Kusan: City of Wolves Review - Wrong Number.

Ole Gamer Joe
56 minutes ago
6 min read

Whenever you set out to make a game inspired by one of the greatest indie releases of all time, expectations are going to be sky‑high. Hotline Miami is one of the reasons I started this channel, so I’ll preface this review by saying that yes, I’m a diehard fan through and through. Over the years, we’ve seen indie developers try to capture its visceral one‑hit‑kill magic, and some have come moderately close. I adored 2023’s criminally overlooked OTXO, and I’ve had a blast with other similar releases such as Ape Out, Katana Zero, and The Hong Kong Massacre. But nothing has fully matched its heart‑pounding mechanics, subwoofer‑rattling soundtrack, or mystifying narrative that sent more than one redditor spiraling down a rabbit hole.

That’s not going to stop Kusan: City of Wolves from trying.

For all the similarities Kusan shares with the game that inspired it, the story isn’t one of them. Developer CIRCLEfromDOT delivers an in‑your‑face narrative wrapped in gorgeous comic‑panel artwork, yet the substance underneath doesn’t quite keep pace.

Things actually start out promising: a dark corridor opens into a snowy battlefield littered with explosions and carcasses. The bass hits, the screen shakes, and the stage feels set for something big. Unfortunately, that opening ends up being the high point of Kusan’s entire story, a script filled with long, drawn‑out cutscenes that can, mercifully, be skipped… most of the time.

Part of what made Hotline Miami special was how little it told you. Its world, characters, and lore were mysterious, fragmented, intentionally sparse. Kusan goes in the opposite direction. You’re introduced to a dizzying parade of forgettable characters, cryptic references to test subjects, gangs, research institutions, and honestly, more threads than I can remember. Even scrolling back through footage to piece things together feels exhausting.

Long story short: you play as a soldier named Jin, you fight the bad guys, there’s a woman with superpowers to be saved, and the city is on the verge of collapse. Look, I don’t need my video game narratives to rival the great English philosophers of the world, but if you’re going to include this much story, it at least needs to be engaging — and Kusan never quite gets there.

So the writing is a bit bollocks. Fine. We’re here for the action. Unfortunately, the news isn’t all good there either. You ever just… not click with a game? Something felt off to me in the way Kusan played. It’s a punishing top‑down romp as promised, no doubt about that, but one that feels too weighty, never allowing me to get into a proper flow state. The game wanted me to combo away and glide from foe to foe as if I had the capabilities of Batman in an Arkham game (which, spoiler, you don’t), but trying to utilize guns, a throwable knife, and your main weapon, The War Hand, molded my hands into uncomfortable positions I haven’t experienced since the ninth grade, when I was convinced yoga lessons would make me flexible enough to give myself a blow job. This might feel better for those of you who excel with mouse‑and‑keyboard, but that leaves a lot of pad‑based players out.

The game is broken up into chapters featuring 54 stages, probably landing somewhere in the 6–8 hour range for a skilled player with tremendous luck, and much longer for poor suckers like me who will die five million times. But let’s be fair… You EXPECT this game to be tough, and in that regard, it delivers. Enemies swarm you like flies on shit, and one hit almost certainly means the end unless you are able to pull off a very carefully timed and unresponsive parry. You clear rooms, break LOTS of stuff (some optionally), and die more than you succeed, instantly thrust back into the action with each failure. It’s a brutal loop, and while it doesn’t feel as snappy or rewarding as it should, the essence of Hotline Miami is absolutely here.

What’s not here is tight level layout or reasonable balance. Too often Kusan feels random, or like death wasn’t actually my fault. It’s infuriating to carefully traverse room by room, pulverizing everything in your path, only for some little nerd with a gun to pop out of nowhere, go “BOOP,” and end the run you’ve been praying wouldn’t reset itself. Challenge? Sure, I’m game. I never got all that frustrated playing Hotline Miami because it was fun! Dying out of nowhere thanks to an unresponsive knife and a lock‑on system that barely functions? No thanks. Add in a dizzying array of enemies charging at you from all angles, levels with cars and other odd obstacles ALSO trying to kill you, random lasers and contraptions, and well… I need some Advil. There’s a ranking system meant to incentivize moving faster and doing better, but I didn’t feel motivated to try again when the first run was more annoying than fun. Some of this could potentially be down to my own personal set of skills I suppose, but being at least a solid player that has reviewed well over 1000 games on this channel, much of it seemed to be poor game design. The occasional boss battle only added to my frustration, which are baffling, dizzying arrays of color that make little to no sense, bested through frantic button‑mashing and hope.

The game tries to balance its mechanical shortcomings with various upgrade options. There’s a decent amount of firearms and weaponry, some of which can be boosted for extra damage. There are also moves to learn, like volleying your knife back and forth which in a better game, could have been pretty cool. But the upgrade system itself feels odd, more akin to a survival horror game. Bolts earned through violence let you buy upgrade chips that snap into a grid, classic Resident Evil‑style, think of 4 specifically. Space is limited, forcing you to think outside the box or unlock new slots. Getting the best stuff involves being really good at the game and well, we’ve been over that. I’m not sure why the developers chose this system for a game that didn’t need it, but it’s here, and I didn’t enjoy dealing with it. To the game's credit, this does allow for some customization for those that really enjoy tinkering around with configurations. The only other notable mechanics are a few simple puzzles towards the end of chapters, involving hitting or shooting switches in specified orders, frustrating in their own right and not requiring much thought.

Kusan’s biggest strength is its excellent pixelated visuals and sound design. They’ve nailed the look of Hotline Miami, with no shortage of retro‑infused bloodshed. Enemy designs are solid, the lighting is nice, and animations aren’t too shabby either. It’s also hard not to appreciate those beautiful comic‑book panels, even if I didn’t care about the dialogue inside of them. This is a great‑looking indie release with a phenomenal, eclectic soundtrack. Lounge music, bumping electronica, Gorillaz‑esque beats, it’s genuinely solid stuff. In fact, oddly enough, I would advise the purchase of this soundtrack over the game itself.

In the end, I can’t say Kusan: City of Wolves is the worst game I’ve played this year, but what’s frustrating is how close it feels to being at least a pretty good one. With refinements to the combat engine, a revamped story, and a more accessible upgrade tree that doesn’t have me trying to fit my stuff into Jill’s box (which I am normally fine with), this could have been a standout release. Instead, it stubs its toe one too many times to recommend outside of a sale. Those few moments of excitement do show up, and the graphics and audio are great, but in a world where fifty games drop a day, I fear it doesn’t do enough to avoid getting lost in the shuffle. It runs fine without any major bugs outside of getting hung up on a few walls, but in the modern day of video games, being merely functional just isn’t enough, especially when players are onto the next adventure so quickly, or ya know, playing the zillionth round of Fortnite instead. Kusan is one of the most blah games I’ve played this year, earning itself the table lamp of mediocrity.