Wuchang: Fallen Feathers

I played Wuchang: Fallen Feathers on PS5 (around 16 hours), and honestly? It's not bad. It's just... okay. A Soulslike that ticks all the usual boxes without ever trying to stand out.

Combat feels smooth overall: good animations, decent hit feedback, and the Discipline system allows for creative combos and builds. The skill tree is alright too, with free respeccing - always a plus. Visually, the game is actually pretty great. The boss designs are solid, and the environments often look stunning. Even the story shows effort - lots of NPCs, lots of lore. If you're into that, you'll enjoy it.

But...

There are too many design decisions that drag the game down or just frustrate you. The level design is a tangled mess of branching paths, with no natural flow or structure. You'll constantly get lost, backtrack into dead ends, or go down long routes just to find... a mana charge or some purple moss. Actual worthwhile rewards are few and far between. You might find a new weapon - and even then, most of them aren't worth using.

Worse yet is the knockdown system in combat. If you get knocked down by a boss, your only real option is to pray they back off. There are no invincibility frames when getting up, no fast recovery, no defensive mechanics to help you. Once you're down, you often just get chain-hit and die. It's not challenging - it's bad design. Period.

Bosses also love to teleport, dodge, and spam combos, making it nearly impossible to land heavy or charged hits. Slow builds (like axes or big weapons) basically get invalidated. You're forced to play fast or suffer. It's just not balanced well for different playstyles.

And let's talk about the PC version: I played on console, but from everything I've heard, the PC launch was an absolute disaster. Game-breaking performance issues everywhere. In 2025, that's inexcusable. No game should launch in that state.

To be fair though: for $50, you do get a full-length game with lots of content. If you love Soulslikes and don't mind that this one feels like a middle-of-the-road genre clone, you might still enjoy it. Just don't expect anything fresh. Wuchang is like fast food - it fills you up, but you'll forget it the next day.

Not terrible, but definitely nothing special. If you've played a few Soulslikes already, this one will just make you shrug. 3 out of 5.

What a pleasant surprise this game is. I love it. Wuchang brings a lot of new mechanics into this genre that works and fits so well.

• You can equip 2 weapons at the same time and can swap between them mid combo. It looks and feels incredible when you can chain the 2 weapons together in a really badass combo.

• There are 5 weapon types;

* Longsword * Normal short sword * Dual swords * A two handed battle axe * Spear

They all have their unique animations, combos and skills. You can experiment with them because you can respec all your skills any time.

The music, the atmosphere, the sound design are top tier. Graphics are gorgeous.

The skills you can use are incredible, combat is fast paced, and yes you can parry in the game and it feels so satisfying.

Boss designs are insane. I remember all of them because of how unique and breathtaking they are.

Some of then negatives I'd like to highlight. (There aren't many of them)

• The performance could be a bit better. But they released 2 patches already and they promised to fix all performance issues.

• The difficulty spikes can be a bit all over the place. At times, you will run into a brick wall when the difficulty jumps up so significantly that it feels like a different game.

Overall, this is an incredible game, does everything well that you would expect from a souls like but it adds a lot more so it feels fresh and exciting to explore this amazing world.

If you like souls like, then this is a must. Combat is one of the best of all souls like games and it offers a lot of amazing gameplay mechanics that others don't. Give it a go and you will love it too I'm sure. It is not a full priced game but it would easily worth the full price tag too. It's also in Game Pass.

Have fun and enjoy this beautiful journey. I can't recommend it enough.

A refreshing souls like that draws inspiration from many games including the original Dark Souls. The graphics, level design, enemy variety, bosses, various weapons, characters, and story are all fantastic. There is a bit of stuttering on PS5 at times but for the most part this does not affect the gameplay. Highly recommend this game to anybody who wants a challenge.