Wuchang: Fallen Feathers (2025)

Played a fair bit of this last night. I'm liking it so far, to my surprise. Combat feels good and while there is some complexity, it's well paced. A bit too dodge-heavy for my liking, but things improved a bit when I got the parry ability. The default sword is also on the slow side, but then I got a quicker one-handed sword with the strangest animation that locked me into a long series of attack even after one press of the attack button, so I went back.

This seems all right based on a first impression including just a few bosses and bonfire-equivalents. I’ve had a bunch of worse first sittings with other Soulslikes, but there are so many games in that lane nowadays, and frankly only a few from anyone other than From Software have truly grabbed me. No particular charm or thematic uniqueness to this one early on outside the mysterious concept that your character is going through a “feathering” which gives their arm feathers and special abilities. Kind of interesting I guess what they’ve done with weapons and attacking, as not every weapon can block and they have used L1/L2 for abilities that gain extra power from dodging attacks. You’re a bit low on stamina I feel at the start of the game, so have to definitely take your time, but you’d seemingly be rewarded for learning the enemy movesets well to get up and dodge them and deal more damage. Along those lines there also seems to be some kind of risk-reward mechanic where you build up “madness” by dying that causes you to both deal and take more damage (I think—they dump a lot of info and mechanics on you early on). I’m not that into the initial feel of the combat, but it seems fine. For those who do like playing numerous Soulslikes per year and doesn’t really care if they aren’t the most original-feeling game, particularly if you would be interested in something that seems to emphasize dodging and has a big skill tree, this could be worth trying. I’ll probably skip the rest of it myself.