WUCHANG: Fallen Feathers Review – Unleash the Madness

Soulike games are truly everywhere nowadays. Back when FromSoftware’s Souls series did not have the immense popularity it enjoys nowadays, the release of any game inspired by the series was an event in itself. However, today’s increased offerings for hardcore action RPGs have led to some stagnation for the genre. While many Souslike games released in the past few years are solid games, very few of them are true standouts, as the vast majority of these games opt to stay within the boundaries of a tried and true formula that is starting to get a little tiring.

In this regard, Leenzee Games’ Wuchang: Fallen Feathers definitely doesn’t break the mold. While the game is a more than competent Soulslike featuring solid combat mechanics and a twist on the genre’s typical character progression, it doesn’t feature anything that makes it stand out from the competition, making some of its issues even more evident. This is not to say that it is a bad game by any means, just that someone who’s experiencing Soulslike fatigue may not find the game particularly interesting.

When it comes to the setting, at least, Wuchang: Fallen Feathers sets itself apart from most games with its identity deeply steeped in Chinese history, lore, and mythology. Taking on the role of the amnesiac pirate warrior Wuchang, players will accompany her on a journey to reclaim her lost memories and find a cure for the Feathering disease that is ravaging the land. For some reason, Wuchang shows incredible resistance to the monstrous mutations this disease causes, allowing her to continue her investigation into the causes of the affliction and of a cure, without becoming a monster herself.

Supporting her is a varied cast of characters whose individual stories develop as the adventure proceeds, and simple side quests are completed, including recovering items or defeating certain enemies. The story and lore are further developed by documents scattered all over the game’s world, item descriptions, and some environmental storytelling, which is generally well crafted, though it never reaches the heights of some other titles. Unfortunately, the story is never truly the focus of the experience. It tends to be a little predictable, never moving past the boundaries of the genre, but, at the very least, it gets its job done for those who wish to follow it, while hardly becoming an impediment for those who are only in for the action. However, those who are more invested in it will be more rewarded with the multiple endings the game features, which are rather different from one another.

Much like with the setting and narrative, WUCHANG: Fallen Feathers doesn’t innovate much within its genre, but it does what it does well enough. Controlling Wuchang with a third-person view, players explore a variety of intricately designed locations filled with powerful enemies and all sorts of traps, collecting gear and weapons on the way and using the obtained experience points, Red Mercury Essence, to level up at small shrine checkpoints.

In regards to character progression and gear, WUCHANG: Fallen Feathers attempts to do things slightly differently, succeeding in providing a system that successfully deviates from the Soulslike norm. Instead of granting a single stat upgrade decided by the player, leveling up in WUCHANG: Fallen Feathers grants the ability to unlock a single node in an extensive skill tree called Impetus Repository divided into different areas related to regular character progression. This includes improvements for the Manna Vase, the main healing tool which works similarly to the Souls series’ flasks, and the Swift Draw ability, an extremely handy ability that allows Wuchang to switch between the two equipped weapons on the fly while unleashing a powerful special ability unique to the equipped weapon by consuming one charge of Skyborn Might (the main resource used to unleash Discipline Skills and powerful magic spell), and weapon type progression, which include stat increases, Mastery nodes requiring additional items to unlock, and extra abilities like new Discipline skills and passive skills that can profoundly change the playstyle of any weapon type. They can add passive abilities like clashing to specific attacks, allowing players to use them to parry attacks, stacks of other passive abilities that grant increased stats, the ability to gain Skyborn Might charges by performing certain attacks, and more. The ability to respec Wuchang at any shrine is also a great quality of life feature that makes it easier to experiment with different builds and playstyles.

Being able to experiment with builds without going through too many hurdles is only one of the reasons why WUCHANG: Fallen Feathers’s combat system is one of the game’s best features, if not the very best. Unlike your typical Soulslike, where the first few hours are made painfully difficult by the limited amount of combat options available, Wuchang is a competent warrior from the beginning of the adventure, thanks to the aforementioned Skyborn Might resource, which, at the start of the game, can only be obtained by perfectly dodging enemy attacks, but later on can be obtained by using certain attacks with all available weapon types – one handed swords, longsword, dual blades, axes and spears. While it is entirely possible to deal with most enemies using the varied light attack strings and the heavy attacks offered by each weapon type, it’s by acquiring and using Skyborn Might that the combat system gets to a whole another level, as Weapon Skills, skills locked to a particular weapon, Discipline Skills, skills that can be assigned to any weapon of the same type, and magic spells can be seamlessly woven into any attack string.

As many of these skills can actually stagger, launch in the air, or knock an enemy down, these mechanics incentivize players to always be on the offensive and use these Skyborn Might-fueled abilities to prevent enemies from attacking Wuchang while keeping the offensive going. In some ways, these combat intricacies are more reminiscent of Team NINJA’s masocore ARPGs like the Nioh series and Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin, although with a slower pace that’s closer in feel to the classic FromSoftware games. Unfortunately, this slower place sometimes feels more sluggish than slow, as there’s some easily noticeable input delay, which is especially annoying when attempting to perform perfect dodges, as the timing doesn’t feel very natural if you are more used to snappier games like the aforementioned Team NINJA games.

With Wuchang being rather competent right from the start of the adventure, enemy design had to take her abilities into account. However, there’s still decent spread of enemies between weaker and stronger ones, though balancing is sometimes off, as weak enemies are generally some real pushovers, while some of the stronger enemies can feel a little bit overturned at times, as their movesets incorporate some natural dodges that can make it challenging to find a window of opportunity and take advantage of it. Enemy placement is generally decent, although the game still features enemies hidden behind corners and some difficult-to-reach ranged attackers, but they are generally manageable. What isn’t, on the other hand, are select enemies found in some location that are either completely hidden until Wuchang gets near them, or that have a color palette which makes them blend with the environment, making it difficult to spot them and even understand what they are attempting to do while they are being attacked. This can sound a little like nitpicking, but the difference is stark with games that have a much better visual clarity, which makes it easier to keep track of what is going on. Bosses are generally well-designed, varied, and, most of all, challenging, thankfully not to the point of frustration like those in some recent Soulslikes.

Adding some more complexity to the WUCHANG: Fallen Feathers experience are a few other mechanics, including the Tempering mechanics, which allow players to add a variety of passive bonuses to weapons for further build refining, and the Inner Demon mechanics. The latter are particularly interesting, taking advantage of Wuchang’s Feathering affliction to provide a risk and reward system. By fighting certain types of enemies, Wuchang’s madness level increases and decreases, and after surpassing certain thresholds, certain skills learned via the Impetus Repository become active. If madness completely overtakes the young warrior, however, her attack power will increase at the cost of her defense, rewarding players who know how to properly defend against enemies. At the same time, getting defeated by an enemy at full madness will make Wuchang’s Inner Demon manifest where she was previously defeated. While defeating the Inner Demon is the only way to recover the lost Red Mercury, leaving her be for a while is definitely a viable strategy, as she also attacks nearby enemies, providing players with new means to deal with a particularly strong foe. For example, you can let the Inner Demon and some enemies in the wear each other out, and then swoop in to finish them off and reap some rewards.

Besides combat, the other central element of any Soulslike is the level design, but in this regard, WUCHANG: Fallen Feathers fares considerably worse. For starters, locations aren’t exciting, except for a few that take good advantage of its setting, so you will be traversing the usual selection of ruined villages, spooky forests and dilapidated wastelands seen in a lot of other games, although there’s a minor attempt at creating a bigger interconnected world in the vein of the original Dark Souls that is appreciated, and there are some definite standouts in terms of visual design, although not many. Their layouts, closer to Team NINJA’s games rather than the Souls series, are not particularly remarkable either, as the game’s locations are mostly linear, with a few branching paths that are not always rewarding to explore, not counting the handful of times when new gear is obtained. Unlike a few other games, finding new gear here is quite rewarding, as defensive affinities are critical to survive most bosses’ attacks. Better yet, WUCHANG: Fallen Feathers features a very simple transmogrification system, so any new gear a player finds unlocks visual customization options right away, of which I’m sure many will take advantage of during the around 40 hours needed to complete a single playthrough.

If one can look past the average level design of the game, which is ultimately not so terrible as to heavily impact the good WUCHANG: Fallen Feathers offers, looking past the game’s middling performance on PC will be much harder for most. As the final system requirements suggested, upscaling and frame generation may be a necessity for many system configurations to run the game at above 60 FPS, which is a little surprising considering the good-looking but not exceptional visuals. On my machine (i7-13700F, RTX 4080, 32 GB RAM), the game ran at 4K resolution with DLAA and high settings at an average of 37 FPS, 24 1% low, without frame generation in a benchmark session held in the Palace Hill area found around 10 hours into the game. Things fared better at 1440p resolution, hitting the 70, 75 FPS mark often, but it’s only with Frame Generation that my system was able to hit to run the game at the maximum refresh rate of my monitor, 120 Hz, at this resolution. The tests above were conducted before NVIDIA launched a new driver optimized for the game, so performance could be better when the game officially launches to the public.

Frame Generation and NVIDIA DLSS set at Quality Mode using the slider found in the settings delivered better framerates in the same location, averaging 103 FPS, 32 1% low, but never hitting the 120 FPS cap. Even if it is possible to get a high refresh rate experience using upscalers and frame generation, WUCHANG: Fallen Feathers never feels very smooth, as the game suffers from some evident micro stuttering. Thankfully, there are no gigantic stutters, but the game often feels choppy, especially during fast camera movements. Those who cannot use NVIDIA DLSS have the choice of using either AMD FSR or UE5’s TSR, and the presence of an oversampling resolution slider allows a greater degree of customization to help the user strike a better balance between image quality and performance.

Despite a bit of Soulslike fatigue, I enjoyed my time with WUCHANG: Fallen Feathers, though I often found myself wondering what the game could have been with a few tweaks and improvements. That said, considering this is Leenzee Games’ first attempt at a Soulslike, they’ve delivered commendably, especially in the combat department, which is powered by interconnected mechanics that work quite well. As such, I hope the Chinese studio will get the chance to develop a sequel that smooths out the rough edges, because the potential for a standout Soulslike is clearly there.

PC version tested. Review code provided by the publisher.

7.5

WCCFTECH RATING

Wuchang: Fallen Feathers