Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty

• If you have some familiarity with Nioh 1 and/or 2, you'll probably recall that blocking was fairly strong there. The same applies here, but because Spirit takes place of Stamina in those games, you have to be more careful since if you hit -1000 Spirit, any hit at all whatsoever will immediately knock you down and you will probably die depending on the circumstances.

• You can perform a deflect out of a block, so if a combo is too tough to figure out, just find a blow that you can deflect and get some momentum going for yourself.

• Whenever you have positive Spirit stocked up, you can use the heavy attack (either on its own, or in the middle of a light attack combo) in order to cash it out and reduce their maximum negative Spirit gauge on top of dealing Spirit damage. Keep in mind that performing a finisher while they're staggered has a slight wind-up and if there is another guy who is in the fight, their attack could interrupt you and make you waste the opportunity.

• Some missions will saddle you with an AI partner automatically. If you let them get KO'd, you have a limited time to pick them up or else they will retreat from the battlefield until you hit up a battle flag for the reset. You should also be aware that if you call for help from an AI partner that isn't given to you by the mission and they retreat, they will not return to you and you will have to call for them again.

• Along with the above, if you are getting frustrated with the AI partner whether or not they're automatically assigned to you, there's an item in your inventory that will send them away. This is handy if the added HP on a specific boss fight is proving to be too troublesome, or if they keep getting downed because the AI is, frankly, kind of stupid at times.

• You can jump in this game and you can perform an aerial finisher if the enemy doesn't see you yet provided that you're high enough in the air for it. It's handy and you should look for good opportunities to bust it out and start (or end) a fight in style.

• Once you get a bit into the game, there's a free respec for your stats in case you want to experiment with spells and builds. No item, either; you just talk to a person.

• You can hit the deflect button when you fall from a high place in order to tuck and roll. This prevents fall damage, although don't expect to live through a really ridiculous fall.

• If you ever fall out of bounds (bottomless pit/water), you will be punted back to the last bit of ground you stood on and be left at 1 HP. Watch your step.

• Because of how the story progression works, it moves you from one main battlefield to the next unless there's a break, which I find to be annoying but I get why they did that. Anyway, you can always go to a battle flag and travel to any mission you want or to the base if you need to upgrade your stuff. If it's a sub mission or replay of a main mission and you finish it, you will be prompted to either try the mission again, return to your current main battlefield, or head back to base once you get that far in the game.

• Since spells and martial arts are tied to Spirit and no longer to items, you can use them as often as you want. The main issue is that doing it from 0 will most likely mean that you will hit -1000 Spirit (which also locks you out of doing any more spells and martial arts) and you need to start hitting people to get back into the positives again. Just mind what you're doing and you should be okay.