Wuchang: Fallen Feathers was provided by 505 Games for review. Thank you!
Soulslikes are a tough genre for me to get into. There's nothing wrong with the genre, but I just don't have the intense focus and capacity for the intense and precise skills necessary to power through. Most soulslikes tend to frustrate me, even though I enjoy them, and it makes it hard to play through them fully without feeling like I'm lucky. However, Wuchang: Fallen Feathers may be the first soulslike I have ever played where its mechanics actually made me feel like I had a chance, and I rarely got frustrated. This was a new feeling for me, and it makes Wuchang quite possibly my favorite soulslike game I have ever played.
At its core, Wuchang is a true soulslike. You run around a gigantic, semi-linear world with winding pathways, grunt enemies who can kill you if you make a wrong move, and an assortment of bosses and mini-bosses. The combat is slower-paced, and killing enemies gets you currency that can be used to level up and make yourself more powerful at shrines. It's a hard game and requires a lot of skill and timing to dodge and attack to take care of foes, which feels standard for this genre now.
Unlike other similar games, the unique combat mechanics make each fight feel more dynamic, slightly faster-paced, and I genuinely felt like my skills were rewarded instead of punished for one false move. On the surface, it appears to be more of the same. You have basic and heavy attacks with each of the five weapon types, which all have different move sets associated with them, but we also have a multitude of spells, skills, and Discipline attacks to help. These can be easily activated with the press of a button and can help turn the tide of battle. Each weapon has its own unique skill to use, while you can equip and change out your Discipline attack and equip four different spells to use.
To effectively use these, we will have to rely on Skyborn Might, which is what allows us to use spells and can enhance our skills and discipline attacks. Each weapon type can accumulate Skyborn Might in different ways, like the Longsword getting some on its second or fifth hit in the basic attack combo, or it can be accumulated by dodging right before getting hit. Once you have it, then it’ll apply automatically to the next skill, spell, or Discipline attack that’s executed. We can also use it for a Swift Draw attack to swap between one of our two equipped weapons.
Coupled with the inability to traditionally block, unless you use an axe, this ended up making my fights feel more engaging and faster. Swinging my longsword may take longer, but staying on my toes to dodge and execute Skyborn Might attacks kept me moving around and thinking faster. This ended up being the biggest draw that kept me from feeling frustrated. I felt like I was dealing more damage and being actively rewarded for dodging and landing hits. The feeling of dodging at the right time to get Skyborn Might and coming back with a Discipline skill or a quickly-charged heavy attack was so satisfying.
I also want to praise developer Leenzee Games for some quality-of-life changes that make using items and spells easier. We can equip four different spells and items at any given time, and instead of cycling through one by one, we can hold a button to bring up all four and select from them using the shoulder buttons. This did take a little bit of getting used to since the shoulder buttons are also used for attacking, but once I did, it made casting and using items significantly easier.
Just like other soulslikes, we also lose all of the currency we’ve accumulated for leveling up and have to go get it again. Usually, this works normally, but in Wuchang, we sometimes have to deal with a powerful demonic version of ourselves. There’s a madness meter we have that goes up and down as we kill enemies. If the bar is full and we die, a demon version of ourselves will show up if we try to collect our fallen currency, and we have to beat it to reclaim what we lost.
I have mixed feelings about this mechanic. I love the idea and concept behind it, and I think it’s cool to have to destroy ourselves to reclaim. But oftentimes, our demonic self has weapons I’ve never used. This made me a bit sad, since I only wanted to reclaim my hard-earned Red Mercury. However, managing your madness strategically can be helpful. Getting above 90% madness can enhance your damage, while making you take more damage too. With this in mind, it can be used as a tool to deal more damage, but you'll have to be more careful.
Most of the time, I never felt like I had meaningless deaths, but some boss fights felt a little one-sided. There were times here and there that I felt my death could have been avoided, but I was always able to come back and try again without that frustration.
This then carries over to our progression and how we build Wuchang out. Instead of traditional leveling, we have an expansive skill tree where we get 1 point each time we level up to unlock new nodes. These can range from simple stat increases to new Discipline attacks and enhancements. We can even unlock modifications for our Discipline attacks to make them stronger. Picking out where to build Wuchang in the skill tree will help prioritize your playstyle.
But that's not all. On top of the skill tree, we can change out our armor to help define our stats, equip three different Jade Pendants to augment our abilities, socket Benedictions to our weapons to enhance their stats, and customize Temperance to endow the weapon with special effects like causing fire damage. We can even pick and choose specific armor that belongs to the same set to enhance it with bonus set effects.
All of these systems come together wonderfully, and I had a good amount of control over how my character would be controlled. Whether I wanted to play as a more up-close brawler or focus on getting Skyborn Might and use spells, I felt I could enhance it how I wanted to. However, some of the terms and management can be a bit confusing, and it took me going through the help section to learn more about the intricacies of the weapons I am picking up and what Mastery can do. Tutorials pop up while playing, but I needed extra time to understand exactly what I was doing.
I also enjoyed the story and world that we explored. Seeing a gorgeous rendition of the land of Shu during the Ming Dynasty, while the land is devastated by a disease that causes people to go mad, is hauntingly gorgeous. Each area is filled with beauty, whether it be due to the architecture of temples, the grassy landscapes, or flesh-filled caves. It was wonderful to navigate the semi-linear levels. The colors did feel a little monotone at times, and they didn't pop as much as I tend to like, but it was still beautiful.
Following along as we learn more about the disease and what is happening to us and the people around us is enjoyable. I was intrigued with what was going on and actively went out of my way to discover more about the land and what happened. Most soulslikes lose me with their complicated and less-direct way of telling stories, but I enjoyed this one a lot.
While Wuchang: Fallen Feather's minimum system requirements are the same as Black Myth Wukong, I would not consider the game playable on the Steam Deck. In the areas I have tested, the game regularly drops below 30 FPS and looks very blurry on the lowest possible settings with TSR upscaling, with some crashes here and there. The only way to bring it to a "playable" state would be to force the resolution lower with everything on the lowest possible settings, which makes it look extremely blurry, or use Proton GE 10-10, but and still has drops and issues here and there.
The game also has FSR upscaling, and while I did hope it would help with performance, it doesn't much. In fact, it makes the game look more pixelated without much of a performance boost. TSR is the winner of the two, but it means there aren't ways to make performance better without major sacrifices.
I also decided to try the game with AMD FSR Frame Generation and Lossless Scaling Frame Generation to see if there are any improvements. Unfortunately, it plays significantly worse. Even though the framerate in MangoHUD looks like it's hitting highs of up to 100 FPS, it feels like it's lower than 30 FPS with major stutters. It also has noticeable input lag, which makes combat harder than it needs to be. And in a soulslike like this, the last thing we need is more of a handicap against us.
None of these fixes the crashes that can happen and that the game doesn't cleanly quit back to Steam. We do have to force quit from the Steam menu, which isn't the end of the world, but still worth mentioning.
There are going to be spots in the game that are playable and can go up to 40 FPS, but running around in the majority of the game will consist of drops and pixelated visuals from upscaling. The only way to marginally improve performance would be to force the resolution down in Steam's settings, making it look even worse, or using Proton GE 10-10, but there were still many drops. Using frame generation of any kind will only hurt performance as well, making this even harder to enjoy. This is going to be a game best played on the Steam Deck through streaming via GeForce NOW or Moonlight.
Wuchang does have an assortment of settings to change in-game. These include toggles for the tutorial, controller and screen vibration, subtitles, button hints, a streamer mode, gore, HUD, and inverting camera. We can also change the sound bars, but that's about it.
The game does support 16:10 resolutions, cloud saves, and controllers. It also recognizes the Steam Deck OLED's HDR screen and has settings to toggle it on and off.
Wuchang: Fallen Feathers has become my favorite soulslike game I have ever played. It's the first soulslike to not make me feel cheated when I lose and find a great balance between the traditional, slower, precise combat, while finding ways to make it feel faster and more dynamic. The combination of spells, Discipline skills, and managing Skyborn Might to enhance them is so much fun, and the multiple ways to build out and define our playstyle feel impactful and helpful. On top of that, the world is beautiful with an interesting story that sucked me in. The terminology and details for enhancing ourselves can be confusing, but it never detracted from the experience.
However, this is not a game to play on the Steam Deck yet. It's possible this will change, but at this moment, it can't stick above 30 FPS on the lowest settings and frame generation makes it feel worse and more stuttery. If you have a better desktop for Moonlight streaming or GeForce NOW, that will be perfect.
Wuchang: Fallen Feathers is an incredible experience, and one I wholeheartedly recommend.
Our review is based on the PC version of this game.
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Wuchang: Fallen Feathers has become my favorite soulslike, thanks to its dynamic combat, great progression, and gorgeous world. Though it isn't ready for portable play.
