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Review: Wuchang: Fallen Feathers – An Ambitious Soulslike with a Twist

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July 23, 2025

On July 23, 2025

WUCHANG: Fallen Feathers is a Soulslike game that aims to take a top spot in the genre. Providing a nice challenge for those looking to step up and fight through fearsome bosses. The focus in combat is to build up feathers to use spells and skills while in a fight, allowing you to utilize the arsenal of ways to fight bosses as you progress. Everything you do is a dance between yourself and your enemies; one wrong move and it can spell the end of the fight.

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Overcoming Madness

Wuchang: Fallen Feathers starts with our main character waking up without her memories, and like most other Soulslike games, it’s up to you to talk to NPCs and explore for a way forward. What separates this game from many others is that the gameplay is slower and more methodical. There’s a mechanic within the game that revolves around Wuchang’s sickness, the Feathering. An added layer of combat where you need to build up the feathers to unleash powerful skills and spells does keep the game interesting and rewards you for playing around them while in the middle of a fight. Spells are going to cost a certain amount of feathers, the same as your weapon abilities, and buying time for your most powerful spells is only half of the fight at that point.

Madness is another mechanic that happens passively throughout the game; if you die or kill enemies that aren’t afflicted with the feathering, your madness will increase. The main character gains more potent attacks at the cost of receiving more damage as well. You can cleanse madness or embrace it for that extra damage boost. If you die while at the maximum amount of madness, however, you’ll be attacked by a manifested demon that takes the shape of the main character. This manifested demon will not spawn in boss rooms when you die, so you have the choice to keep the madness or cleanse it by other means. If you have chosen to fight the demon, it will then cleanse your madness, regardless of whether you’ve killed it or died.

With a Soulslike, you can also expect a variety of fantastical areas that you can explore and fight your way through. It’s no different here either. You have a rotting forest filled with people overcome with the feathering, with this curse even affecting corpses and the flora, and villages decimated by raiders, but still holding out hope for help. While grim, there’s still beauty in these areas, showing you the background and how wonderful these areas were, and what could have been if peace had remained.

Wuchang Fallen Feathers Blighted Village

A New Way To Approach Combat

You can’t spam attacks, as it will only get you so far. You have to carefully watch your enemies, dodging around and behind them, and stunning them with charged heavy attacks is a major mechanic in the game. Bosses can be mobile, and when your heavy attack is charged and ready, they’ll have already moved out of the way. There are ways to handle this, dealing reliable and constant damage to break their stance being one way. But the other can also come in the form of a skill that can instantly activate these attacks when you use a feather for them. Having multiple answers for a fight is always a great thing to offer up to players, giving everyone a way to solve the problem their way.

What the game lacks in weapon variety, it makes up for with weapon skills and abilities. There are longswords, one-handed swords, spears, dual swords and axes as your choice of weapon. Every weapon will look and play differently; they will have unique weapon abilities, and later on in the level tree, you can edit their Martial Skill. These martial skills are abilities you can put on each weapon type to augment them further. For example, the longsword has many strike-based martial skills for an aggressive playstyle as well as a Sword Counter that you can adopt for a more defensive one. You are given absolute freedom to test and look for new and unique ways to take on bosses while clearing out areas. Unlike many games within the genre, Wuchang: Fallen Feathers will allow you to build into any section of the level tree that you’d like and you can also reset the entire tree or specific portions of it at will.

You are given absolute freedom to test and look for new and unique ways to take on bosses while clearing out areas.

Playing around with what weapons work best in your hands and editing your skill tree for a boss that might be giving you trouble feels surprisingly good. If you prefer using longswords, you can switch between two that you’ve given different martial skills and still utilize their unique weapon abilities while in a fight as well. Or if you prefer the moveset for a one-handed sword and a spear, you can build into both of their respective trees and make use of the varied playstyle it would have to offer.

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Questionable Choices With Optimization

You’ll need a specific hardware setup for Wuchang: Fallen Feathers to make the most out of the game. If you don’t have a monitor or television that is 120Hz and above, the game will have frequent screen tearing. Many PC players will most likely have access to a monitor that supports 120Hz, but it’s hard to say if the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S playerbase will have the same hardware, especially if playing on a television. While it’s encouraged to support higher refresh rate monitors and television, it’s disappointing that they have not optimized the game for a 60Hz experience. Expecting players to be okay with experiencing constant screen tearing if they don’t have the proper setup, especially on consoles, is not ideal.

Now, if you do have the equipment for your monitor or television, the game will run well with minor hiccups on the PlayStation 5 version. The framerate isn’t the most stable as it could be on the PlayStation 5, but it still runs properly and without any other issues. While testing on the PlayStation 5 version, 120Hz support had to be enabled via the system settings to ensure no screen tearing. If issues with screen tearing persist even with a monitor or television that supports it, you may need a new HDMI cable. Technology is always moving forward, but the issue here is a severe lack of options to change around settings and solid optimization for the game with lower hardware options available.

Wuchang Fallen Feathers PS5 Graphics Settings

Closing Comments:

Wuchang: Fallen Feathers is an ambitious game that has a lot going for it. The combat is solid, fun and challenging while still giving you a dozen ways to solve any sort of trial that you’re going up against. It’s a welcome addition to the Soulslike genre with intense fights and interesting areas to explore. Some of the design options they took when making the most of the available technology, however, are hard to support. Not everyone will have the correct hardware and you have to accept that when making a game for consoles. There doesn’t seem to be an attempt to solve the issues with monitors that don’t support 120Hz, and many may not see a hardware upgrade for a single game as worth the investment yet. If you can experience the game without the graphical issues, however, it is very engaging. The combat has a great learning curve, the environments are crafted with a fantastic level of detail and the skill tree allows for freedom that many games in the genre end up neglecting.

Wuchang: Fallen Feathers

Version Reviewed: PlayStation 5

3.5/5

Released: July 24, 2025
ESRB: M For Mature 17+ Due To Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, Partial Nudity
Developer(s): Leenzee
Engine: Unreal Engine 5
Multiplayer: Online Multiplayer