Wuchang: Fallen Feathers (2025)

I've got a lot of things to say about this game. After 22 hours and getting to level 99, I beat the final boss and all of the secret bosses. Throughout my time playing the game, I thought I was getting a lot of the NPC quests done, but by the end I realized that I was only accomplishing some of them. I think the easiest way to talk about this game is by saying it tries to have the level of combat that Lies of P has, and arguably there is more depth, but it doesn't feel as good. It also tries to have the exploration of the Dark Souls series, but is not as good at that either. Overall though, it is a fun time.Now to go into all my thoughts on the game

To start with things I liked. First, I'm so happy they have an actual transmog system for the armor. I understand why purists think Fashion Souls shouldn't have transmog but I've never agreed with that, so being able to use strong armor while making the armor look good was nice. I will say, it was annoying the process to try on new pieces of armor and swap them around and how there wasn't a favorites button, but I'll take what I can get. The outfit choices were pretty decent, there were a decent amount of gooner outfits but yeah that's just how it is, Wuchang did have some non gooner cool outfits though as well.

Next the combat. I think it's pretty good, but the way the dodge works both does and doesn't feel impactful. The dodge giving the feather ability does give a good bit of feedback, but by the end of the game, you're chaining dodges like 6 times in a row, and even though that happens in Dark Souls and other SoulsLike games as well, it doesn't feel as good in this game. Not a huge deal though. The weapon combat is pretty good, but I will say up front I basically just used one weapon all game. I tried going towards other weapons, and from what I tried, the other weapons were pretty fun, so I can't say it is a fault of the game that I stayed with one weapon the whole time. I think the magic system was kind of eh, most of them didn't feel very good, but that is also probably just because I didn't put many points into magic.

To quickly touch upon the story..... Uh it seems fine, from what I could gather playing the game, it is interesting enough. There's like a 1.5 hour YT vid on the lore that I will watch at some point. The ending options are very bland, and it is pretty annoying how easy it is to get locked into the bad ending while playing blind thinking the bad ending would actually be a good ending. But it's not a huge deal.

Enemies and bosses were ok. I think after the mid-game (I'll be talking more about this later), the bosses got much less difficult, and in general only like 3 or 4 were that memorable. The actual enemies in the environment were pretty cool and were a decent challenge sometimes.

Lastly, to talk about the exploration. The game is split up technically into 5 chapters, but it really feels like 4 chapters. I think I experienced the game different from most people, becasue while you can technically do chapter 2 or 3 in either order, there is kind of a set path for which one to tackle first, but I tackled what would be considered chapter 3 during chapter 2, so I was pretty OP once I ran back and did chapter 2's content, but that isn't really a fault of the game. I think chapter 4 and 5 felte really disjointed, and upped the problems I had with the exploration in the first 3 chapters. The game really tries to pull off a Dark Souls 1 with multiple paths that end up interconnecting, and sometimes it does it well, but sometiems there are just too many random pathways that lead to nothing. I will give it credit that there were a lot of times I thought it was too confusing, but then I took a step back and did appreciate how the level design was going. Really, my big problem is chapter 4 and 5, especially 5, because they feel so random and blah. IDK, I'm not smart enough to further describe it than that, but I just felt a massive downturn in quality in those two regions, even though I was still having a decent time.

All in all, I think it's a fun game, but for Souls game purists, I don't think they'd like it. Someone like me who likes Souls combat and doesn't care as much about the "soul" (haha) put into the worlds of Dark Souls games, I thought it was a good time. Not as good as Lies of P, I think there were just a lot of times in this game that was just kind of ok with not that many highs, but realistically, I didn't feel that many lows either. Some boss fights I did feel in the first like 5 times I fought them were too difficult, but then I realized I was usually doing something wrong, and I couldn't really blame the game that much. I also will give the game the grace that I barely interacted with a lot of the combat mechanics, and I still had fun with the combat, so that's something good. Originally, I was going to give this game a hgh 7, but after typing this all out, I feel like even though I won't really remember any specific part of this game for that long, I could see myself coming back and playing it again with like a totally different moveset and trying to get one of the (pretty bland) good endings. I'll definitely come back in the future if there is DLC. Final verdict from me, Light 8/10

Article: Wuchang: Fallen Feathers Review - Facing A Familiar Demon by Marcus Stewart

Score Report: 7.75 / 10

It’s very competent and enjoyable, but much of it feels like Soulslike junk food; tasty with a few neat ideas, but nothing will stick with me compared to more substantial offerings. Wuchang: Fallen Feathers may not revolutionize the genre, but it’s a good rendition of a favorite song.

Overall I liked it. Combat is decent and some bosses are neat.

The highlight is the level design, which is (most of the time) extremely dense. Every area has side paths that themselves have side paths, some of which also have side paths. Although I was a bit touch and go at the beginning, in the end I really enjoyed getting lost in the world, exploring all its nook and crannies.

As I said, combat is alright. I played exclusively with the longsword because it had a good balance between speed and damage, and it had a parry skill. Also, early on you get a whipsword with crazy range that is very fun to use. But there are also spears, hammers, dual swords and magic. Each branch of the skill tree has a lot of skills that can significantly change the flow of combat, so I'm sure there a lot to experiment (which is encouraged by the free and painless respec option).

There is also a fair bit of armour options and you an even modify the appearance of your gear, so item stats are not tied to looks. I spend a fair bit of time customising my look.

The last area was a bummer, though. Very linear, generic, and videogamey. A lot of activating switches to move platforms around that broke all the immersion that this was an actual world and not a videogame level. Followed by a disappointingly boring final boss. So the game ended on a sour note.

OK, I'm at the final boss and it's disappointing. On par with the lousy last level that preceded it, I guess.

I think I'm starting to understand that I generally don't like the giant monster bosses. They tend to be too unwieldy and have weird attacks that are not very well defined. They also tend to fuck the camera up, although to Wuchang's credit, the camera is behaving pretty well. The big monsters also require big arenas and if they are very mobile you end up running around most of the time (**stares at Elden Beast disapprovingly**). Being big, often the strategy is to stay right to their side where their attacks can't get you and hit them in the arse.

I very much prefer human-sized enemies with swords. I feel that their attacks usually have clear hitboxes so they are more satisfying to parry or dodge. Isshin being the quintessential example. Man, what a good fight.

The latter bosses are a bit disappointing, TBH. I think I'm overlevelled, which is strange for a mostly linear game, since bosses tend to be too easy and don't give me a lot of XP (the latest I beat didn't even give me a full level). They are also not very interesting to fight. A lot of dodging and backstabbing with not a lot of variety.

The last one was this misshapen monster that could barely touch me but was an insane damage sponge because I was meant to summon. But to summon you need to equip an item, which is not really possible mid-battle.

I would also brag about beating this boss on my first try, but honestly the fight was kinda boring. Between the AoE and bullethell atacks, I was always on the defensive. Besides, the fucker CHEATS. The light attack after a heavy attack would phase through her even though she wasn't dodging or even moving. Even the game registered the attacks as landing since the second light attack consistently gave me mana (the bright blue flash that also happens when I dodge), which they only do if they land.

The previous boss also cheated. He had an almost one-shot-kill grab attack which could ignore my counterattack stagger. And because that super armour would start before the animation, there was no way of knowing if it was safe to counterattack or not.

This has this "madness" mechanic. When you die or kill humans, your madness goes up and then it goes down when you kill certain types of monsters. More madness increases both damage dealt and taken and is tied to some skills, which only trigger at particular madness levels. At 100% madness, when you die you leave a hollow-knight-esque shade but much tougher and that will also attack enemies as well as you. If you kill it, madness resets.

You can also buy consumables at the cost of increasing your madness.

It's certainly an interesting system that could have the potential for varied gameplay and strategic use. But in practice is just not. I feel that there should be relatively straightforward ways of managing madness to make it strategic, but it only seems to go up, since you die a lot and you kill a lot of people and there's almost no way of reducing it. In boss-fighting mode, madness management is simply impossible: you will die a bunch to the boss and eventually get to max madness and stay that way because the shade doesn't appear in boss arenas.

There is also little point in not maxing madness, it seems. The increase damage taken is very small, if the internet is to be believed, and there are no skills that require low madness.

There's also the technical issue that killing the shade prompts a gigantic "Madness retreats" message that covers the screen. So if there are other enemies around, which there will be because it's where you died before, then good luck with that.

I played on PS5 without any major graphics or FPS issues but the game allegedly has very poor performance on PC so caveat emptor.

This game feels like it was made by someone who doesn't really understand the strengths of the soulslike genre- as if it was a pretty well made wukong clone that pivoted to a different genre to differentiate itself, and is worse off for that decision. Even its fan service-y depiction of the titular main character seems half-baked, as if they wanted to bait the stellar blade gooner crowd without actually sexualizing or empowering their voiceless, motivation-less nothing of a main character. Khazan's oft-shirtless hunk of an Adonis at least pretended to be part of the story, and AI limit's Arissa was charming and hardly sexualized, in terms of contemporary comparisons within the genre.

With that said this is likely the best version of bloodborne combat we'll get, easily surpassing wukong et. al. I don't know where exactly they can go from here in terms of keeping the combat simple like bloodborne and interesting, I think from a design perspective it comes down to encounter design and that's where wuchang excels. Bosses are near perfectly aggressive, suffocating until they aren't with diverse movesets and visual styles that can obfuscate the fact that you are just float-dodge-strafing around the boss in a circle over and over. The future of the genre is in rock-paper-scissor boss design (parry, dodge, spacing, gradient counter.. wait) but this game is the top of the pack when it comes to old school floaty iframe dodge combat design.

The game has the sekiro problem where it's humanoid bosses are truly amazing and its big monster bosses are just good, with occasional camera issues and a bit of hitbox jank.

The graphics are amazing, the snow level is ripped straight out of wukong but its still pretty cool, its sphere-grid style skill tree doesn't really work better than classic stat/skill points (and kills level 1 runs as skills and flask upgrades etc are locked behind mandatory stat improvements) but its fine and novel as long as you don't compare it to the classic customization and meaningful progression choices that are intrinsically and indelibly linked to the genre.

I think where this game struggles is that its big, interconnected mess of levels is cool, but unlike DS1 and its clones, this game doesn't really have meaningful build variety or interesting lore to find. So the big complicated levels don't really work as the incentive to explore is minimal. A wukong or god of war style curated hallway of boss after boss feels likes it would capitalize on the games strength, its combat and graphics, while minimizing its weaknesses. The pacing of the games near non-existant story is especially brutal if you full clear all the areas.

I also have to acknowledge that the general level design is kind of bad. It's going for a DS1 style sprawling mess, which I generally love, but the games non-boss enemies are so laughably easy that in order to create any friction or difficulty the devs added what can be colloquially known as 'bullshittery' to try and tax player resources as they progress through the levels. Unavoidable persistent status effects, barely perceptible traps, just tedious and annoying nonsense with no real counter-play that doesn't incentivize any interesting player behavior. This game desperately needed less environmental effects/traps and more poise/health/damage/moves for its basic and elite enemies. Luckily the devs already know they overdid with the environmental hazards as they already patched the snow land mines to presumably reasonable levels. I also think the average player is going to be deeply frustrated with the infrequency of bonfires, and literally everyone is going to hate the worthless long boss runbacks they selectively add to half the bosses for no reason.

I'll try and keep it brief as its something I harp on but the game has no pause button despite no multiplayer options, and no difficulty or accessibility options etc. Pathetic in 2025 yada yada yada.

The story is just ok and its fromsoft clone quest design and endings are pretty bleh and unsatisfying. The music is pretty okay with some good standouts. The graphics, quality and game length is great for its price point. Pretty good game that probably works better as a near-AAA action game rather than a watered down souls game that fixates on the outdated frustrations of the genre and fails to deliver on the parts that matter (atmosphere, customization, music, etc.).