WUCHANG: Fallen Feathers, Byte Size Review
WUCHANG: Fallen Feathers is a dark fantasy RPG with a very familiar soulslike flavor. In fact, as soon as I started WUCHANG, I struggled to shake the feeling that I’ve seen all this stuff before. Be it in the Fromsoft games, or in the many wannabes like The First Berserker: Khazan, Black Myth Wukong, Wo Long Fallen Dynasty… and now, WUCHANG: Fallen Feathers. I honestly think we are hitting market saturation of this genre, in particular this asian-culture-inspired souls subgenre. They look similar, sound similar and play similar…. but maybe thats ok?
In typical Fromsoft-like fashion, WUCHANG begins with little exposition. Just a women, in a cave who has lost her memory. Combat ensues and slowly a path forward opens up and a rough narrative arch beings. But when I say “rough”, I mean it. I still don’t know exactly what is going on. The main character Wuchang has a disease called The Feathering and eventually it will send her mad and kill her, but in the mean-time, it gives her enhanced combat skills.
A road well travelled.
Combat is souls-like fair. Progress down set paths, kill enemies and collect Red Mercury (aka: Souls) to level up and gain power. Rest at the games verions of bombfires or graces, level up and respawn the enemies. Combat is fast paced though, more akin to Sekiro than Dark Souls. There is a wide array of weapons and armour to collect, each opening up new skills and builds. Dodge and Parry are linked to different weapons and not a given, like others in the sub-genre. Magic, buffs and skills all have to be managed. And as you die more and more, Wuchang heads into Madness creating a difficulty push and pull system too.
No difficulty slider here.
A graphically beautiful game, the chinese based developer know how to work in Unreal Engine, no doubt. But the art design choices and world building is uninspired. As I mentioned in the intro. WUCHANG looks and feels like more of the same, like all the others. Which for fans of the genre, is awesome! And this cribbing off others is not a new revelation in the video game space. Think of stream of brown-grey Modern Warfare copy-cat shooters we endured in the mid-2010s!
What I’m getting at here, is that WUCHANG: Fallen Feathers has some interesting game mechanics and build options. And massicists who love the soulslike genre will love this game. But for me it is another Fromsoft wannabe. And if I want to smash my head against a wall of difficulty in this genre, I’m just gonna go play Elden Ring again.
