Wuchang: Fallen Feathers evaluate
Wuchang: Fallen Feathers has nearly nothing so as to add to the soulslike style. For all of its 40-something hours of monster battles and weirdo NPCs, all it does is poorly imitate the perfect moments in FromSoftware‘s record of a lot better motion video games.
Have to Know
What’s it? An action-heavy soulslike set in a plague-stricken 14th century China
Launch date: July 24, 2025
Anticipate to pay: $49.99
Developer: Leenzee
Writer: 505 Video games
Reviewed on: RTX 5090, Intel Core i9 12900K, 32GB RAM
Multiplayer: No
Steam Deck: Verified
Hyperlink: Steam
Skimpy outfits, boring fight, and an empty world cheapen your entire expertise and bury the few issues it really does effectively. What’s left is a sport that always jogged my memory of all of the methods FromSoft has finished it higher and more often than not I needed I used to be simply enjoying the true factor.
I might lower Wuchang some slack if it hadn’t been 10 years since Bloodborne was launched. There are numerous soulslikes the place some sort of monstrous plague has damaged out in a city and a silent hero should struggle their approach to the supply.
In Wuchang, the folks of China aren’t turning into werewolves, they’re turning into birds. First they go blind and lose their reminiscences after which they flip into tortured avian creatures with boss well being bars. Your character, Wuchang, has it too, however most of her signs simply give her superior fight strategies.
A whole lot of the gear you’ll be able to put on barely covers her up and appears prefer it got here from a premium cosmetics store.
The one factor she really suffers from is progressively shedding her thoughts and reminiscence as you play, which often forces you to struggle a demon model of her to get your stuff again. In any other case, Wuchang appears to be doing advantageous. So advantageous that her physique stays completely doll-like to decorate up in garments which have completely nothing to do with the sport’s grotesque model of China through the Ming dynasty.
A whole lot of the gear you’ll be able to put on barely covers her up and appears prefer it got here from a premium cosmetics store—which it’ll have on launch (it wasn’t accessible in my pre-release copy). The sport is so unserious about this that the perfect armor for resisting a deadly standing affliction had me working round in my underwear.
It is onerous to really feel the gravity of the scenario as I wade by way of swimming pools of blood and hearken to the cries of people that have misplaced their family and friends to a horrifying illness after I’m enjoying a personality designed to be eye sweet. A part of what’s so compelling about FromSoft video games is the imaginative methods they mix horror and humor of their worlds, like carrying a ridiculous mushroom outfit that provides you immunity to scarlet rot in Elden Ring. As absurd as a few of the issues in its video games are, all of them are rooted in its fiction. Wuchang’s world would not really feel as deeply thought of.
Weapon mastery
Wuchang brings one admittedly intelligent thought to the weighty, punishing fight you anticipate from a soulslike. Narrowly dodging enemy swings or touchdown repeated hits allows you to weave in highly effective spells and distinctive assaults with out having to fret about draining a mana bar. Each weapon could make use of those particular reactions primarily based on the way you make investments your factors in Wuchang’s Path of Exile-sized ability tree. It is stuffed with minor stat upgrades to well being and harm and main nodes that provide you with distinctive strikes that usually grant you particular assault costs.
I invested in one-handed swords so that they passively fed me costs to make use of magic far more than you normally can in a FromSoft sport. Dashing towards an enemy to land just a few strikes and dashing again out to bathe them in explosive stars spoiled me on how slick Wuchang could possibly be throughout prolonged duels.
A boss struggle towards one other swordswoman performed like a dance as we clashed metal within the flooded ruins of a temple. After a flurry of slashes, she’d slam her foot down into the water, splashing the display simply as I dodged backward, Wuchang’s feathered arm igniting with a purple glow earlier than I let off one other volley of magic.
In these moments, Wuchang affords tense, Sekiro-like encounters that reward you for fastidiously contemplating your path by way of its large ability tree. Each level will increase your general power and incentivizes you to squeeze in particular assaults that result in even stronger assaults. It provides prolonged fights a satisfying loop that additionally knocks you out of enjoying the most secure approach potential.
Been there
You’d suppose borrowing from a few of the biggest motion RPGs of all time can be a good suggestion, however most of them do not work in a sport like Wuchang.
Exterior of the boss fights, nevertheless, Wuchang’s fight drags. There’s solely so many occasions I can kill the identical hunched-over man and his crawling skeleton sidekicks earlier than I go to sleep. A lot of the encounters are constructed like pace bumps on the highway to the following boss, and even after they do require slightly thought, they’re tips stolen proper out of FromSoft video games.
A number of hours into Wuchang I used to be tiptoing throughout picket planks in a poison-filled space which may as effectively be Darkish Souls’ Blighttown. Quickly after, I used to be sprinting previous monsters to trace down the necromancer who was endlessly summoning them—a nuisance I handled in loads of FromSoft video games. And in some way the designers of Wuchang thought combating by way of an space the place a deadly standing impact always builds up on you’ll be enjoyable regardless of it being the worst a part of Bloodborne.
You’d suppose borrowing from a few of the biggest motion RPGs of all time can be a good suggestion, however most of them do not work in a sport like Wuchang. Not like FromSoft video games, Wuchang’s intensely darkish tone would not depart room for goofy deaths that really feel just like the designers pranking you. Enemies do not kick you off of ladders or knock you off of cliffs. Random deaths really feel incidental and irritating when there isn’t any indication that you have to be doing something however charging by way of to the following boss.
The sport makes it some extent to steer you again round to locations you’ve got been earlier than—a highly-praised facet of the unique Darkish Souls—however aside from just a few NPC aspect quests, there’s actually no purpose to backtrack. By the tip of my time with Wuchang, the nonstop references to higher video games had me questioning why I used to be even enjoying it within the first place.
Uninteresting blade
Every thing else in Wuchang is not any higher. While you’re not combating a single powerful enemy, fight turns right into a weightless spam-fest the place you attempt to kill the monster earlier than it hits you too many occasions. There is not any fastidiously buying and selling blows and ready for openings when each enemy stands there and allows you to hit them till they do not.
The intense lack of selection within the encounter design and the enemies themselves dulls 90% of the sport. The sections in between boss fights have been so empty that it nearly felt I used to be enjoying a sport from a distinct staff.
It would not assist that I spent plenty of time in Wuchang utterly misplaced in its maze of filth paths and ladders. Pacing round every stage searching for stragglers who may lead you to the following place you want to go is a chore, particularly when all of it has a form bland hyper-realistic sheen to it. A sundown peeking by way of lifeless timber as you enter a brand new space is fairly to have a look at for just a few seconds, however I am undecided what it is doing in the identical space you move by heaping piles of skulls and rotten meat.
With out one thing tying these two wildly completely different visuals collectively, Wuchang begins to seem like a confused Unreal Engine tech demo, not a definite world made to speak one thing core to its identification.
All of the incoherence retains me from latching onto something in Wuchang, particularly as soon as I understood every thing I did discover pleasurable would finish abruptly and kick me proper again out into the monotony of dangerous FromSoft impersonations. A handful of tightly-designed boss fights cannot save a sport so bereft of a persona.
It is disappointing for a sport that might’ve landed someplace nearer to Black Delusion: Wukong, an motion sport that dabbles in soulslike components however leans on martial arts and Chinese language mythology as its most important draw. Even FromSoft’s personal Nightreign twists what you’d anticipate out of its video games and injects slightly Fortnite into what’s successfully a boss rush mod. Each video games produce one thing new with the style that also incorporates acquainted components of it. Wuchang is way too spinoff for its greatest moments to shine, leaving it to be buried by the ever-growing pile of forgettable soulslikes.