2/5 ★ – RoseFNV's review of Wuchang: Fallen Feathers.

I normally consider myself pretty alright at being able to predict whether a game will click with me, not always but most of the time I give a lot of excitement and love pre release to a game I end up having a great experience with or at least a good time. Wuchang seemed like it'd be another really fun entry in the soulslike pantheon, it's combat looked flashy and interesting, the art design was really consistently pretty and previews were pretty positive. plus, I'd say I'm pretty forgiving when it comes to soulslikes quality, LOTF was a favorite of mine from 2023 and other divisive titles like morbid the seven acolytes and steel rising I normally at least really enjoy, so I felt pretty comfortable putting this in my most anticipated of the year list as soon as it's release date was locked in. Unfortunately this is one of the worst games I've finished this year, an inconsistent mess that has constantly clashing systems and design philosophies and as you've probably heard a pretty bad technical state. For every single moment of fun I had there were 3 of being annoyed or feeling completely indifferent. It's frustrating because I think there's enough interesting ideas here to make a good game and there's clearly a lot of talent from the art team and the people who handled character feel but there's so much wrong that it just all goes to ruin. Most of these issues appeared soon after starting, many soulslike mistakes are made, area design that doesn't provide reasonable shortcuts half the time and DEFINITELY not reasonable shrine (bonfire) placements, there's way too few sprinkled about and even if there's some clever shortcut placement it's never enough compared to how massive these areas are, each of them is 2-3 times the size of a normal soulslike area and they always suffer from either being so big they become a slog halfway through and never let up. at worst they're so big without enough visual variety that they become really annoying and confusing to navigate (forest level probably the worst in the game). It sucks because there is something there with the level design and it's DS1 esque qualities to secret finding and shortcuts but it's too linear to fully take advantage of it and like I said every area is just too fucking big, and I mean every single one, it's tiring the first time spending so long on an area that feels twice the size it should be and it never gets less tiring, especially when the enemy placements and level gimmicks are pretty consistently annoying as well. Way too much focus on ranged explosive enemies with no sound queues for their attacks and status effects just from walking, gets miserable and enemy placement doesn't help. The combat itself fairs a bit better, there's definitely moments of fun and some solid buildcraft through a pretty customizable and easily redoable skill tree, but unfortunately there're a lot of issues with the way the game feels and in particular it's speed in comparison with the enemies and bosses. you're so much slower especially in dodge, get up animation and healing, and It often just feels awkward to engage in combat because of that especially when this game has the worst case of endless combos with little attack windows I've ever seen in a soulslikes and because unless you're rocking an axe you're doing extremely little stagger damage on basic attacks to interrupt any of that you're just forced to sit through it. even with weapons like a longsword feel like they are doing nothing poise-wise to a decent chunk of enemies and it really limits how much fun combat can be and made me rely a lot more on backstabs than I would like just so enemies would stop attacking for one second. Bosses have the same issue, they're a mixture of really easy and not much to talk about and hyper aggressive monsters with crazy damage and frustrating moves, the latter can definitely be more fun but out of all the bosses that I somewhat enjoyed I fought I don't think there was a single one without some bullshit move that's unfun to dodge and at worst those moves are the entire fight. There's definitely some of my complaints that are early game skill issues but I felt this way even after I got good at the combat system, it becomes more manageable but doesn't become more fun cause it's just so much backstabbing. After all, that's just the best way to deal with most major enemies and bosses when the dodge is so finicky and the combat loop is so unevenly fit in with the actual game. Like I said there is good stuff here with how parts are designed, the magic system is very unique and I like how it fits in with both melee and mage builds and there's definitely something to be said for the customizability of the skill tree and the fact that Wuchang herself does overall feel solid to control but it's not enough to save a combat model this lopsided. I wish I was able to say much else of this package came together for me, but not really. The art direction is worthwhile with some nice vistas and locations with a pretty large scale brought to life very well by the engine used (although of course this has come at the great cost of performance, which is bad on Xbox and from what I hear even worse on PC) but I do wish a couple of the locations had more variety and landmarks to set the specific parts of each region apart more. Music is straight up bad, mostly dull uninspired ambience and fairly standard boss tracks too. Occasionally some interesting instrumentals will pop up and I did like the final boss' theme but other than that I was pretty irritated by just how soulless the music was, ambient music especially I think only helped to detract any sort of vibe or ambience this might have had, and as a result it's probably one of the least I've felt in tune with this world's mood than with almost any other soulslike title, gives the game a lifeless and drab quality that does not improve it. The story itself is normally kind of on the backburner with these types of games and it's still the same here but done not as well. I'm not gonna pretend I can add too much input to the specifics but I will say I did tap out of this a lot sooner than I expected. I tried to get into this but eventually I just found it frustrating to keep up with the large cast of characters who said too much for too long without any of the actual stuff said being super engaging, just very flat dialogue that didn't intrigue in the same way fromsoft or the best of the soulslikes do. For what it's worth that may have been a mistake on my part, there did seem to be some mysteries and plotlines that seemed worth looking into that showed up later in the game but at that point I was too tapped out and tired of the game to care, didn't make enough of a good first impression for me to want to dig deeper into the goings on of this world. At first I was unsure whether I should actually go through with finishing this game cause normally with titles I have a pretty immediate negative reaction to that are 10+ hours I drop early on, but with a soulslike I repurchased game pass ultimate to get I wanted to really try to get into it and force myself to get something out of it. 10 hours in, I realized that wasn't happening, but at that point i was far enough in that I felt like I should just push myself to finish the game just to not have wasted my time. Now with around 30 hours in it's finally over. I really wish I wasn't encouraged to say it like that from my time with the game but it's been such an uneven, frustrating and often miserable experience that I can't justify any other reaction. There's still so many things I still didn't dig into like the lack of new weapons/ weapon archetypes and the awkward base ending that makes the journey feel like a waste and enemies with absurd tracking that rarely feels fair, but eventually with a game like this there's so many issues you realize you can't get everything down. It's a shame cause I really do love this genre and had so much hope for this game and wanted to root for a new soulslike from a new team, especially one with a female lead, but I can't in any way recommend this when so much of the experience is compromised in ways I would be shocked if they were able to fix. I guess at it's best there's enough downtime of just some decent action gameplay when I was just going through levels hacking and slashing for it to be a okay voice chat or podcast game maybe but even for that there's so many better options that won't pull you out of that relaxed state to just piss you off. and when my best compliment for a game Is that it can be a just okay timewaster for when you don't need to focus that much on the game itself that's not high praise. Hope the studio can improve for their next title, but honestly it's hard to feel much hope when this has burned me so much.