Don’t let the title fool you; this game is far from beginner-friendly. That being said, I wanted to take a little bit of a different approach to this review, seeing as I am not a big Soulslike person. I wanted to give my perspective on the game from the outside looking in and share my honest review of Wuchang: Fallen Feathers as a non-soulslike player.
Before getting started, I wanted to preface this article by saying this is very much a first impression look at the game and not a comprehensive review. With that being said, I want to kick this article off by talking about what Wuchang does well.
Editor’s Note: The Guide Hall received a review copy of the game from the developer/publisher/PR for this review. Their generosity does not impact our overall opinion or thoughts on the game!
The Good
For starters, I think the setting of Wuchang is very interesting. Set in an ancient Chinese setting, Wuchang offers a distinctly different atmosphere from other souls-like games. The sights and designs of characters really help this game pop in a sea of other legendary games, and offer a breath of fresh air from FromSoft’s lineup of titles.
Wuchang’s premise is also quite interesting. The Feathering is a looming threat all the way from the start of the game and gives the protagonist, and by extension the player, an immediate hook. Different NPCs will talk with you about their affliction, or of family members who have the Feathering, and it does a great job of showing the player just how dire the situation is. That being said, the story itself didn’t really hook me beyond that, but we’ll discuss this more in a little bit.
The game also boasts quite a bit of content. The game itself is decently long, but it also contains a variety of features, including character customization, different weapon types, spells, benedictions, and a skill tree, among other things. This gives players a lot of options when it comes to how they want to build their character. I had a lot of fun just putting new outfits on Wuchang and trying out different weapon types.
The skill tree is nice, if not a little bare bones, and benedictions and pendants give the player a few ways of improving their stats and weapons. Madness is also a very interesting mechanic, giving the player consequences for dying too often while also allowing them to obtain items in exchange for increasing their madness. It often made me consider the pros and cons of increasing my madness, and whether or not I’d be willing to lose my Red Mercury.
The combat itself is pretty decent. As mentioned before, there are several different weapon types that the player can choose from, along with the different pendants and benedictions that can change up Wuchang’s entire fighting style. This makes for a decently complex combat system, containing a variety of moves, techniques, and magic spells that the player can choose from to defeat the enemy. It’s nothing groundbreaking, but it does a good job of giving players variety in how they attack, and what those attacks can do to take out Wuchang’s foes.
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The Bad
Now we move on to the bad. We’ll start by talking about the graphics.
I didn’t like them.
I’m not usually a stickler for graphics, but Wuchang’s graphics can outright make the game hard to look at. There were a few times I couldn’t really tell what was going on, and the worse your hardware is, the worse the graphics are. Now this is more of a testament to how difficult it can be to run a game with realistic graphics, but I would rather play a game with a great art style and simplistic graphics than a realistic game whose graphics can’t truly be enjoyed by anything less than a supercomputer. That being said, this isn’t too much of a dealbreaker.
Now, while I said the premise was quite interesting, the story did not hold my interest for long. It’s an overall pretty generic story about trying to find a medicine for the Feathering, but none of the characters really stood out to me beyond their design. They all ended up blurring together, and the plot really didn’t hold my attention for long. A lot of the scenes of characters talking about the Feathering just weren’t that interesting to me, and overall, the plot just seems like an afterthought a lot of the time. It doesn’t get developed all that much, and it just leads to me not caring about it in the long run.
I said before that the combat was good, and it was, but compared to other Soulslikes that I’ve seen, such as Dark Souls or Elden Ring, the gameplay is just not that interesting. It’s your stock standard Soulslike gameplay, which isn’t inherently a bad thing; it just doesn’t give you much of a reason to play Wuchang as opposed to the numerous other Soulslike games out there.
The level design itself also isn’t great. There’s not a whole lot of exploring the player can do beyond going down one of two forks at the end of the path. Now I’m all for linear games; not every game needs to have a big, open world, but Wuchang just doesn’t do this very well at all. Having exploration essentially boiled down to choosing a path at a fork in the road just seems really uninspired to me.
My biggest criticism of this game, however, is just how tedious it is. Many shrines are located so far apart from each other that if you die, you will have to make the long walk down the same, narrow paths over,
and over,
and over again.
After a few deaths, this just becomes straight up annoying. A lot of the boss fights are much the same, but to a lesser extent. I ended up repeating the same strategies and watching the boss make the same moves repeatedly. This isn’t a big issue if you only fight the boss a few times, but if you spend hours on a boss, it becomes tiring very quickly. Even if the bosses didn’t get tiring, the distance between shrines and the constant runbacks you have to do ultimately killed this game’s enjoyment for me, and just made it a slog to play.
Final Thoughts
Overall, my first impressions of Wuchang: Fallen Feathers haven’t been great. There were some good things; the combat was pretty decent overall, introducing a rich, complex system of skill trees, equipment, and magic. The customization was nice, the game has a lot of content, and the premise and setting are quite interesting. That being said, the game’s downsides far outweighed its upsides for me. The gameplay, while complex, doesn’t stand out from other soulslikes. The story, while having an interesting premise, didn’t really hook me and isn’t anything to ride home about, and the placement of shrines makes this one of the most tedious games I have ever played.
This is definitely not a game for everyone. If you’re a fan of soulslikes, this might be an interesting pick-up, especially if you’re looking for a new game to sink your teeth into. It likely won’t be the best soulslike you’ve ever played, but it could definitely tide you over. If you are not a fan of the soulslike genre, stay very far away. If you don’t like Soulslike games, this will not be the game to convince you otherwise, and if you know nothing about the genre, this is not a great first game to be introduced to it with. So overall, if you’re a soulslike fan, this might be a nice pickup on sale, and if you’re not, it’s probably best to look the other way.