Kusan: City of Wolves Review

Circle From Dot's debut action game borrows the best parts of Hotline Miami while building its own identity through satisfying progression, a cyberpunk setting, and an ambitious story.

Whenever a game openly takes inspiration from one of the most influential indie titles ever made, comparisons are unavoidable. That's exactly the situation Kusan: City of Wolves finds itself in. Created by Korean studio Circle From Dot, Kusan: City of Wolves instantly reminds us of Hotline Miami with its top-down perspective, fast-paced room-clearing action, pixel-art presentation, and punishing gameplay. 

Where Hotline Miami has psychological storytelling and an intentionally mysterious narrative, Kusan is a lot more straightforward. It combines cyberpunk themes, military conspiracies, supernatural powers, and comic book storytelling into a world that feels larger in scope than the gameplay initially suggests. 

Circle From Dot’s first big project is clearly ambitious, with stylish action, RPG progression, and a story about corruption, loyalty, and the consequences of turning people into living weapons.

You are Jin, a former soldier now working as a fixer and gunslinger in the fractured city of Kusan. An ordinary rescue mission becomes something much bigger when Jin learns the kidnapped girl he is trying to save has incredible psychic powers linked to Project Origin, a secret government experiment. 

The story takes you on a journey that puts you between government agencies, military officials, scientists, criminal organizations, and the Diamond Wolves, a group of ex-soldiers who believe the country has betrayed the people who fought to defend it. Each faction thinks they're trying to save the country. 

Each has their own way of doing it, their own reasons. Some see the child as a weapon that can change the future, while others just want to prevent another disaster from happening. Long-buried secrets surrounding the war begin to come to light, and Jin slowly finds himself questioning who to trust.

The story is told through beautifully illustrated comic-book panels that help set Kusan: City of Wolves apart from other games of the genre. We’re not doing environmental storytelling here, but simply showing conversations on the surface and letting the world develop slowly with each mission. 

You learn of artificial psionic beings, of unethical military research, of political corruption, and of experiments that forged children capable of devastating destruction. In the course of the campaign, Jin again meets old comrades, who, through their wartime experience, have come to very different conclusions about justice and sacrifice.

One of the more compelling things about the story is how it avoids portraying either side as being completely right or wrong. 

The Diamond Wolves aren’t just bad guys who want to destroy the world. They believe they are fixing years of government corruption and honoring soldiers who were sacrificed for political gain. Likewise, the government officials are not portrayed as evil either, as some of them are genuinely trying to prevent another disaster, even if their methods are questionable. 

The emotional focus remains on the children of Project Origin. They are not thought of as mere characters but rather as military assets with the potential to set off massive psionic explosions. A lot of the story is about Jin starting to see them as victims, not weapons, and protecting them from those who only see their destructive potential. 

Either way, it’s not a perfect story. Kusan has a surprisingly large cast of characters, as well as a large number of government agencies, scientific ideas, military groups, and technical terms. The world-building is ambitious, but the amount of information presented in a relatively short span can be overwhelming at times. 

Some supporting characters receive little development before they fall out of the spotlight, and several conversations rely heavily on exposition to explain the game’s lore. Hotline Miami is minimalistic in its storytelling, while Kusan sometimes talks more than it needs to.

But the setting is unique, and the pacing is steady enough to keep the overall story compelling. Between the mystery of Project Origin, Jin’s relationship with his old comrades, and the conflict between loyalty and morality, you get enough thrust to keep you engaged through the course of the campaign. 

As soon as you start your first mission, the gameplay immediately sets its pace. 

Each level is broken up into tight arenas full of enemies to kill before you can move on. You have to be able to quickly read a room, see what immediate threats are there, and react before the enemy can overwhelm you. Most attacks are lethal. All encounters require fast thinking and precise execution, not mindless aggression.

Jin’s main weapon is the War Hand, a mechanical gauntlet that can instantly crush enemies in close range. Most fights kick off with aggressive close quarters, forcing you to zip from one enemy to the next without pausing for a breath. Once you get to grips with the layout of each level, charging into a room, smashing enemies into walls, breaking furniture, and clearing an area within seconds makes for an incredibly satisfying gameplay loop. 

Combat gets much deeper as you unlock more abilities. The Quantum Knife is one of the earliest and most useful tools, automatically targeting enemies nearby and coming back to you once you retrieve it. Initially it is simply a basic ranged attack, but upgrades later on will make it one of your most useful weapons. 

You will also have guns like pistols and crossbows in addition to melee combat, giving you more tactical options. Some enemies are much easier to handle from a distance before charging into close combat, while others force you to constantly switch between ranged attacks and melee strikes depending on the situation. 

One of Kusan’s biggest improvements over its inspiration is its progression system. You don't have to rely purely on your skill as a player from start to finish, as each mission you complete gives you resources that can be used to purchase new abilities, weapon upgrades, and passive enhancements. 

Upgrades are not a traditional skill tree, but rather chips that have to fit into a finite grid, meaning you have to think carefully about which abilities are worth equipping. Some of them increase your movement speed. Others increase your weapons, knife techniques, inventory space, or unlock new combat techniques. 

Kusan: City of Wolves also adds replayability with its ranking system. 

Each level has a grade depending on how well you performed in total. The cleaner the run and the quicker you finish it, the better the grade. You can earn S or SS ranks, which will earn you more money and encourage you to replay older levels and improve your performance instead of just rushing through. 

Upgrades have a noticeable impact on future missions, so you never feel like you're wasting time revisiting stages. As Jin gets stronger, you can get more creative with your combat approach, letting you chain together attacks that weren't possible in the opening chapters.

Combat is the main experience, but Kusan does slow the pace down sometimes with light environmental puzzles. These sections typically involve hitting switches, locating security cards, unlocking pathways, or using machines before moving to the next combat area. The puzzles fortunately never get too complex, and that’s ultimately for the best. 

Instead of slowing down the action with long problem-solving sequences, they give you brief respite before plunging you back into another heated battle. Exploration is also a minor factor, providing you with upgrade materials and optional resources if you thoroughly scour each level.

Combat remains the core of the experience, and for the most part it succeeds in its goals. Every room is like a puzzle where success depends on reading enemy positions, prioritizing dangerous targets, and combining your abilities efficiently. Occasionally the best answer isn’t to charge in the front door. 

Occasionally it’s best to take out gunmen from a distance before going after the melee enemies, while other scenarios reward aggressive movement and perfectly timed knife throws. When your abilities start to synergize, combat becomes a satisfying rhythm, and clearing an entire room without taking a single hit feels all the more rewarding.

The enemy variety increases steadily throughout the campaign.

You will face armed soldiers, shielded enemies, ranged attackers, environmental hazards, automated defenses, larger elite enemies that force you to change your strategy, and basic melee opponents. Boss fights are also fairly frequent, offering larger arenas and different attack patterns that help to break up the standard room-clearing formula. 

Some of these encounters are exciting highlights; others lean too much on visual chaos rather than clearly communicating enemy attacks. There’s a handful of bosses that can be frustrating for reasons apart from difficulty, especially with occasional camera limitations and crowded arenas.

Even the combat system isn't without its flaws. Usually, movement is responsive, but there are times when the lock-on system struggles to keep up in larger encounters, resulting in attacks that hit enemies you didn’t mean to attack. 

Parrying also becomes an important mechanic later in the game, rewarding precise timing with opportunities to counterattack immediately, but the timing window can sometimes feel inconsistent. Others use the most unlikely directions to place enemies or position ranged attackers just outside your line of sight, resulting in deaths that seem more unfair than they are. 

Whatever the issues, Kusan always rewards improvement. Combat gets smoother the more you know what enemy behavior is like, experiment with different upgrades, and master Jin’s growing arsenal. Instead of simply making numbers bigger, progression opens entirely new ways to approach encounters. 

Visually, Kusan: City of Wolves is one of the strongest indie action games recently. 

While its top-down perspective immediately recalls Hotline Miami, the cyberpunk setting gives it a personality of its own. There is a lot of detailed pixel art in neon-lit streets, military compounds, research laboratories, abandoned buildings, and snowy battlefields. 

The character designs are equally memorable. The cast is made up of anthropomorphic animals rather than humans, which gives the world a unique style that surprisingly works well in a futuristic setting. Story scenes are presented through beautifully illustrated comic-book panels that provide personality to conversations and make major plot moments more cinematic. 

The soundtrack is probably the best thing about it. Electronic beats, hip-hop influences, synth-heavy tracks, and atmospheric music are constantly driving the action forward, creating the same adrenaline-fueled energy that made Hotline Miami’s soundtrack so iconic. 

The music makes each big fight more exciting, with the softer songs playing during story moments letting the story breathe before jumping into the next fight. The sound effects are equally satisfying, as every punch, gunshot, explosion, and enemy kill has enough impact to make combat feel responsive and rewarding. 

Kusan: City of Wolves draws heavy inspiration from Hotline Miami but never feels like it wants to be a straight-up copy of a winning formula. Circle From Dot builds on those foundations with RPG progression, a cyberpunk Korean setting, comic-book storytelling, and a greater emphasis on customization. 

While the similarities are impossible to ignore, Kusan: City of Wolves slowly carves out its identity with satisfying combat, meaningful upgrades, memorable presentation, and a story that explores loyalty, corruption, and the cost of treating people as weapons.

Not all systems can achieve their full potential. 

The story can feel bogged down by its characters and terminology, some boss fights are more about spectacle than reading the fight, and the lock-on system can make some encounters more frustrating than necessary. But these flaws hardly take away from what Kusan: City of Wolves got right. 

If you want a stylish top-down action game that builds on a familiar formula rather than just rehashing it, Kusan: City of Wolves is a rewarding experience. It might not topple the classic that inspired it from its perch, but it’s proof that Circle From Dot has the creativity and ambition to build something that’s worth playing on its merits.