Wuchang: Fallen Feathers - Review
The Ming Dynasty is at its end. Corrupted monsters are tearing the land of Shu apart, and you must assume the mantle of Wuchang. A pirate warrior who has been infected with the same Feathering that is destroying everyone. Amnesia wrecks your mind, but you know what you must do. Can you save this land?
Wuchang: Fallen Feathers is an action RPG Soulslike set in late part of the Ming Dynasty. Taking place in the lands of Shu, Wuchang strays somewhat from the traditional Romance of the Three Kingdoms themes that often accompanies games based in this period of Chinese history. Rather than focusing upon this exhausted and retold story, Wuchang takes parts of Chinese mythos and blends it with the supernatural. Wuchang looks to tell its own story in a setting that accentuates it, while feeling strangely and warmly familiar.
The visual design of Wuchang is incredibly striking from the word go. The environments feel familiar, reminiscent of that which we’ve seen in games like Nioh, Wolong and Black Myth Wukong, while still finding its own identity and unique take on the hyper-visualised Asian styling. There is a fluid feeling to the movement through the world, the way combat works and just in conversation with the various NPCs you’ll encounter throughout the game. Everything seems to have a reason, and the backdrops frame the path you’re meant to be following in a way that feels alive. It did take me a little bit of playing with graphics options to get the game running optimally and looking the right level of sharp. On higher settings the game feels a little too sharp and the design almost becomes washed out.
Thankfully though, despite looking so visually impressive and demanding the game runs incredibly well and smooth. I did run into frame rate issues but discovered that this was a bug revolving around using an Xbox controller on PC, which the developers have stated will be resolved in a Day One patch. Other than that, I didn’t experience almost any issues with performance.
Combat can make or break a Soulslike game. Some do it really well, like Lies of P, some do a middling job like Thymesia, and a lot do a horrific job with not fundamentally understanding how to make the combat challenging but engaging. Wuchang exists on the end of the spectrum with Lies of P. Combat feels slick and responsive most of the time. The weapons feel like they have the right impact and weight behind them. Heavy weapons feel heavier and cause more staggering, lighter weapons moving faster and making it feel more like a fast-paced duel. Different bosses will demand you play in a way that reacts to their style, which keeps you on your toes.
A gripe however is how actively the game tries to punish you for needing to heal. This becomes incredibly apparent with faster bosses, as the drink speed for your healing item is obnoxiously slow. Not so slow that you can’t get a heal off, but slow enough that any enemy with a ranged attack or gap closer is likely to hit you mid heal and negate the attempt. It can become incredibly frustrating when you cannot get a heal off at all because of this when the enemies are barrelling down on you constantly, giving you absolutely no space to breathe. The final boss in particular I found that there was almost no windows to heal, and once I got hit (which was pretty much inevitable) I never really had time to recover from that. A slight speeding of the heal drink animation, or some super armour when healing would go a long way.
Armour is also an interesting thing in Wuchang. For the most part, the armour choices themselves don’t have a tremendous impact in combat. Equipping the right armour for the specific attack type of the enemy can give you an extra hit or two before dying. What is most important for the armour, however, is its resistance stats. Equipping the right armour to deal with environmental factors, or elements from enemy attacks will absolutely make or break your playthrough. It’s nice for a game to take the focus off the raw damage reduction aspect and put the emphasis elsewhere. There is a few armour sets that have you walking around in pretty much underwear, which I could take or leave, but I’m sure will be enjoyed by some people. I found that I mostly stuck with the few armours I liked the look of, changing out for specific pieces when I needed to combat specific debuffs (particularly one which causes instant death a la Curse or Petrification in Dark Souls).
Wuchang doesn’t settle for the obscure and oblique storytelling that a lot of souls-like titles go for. It is straight forward in its narrative; it tells you where you’re going and what you need to be doing and uses a cast of characters to help you stay on track and moving towards the end goal. The focus does a great job for what could have been a really baffling and confusing experience filled with bizarre mythos and supernatural themes that may not make any sense on their own. There are clearly things I missed and stories I didn’t quite do correctly, but for the most part, I felt like the game does a great job of guiding you to the key plot points, without forcing you to read walls of text to fully grasp what is happening. Wuchang is an expertly crafted game in keeping you involved with a story that in isolation is a bit whacky and requires some suspension of disbelief.
Its worth noting that levelling system never forces you into a single style of play. At any point you can reset your talent points in any of the trees you’ve invested points into and respect entirely. This goes so far as even being able to reset which weapon you’ve invested all your upgrade materials into, to pivot to another weapon type if you find that it might be more effective against a boss. This freedom in the way you can play the game takes some of the danger out of not knowing exactly the optimal way to upgrade your character and gives you the freedom to experiment. This is wildly appreciated in a game genre that can feel so punishing if you invest in the wrong stats or find that you don’t really like the weapon you’ve been investing all your resources into. The flipside to this is it does make the individual points feel less impactful overall, because there is no pressure in what you decide. Each stat increase doesn’t feel like it does a tremendous amount either, with the scaling across the game never feeling too large. Enemy health pools aren’t too bloated to compensate for this, but it does mean that you never really feel like you’ve become noticeably more powerful, which can be frustrating. An inherent power creep is better than stagnation.
Wuchang: Fallen Feathers is a wonderful action RPG title. The world is crafted beautifully; the style of the game feels appropriate and engaging. The story is easy enough to follow and holds your hand just enough to ensure you always know what is happening and why, and what you should be expecting, with just enough twists to keep it engaging and mysterious. The cast of characters whilst somewhat muted do a good enough job of keeping the world feeling alive. The combat is slick and enjoyable if not a little too punishing at times, with a somewhat bland levelling progression. This is one for all fans of Soulslike games to engage with, and a very approachable entry point for those who may not be entirely sure of this style of game.
The Score
9.0
Review code provided by 505 Games
The Pros
Incredibly slick combat
Beautiful world that feels unique in environment
Ability to respec whenever you need/want
The Cons
Healing item speed is far too slow
Graphics take a bit of playing with on PC to get looking quite right
Levelling never feels hugely impactful because the game scales almost identically to you
