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Metro
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Metro
Wuchang: Fallen Feathers review - taking the soul out of Soulslike
A new Soulslike set in China's Ming dynasty borrows from both Dark Souls and Bloodborne, with some interesting madness effects to keep you on your toes. For decades the Chinese video games industry has been focused solely on the PC and its home audience. For reasons that are not entirely clear, but seem to involve the oversaturation of the mobile market, Chinese developers have suddenly begun to embrace console gaming and in terms of technical prowess their output has been exceptional from the start. What's been disappointing though, is how they already seem to have got themselves into a rut, where almost every single high-profile game is a Soulslike, or at least Soulslike adjacent. Starting with Black Myth: Wukong, and now this, there's a dizzying array of very similar looking titles on the horizon, including Phantom Blade Zero, Lost Soul Aside, Tides Of Annihilation, Project Jinyiwei, and more. We guess that means Dark Souls and the rest of FromSoftware's oeuvre is popular in China but while some games, especially Black Myth, do deviate from the formula Wuchang follows it all too closely. It's a competent copy, more so than many we've played over the years, but in terms of gameplay it adds absolutely nothing new. Wuchang is set in what is now Sichuan province during the late Ming dynasty, in the 17th century. But while the game does feature some real historical elements the overall plot involves a supernatural pandemic called the Feathering Disease, which… well, the clue is in the name really. Playing as a female pirate named Bai Wuchang, you start the game with amnesia and your arm covered in feathers. Ordinarily this would mean you're about to turn into a monster but for initially unexplained reasons it grants you access to a number of magical abilities. Dark Souls will be 15 years old next year and while it's had a huge influence on the games industry, there can be no other game that has been copied quite so much while changing so little. If you've at all familiar with the genre you'll know exactly what to expect from Wuchang, in terms of the third person combat, the multiple weapons, the stats that can be influenced by armour and talismans, and the unusually high difficulty. Sign up to the GameCentral newsletter for a unique take on the week in gaming, alongside the latest reviews and more. Delivered to your inbox every Saturday morning. Wuchang hits every note predictably and accurately but in every way it feels like From Lite. Even the difficultly isn't quite as extreme as the games it's copying, while being uneven enough that you still can't recommend it to newcomers to the genre. Every different weapon has its own related skills, while each of the five weapon types (swords, dual blades, longswords, axes, and spears) has associated discipline skills, which are unlocked from a skill tree and assigned to whichever weapon you want. This is all enjoyably intricate, with discipline skills also determining whether you're able to deflect or parry with a particular weapon. All skills and weapon abilities are powered by something called skyborn might , which by default is gained by performing a perfect dodge. The combat is enjoyable but it's also extremely familiar. The only thing that's surprising about the game is that as well as Dark Souls it steals quite a bit from Bloodborne, including a version of Insight, where if you kill ordinary humans (who, because of the feathers, assume you're about to turn into a monster and attack you on sight) your state of madness increases – while killing monsters decreases it. Your madness level alters the effectiveness of certain skills, while going above 90% means you both take and deal out more damage than usual. Plus, if you die when at maximum madness an evil demon version of yourself appears and is waiting for you when you come back to recover your lost souls red mercury (although because the game is generally less difficult than the Soulslike average you usually only lose about half when you die). The level design is also reminiscent of Bloodborne, since this isn't a true open world game like Elden Ring, and generally that's a compliment. Although while the intricately designed map and unexpected shortcuts are clever the landscapes and art design is never anywhere near as interesting. Wuchang is perfectly fine, but it feels so watered down compared to actual FromSoftware games it's hard to see under what circumstances it could ever be recommended. Especially since the bosses – usually the highlight of any similar game – are so unsatisfying. They often involve a sudden difficulty spike and the later ones have almost no margin for error, while also being irritatingly defensive fighters, forever flitting off out of reach. More Trending The game's best elements are its expansive skill trees and everything related to the madness rating. If it was us, we would've focused more on that and added more of a horror element to the game, but that never seems to have been a consideration. While this is not the worst Soulslike we've ever played we're struggling to think of another one that feels quite so generic. When there are so many other games doing almost exactly the same thing this needed a more substantial selling point than copying from both Dark Souls and Bloodborne. But alas, Wuchang: Fallen Feathers never really takes flight as its own unique experience. In Short: A wearingly competent Soulslike that seems to have no interest in inventing anything of its own and which is nowhere near as refined as FromSoftware's best games. Pros: The combat is perfectly entertaining, with a wide range of weapons and impressively vast skill tree. The madness stat is an interesting feature that should've been expanded on further. Cons: Everything in the game has been done a dozen times before and usually to better effect. Nasty difficulty spikes and simplistic storytelling. Score: 5/10 Formats: PlayStation 5 (reviewed), Xbox Series X/S, and PCPrice: £44.99*Publisher: 505 GamesDeveloper: LeenzeeRelease Date: 24th July 2025 Age Rating: 16 *available on Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass from day one Email gamecentral@ leave a comment below, follow us on Twitter. To submit Inbox letters and Reader's Features more easily, without the need to send an email, just use our Submit Stuff page here. For more stories like this, check our Gaming page. MORE: 80% of Call Of Duty players more excited for Battlefield 6 than Black Ops 7 MORE: Tales Of The Shire: A The Lord Of The Rings Game review – Animal Crossing with hobbits MORE: Nintendo's next big Switch 2 game is just £50 right now – but only for today
CNET
23-07-2025
- Entertainment
- CNET
Wuchang: Fallen Feathers Review
505 Games Wuchang: Fallen Feathers is the latest high-profile Soulslike game, this time coming from Chinese developer Leenzee Games. Unlike some of the most recent Soulslike releases, Wuchang is more faithful to the formula created by FromSoftware's Demon's Souls and Dark Souls, but the changes it does make might be the game's downfall. Wuchang is an ambitious Soulslike, which helps it stand out in what's one of the newest and most popular subgenres around. What keeps it from being great is that all these new systems are a chore to actually understand and use. I'm sure that if players perfectly grasp a balance of the systems, they could make a character with some amazing capabilities, yet it's hard to reach that sweet spot playing through the game. Just to get it out of the way, Wuchang's story is like a lot of Soulslike games. You play as the titular Bai Wuchang, a pirate warrior suffering from amnesia who has to fight through different areas in ancient China during the Ming dynasty. People have been victims of "feathering," the game's sickness that makes the infected sprout feathers and eventually turn into monsters. Wuchang can harness the power of feathering, making her the ideal warrior to uncover what's going on. Is this a confusing and vague storyline? Yes, because it's a Soulslike and that's practically a requirement. The people you meet speak vaguely about other people and subjects that don't make sense until you piece them together with item descriptions, clues found throughout the areas and environmental story elements. It's hardly a storyline that you could fully figure out in a casual playthrough, so I'll be depending on the lore guys on YouTube to piece the story together in the days and weeks after the game's release. Progression system has too much going on What's important for Wuchang -- and any Soulslike that aims to stand out in the subgenre -- is the gameplay, and it's certainly unique. It's dynamic but almost to a fault, with a lot of complexity getting in the way of combat flow. As Wuchang, you have access to five classes of weapons: axes that do big damage but are slow; longswords that do good damage while allowing for parries; twin swords that allow for quick attacks at the cost of lower damage; one-handed swords that are in the midrange for damage and speed; spears that do solid damage while also being able to poke at a longer distance. Throughout the game, you'll come across different weapons of each type. There's 25 in total, and they all have a unique look, abilities and stats from each other. So you're not as overwhelmed as, say, in Elden Ring, where you have more than 300 weapons to choose from. To make full use of these weapons, however, you have to work your way through the skill tree, and this tree represents a hurdle for the game as it overcomplicates things. 505 Games The skill tree reminds me more of the Sphere Grid from Final Fantasy X. It's split into six paths, one for each weapon and one for general-purpose use with universal upgrades like adding to your healing flasks, being able to do more damage with certain effects, and getting more magic points. Along each path are also various stat improvements like adding an extra point to strength, endurance, agility and so on. When you acquire enough red mercury, the souls or currency in the game, you can gain a level, providing a red essence that unlocks a spot on the grid. You need to go down these paths to power up Wuchang as well as the weapons, as improved attacks and mastery of a weapon also require going down each path. Then, at a certain point of unlocking more spots on the grid, the path extends to give you even more stats, abilities and so on. If you're confused by reading this, it's going to be just as confusing when you try it out for yourself. It's one thing to level up a character and put points into various stats, but it's another to level up and realize that you need to spend skill points unlocking a path to get more healing flasks. Where the leveling system messes with you is when you don't unlock a certain path that you need for a boss. One boss in particular was kicking my ass, as it's the first boss you need to use deflecting, or parrying, to beat (unless you're a Soulslike ace who can play perfectly). I had gone down the axe upgrade path and didn't realize that I was ill-equipped for the fight. While there is a tip message that comes up mentioning deflecting, this was the first time the game even mentioned this capability. After failing to beat this boss for hours, I decided to take a long look at the grid and saw that the deflect ability was a few upgrades into the longsword path. Fortunately, you can respec these points at a shrine for free, which I did, and I defeated the boss after a few more tries. Mind you, I could have beaten the boss the other way -- playing perfectly -- but deflecting and parrying to expose the boss's weakness was far easier. And prior to this, the bosses weren't giving me much trouble, just requiring a few deaths in order to understand their pattern. This upgrade grid is super interesting, but there are far too many abilities and benefits that should be unlocked from the start to help reduce the frustration when playing. Madness is making me mad Another interesting idea in Wuchang is the madness system. This is a play on the Humanity and Kindling found in the original Souls games, with a bit of Insight from Bloodborne -- a sort of passive stat that changes how the game world evolves as you play. As you die or defeat certain enemies, your madness will increase. As your madness increases, you can become more powerful. In that path I mentioned about gaining more healing flasks, there are unlockable traits where, if you have a certain amount of madness, you do more damage or gain some extra ability. Madness is based on your level, so the higher the level you are, the higher the maximum madness increases. If your madness is low, you can even acquire a certain amount of madness to buy an item at a shrine. So what happens when your madness is at max? Well, that's a bad thing for two reasons. The first is that you'll do more damage, but you'll also receive more damage. This is going to be great for the hardcore Soulslike player with perfect dodge and parry timing. I'm sure speedrunners will make use of this trait. However, when you're getting your ass kicked by a boss, the last thing you want is for them to hit you for more damage. 505 Games Arguably the most interesting part of this madness system is that if you die at, or near, max madness, the spot where you died that has some of your leftover red mercury will take the form of an evil doppelganger that you'll have to fight. Defeat it and you'll get an item as well as removing all of your madness. It's an interesting feature, but it's also a pain. To get rid of the madness, you can kill certain humanoid enemies, but sometimes to kill those people, you need to kill non-humanoid enemies, which increases madness. Alternatively, you can find and buy items that will reduce madness at a certain temple, but those aren't widely available. Where madness really causes a problem is with bosses. If you die repeatedly at a boss and your death spot is in the boss arena, the doppelganger won't show up, so you're kind of stuck with max madness unless you decide to go get killed somewhere else, take down the doppelganger and be back to zero madness. Pretty but punishing Wuchang performs as well as any Soulslike game when it comes to the action and graphics. The speed of the gameplay is just a step below Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, FromSoftware's parrying-intensive Soulslike, but also a step above its other popular title, Bloodborne. It's fast-paced, but it's also dynamic. I say it's dynamic because of the Spirit Points system, which is the game's version of mana. Unlike most Soulslike games, you don't have a mana pool to draw from when casting magic or doing special attacks. Instead, you need to acquire Spirit Points, and the easiest way to do this is by dodging. A perfectly timed dodge nets you a point that will let you use one special ability or one basic spell. On the grid, there are spots to unlock more points as well as more ways to get the points from deflecting attacks, doing a certain combo or having a certain amount of madness. 505 Games This system requires players to be more active in fights, so someone can't make a glass cannon magic character right off the bat who fights at a distance, although I'm sure there is a build where that's possible in the late game. You need to really get in there and mix it up with the enemies, which I can appreciate. Then come the visuals, and Wuchang has some great-looking scenes. Bosses in the game are also unique in both their attacks and visuals, something highly prized by Soulslike players. The game's presentation overall is on par with any of the AAA titles out there. The English voice acting is a little weak, but people talk so little in the game that it practically doesn't matter. I played the game on a standard PS5, and there were instances when the PS5 did seem to have some issues with dropped frames. It happened after a certain amount of playing and not due to too much going on-screen. Wuchang is a great effort by Leenzee Games. While the game won't revolutionize the Soulslike genre, it does the next best thing by offering some ideas that they, or maybe another developer, can refine. Maybe it will become a mainstay for the genre in future games. If anything, I believe a Wuchang sequel could be an incredible game if it happens. But right now, the formula just isn't there yet. Wuchang: Fallen Feathers comes out on July 23 for PC, PS5 and Xbox Series consoles for $50. It will be available on Xbox Game Pass on day 1.
