving in at launch this week or potentially planning a pickup down the line? Let us know!