WUCHANG: Fallen Feathers PC Review
Summary: Wuchang: Fallen Feathers is an excellent example of a Souls-like done right.
4.5
Wonderful!
I’ve come to realise over the past year or so that I’ve got a case of Souls-like fatigue. I can’t pinpoint exactly when it started (Elden Ring’s Fire Giant is probably a good place to start looking, though), but my enthusiasm for the genre had been steadily waning for a while.
There was something about Wuchang: Fallen Feathers that made me curious enough to take a look at it, however, and I’m glad I did.
There’s been a proliferation of games hailing from China that have broken through to a mainstream Western audience lately. Wuchang: Fallen Feathers is one such game. Developed by Leenzee and published by 505 Games, it sees the protagonist, Wuchang, struck with a case of amnesia and the mysterious Feathering. A disease that inflicts madness on those unlucky enough to succumb to it, while slowly covering their body with feathers, morphing their appearance over time.
Set in an alternate version of the ancient Shu Kingdom during the Ming Dynasty, Wuchang battles her illness and the aberrations it creates in a quest to revive her sister with a power artefact.
For the most part, this is about as Souls-like as it’s possible to get without being a From Soft title. All the hallmarks of the genre are here, sprawling circular maps filled with shortcuts, bosses contained in (usually) sealed off arenas, shrines that act as checkpoints and are used for increasing stats, respawning all the foes in the area, and fast travel, etc.
It does diverge from the archetype in a few unique ways, however. For example, Wuchang eschews a typical levelling system. Defeating foes rewards Red Mercury, the currency of the game and the drop-in replacement for souls, and, as you might expect, is lost upon death. This red mercury can be spent at a shrine, but rather than converting into a level that can be assigned to a point, or something similar, they’re used to activate nodes on what amounts to a massive skill tree.
This sprawling tree is circular in design, with different areas of it focusing on the available weapon types, allowing players to spec into one or more specialities. Each path of the tree specialises in different skills, stat increases, and upgrades to the various weapons that can be found. While skill trees are nothing new or special, it’s a different take that’s closer to something like that found in Final Fantasy X’s Sphere Grid, rather than a traditional system, and it meant that I had to think about where to invest points rather than just min/maxing any given stat.
The other area where Wuchang tries something different is with madness. It’s essentially a meter that fills in the background while playing. As it fills, Wuchang deals out increased damage, while also taking massive damage, effectively turning her into a glass cannon. Defeating human foes, or being slain in battle, raises Wuchang’s madness value, while dispatching non-human foes reduces it.
It’s an interesting twist on the formula, which means mindlessly farming enemies to level up has some consequences. In theory, anyway, while you do definitely take more hits while at maximum madness level, I felt that it didn’t really change the game all that much. Being a Souls-like, you’re never more than one or two hits away from being reduced to a broken mess anyway, and this doesn’t really change that. As such, I played through a huge amount of the game at maximum madness level and just enjoyed the extra damage output that it afforded.
It’s entirely possible that it just didn’t really factor into the build I went for and that it’s more of a factor when speccing into different areas, but something tells me probably not. Wuchang is ultimately a game that puts a huge amount of emphasis on dodging attacks rather than mitigating the damage of them, and while there is a block and parry system, it isn’t really central to the core experience.
Beyond the fixation on dodging and the madness system, Wuchang is relatively straightforward in the combat department. Light attack, heavy attack, and dodge are the order of the day; however, each weapon type does have a multitude of special attacks that can be used. I found most of them to be style over substance, though. Flashy attacks that looked impressive in a wuxia sort of way, having Wuchang dancing around the screen, blades whirling around her. I just didn’t find them to be all that useful in actual fights, favouring the trusty dodge–backstab combo.
One area where Wuchang is undoubtedly outstanding is visually. The game is filled with beautiful vistas that overlook the area’s bamboo forests and mountains. Every area is packed with little details, everything from the genres’ ubiquitous breakable pots to discarded personal effects and miscellaneous greenery. Even the token poison swamp (okay, it’s more of a cave this time) has a disgusting charm to it that makes it look impressive.
Performance at launch of PC could charitably be called ropey, and more realistically, be called awful. Thankfully, this is largely fixed now, and other than the occasional hiccup, my time spent with Wuchang was flawless.
Steam Deck
Wuchang: Fallen Feathers is playable on Steam Deck, depending on your definition of playable. It looks very rough, but with the right combination of settings, it’s possible to maintain 30fps just about. I didn’t think it was an especially pleasant experience on the Deck, but your mileage may vary.
Final Thoughts?
I really enjoyed Wuchang: Fallen Feathers. As far as Souls-likes go, it’s nothing especially revolutionary, and it was a tad on the easy side for this sort of thing (Maybe I’ve finally gotten gud?), but I had a great time with it.
It’s filled with interesting enemy designs and combat encounters; the world is well fleshed out and is beautiful to look at. I can’t promise that everyone will enjoy it, but it got me out of my Souls funk.
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