Review – Wuchang: Fallen Feathers

After the excellent Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty, I became smarter with any Chinese theme that came out. Black Myth: Wukong came next and now we have Wuchang: Fallen Feathers of Leenzee Games studio. And it gives you another adventure based on Chinese folklore, set in the final period of the Ming Dynasty. Wuchang is the name of the protagonist, a warrior who lost his memory and whose body began to receive bright feathers for no apparent reason.

Such a supernatural event is not happening only with our heroine. Several regions of China are suffering from the effect of “plumage”, which many consider a curse caused by ancient demons. It starts with fever, causes amnesia and evolves into aggressive and uncontrolled behavior. This even loses humanity once and for all and becoming a monstrosity.

WUCHANG AND HIS PENALS

Unlike the other inhabitants, except for amnesia, Wuchang does not suffer the same effects. On the contrary, the penalties gave him magical skills. Its goal in history is to find out what caused plumage, recover your memory and face an inevitable war. A relatively simple plot that works especially for the great setting in decaying China.

The scenarios are quite rich, influenced by the Asian Gothic style, and give a distinct atmosphere from other soulslike. Not that the graphics are impressive, ultra realistic, but draw attention to the dark form that adapted Chinese mythology. And the bosses, different in proportion and level of monstrosity, have an impeccable presentation. Give taste to face them!

Still on the story, his inconsistency bothered me a bit. In one moment it is great, in another is in the background, uninteresting, and such an irregular rhythm drags through the whole game. Even in Lore the game gets too complicated, making the player lose his interest and focus on gameplay. And it is exactly in combat and exploration that the most shining game. The levels are well structured in a semi-open world, creating mazes with different paths to follow and thus encouraging curiosity. It is confused at certain times, but you can get used to it. The only failure I saw in the exploration was the distancing of checkpoints in some areas.

Wuchang: Fallen Feathers presents the traditional mechanics of a soulslike and drinks mainly from the source of Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, with plenty of white weapons use, but unfortunately without the stealth and jump of the game of FromSoftware. The variety of white weapons and special skills is huge, giving freedom to the expecting player and finding out how to eliminate ordinary enemies faster – because there are several that, help, give a lot of damage – and go through the bosses, which are mostly thick shell and require a lot of strategy. When it is not a strategy, it is timing for Parry and to drink (slowly) the potion that recovers life.

Too difficult or unfair?

The gameplay is excellent, fluid, and everything works very well until the camera is disturbing. This is one of the most serious problems in the game: in tight spaces, it bugies very often and until this publication no patch has corrected it. Another problem, and this is one who has made many players give up on continuing to play Wuchang: Fallen Feathers, is his unfair difficulty. The defense system is not perfect and there are very unfair game design decisions, such as snow -hidden explosive mines, enemies that sprout out of nowhere by attacking you, and other uncomfortable situations.

The bosses then, my ours… are fantastic, have different attacks, but offer a difficulty far above normal. Above the nioh bosses (a game originally unbalanced) for comparison. Obviously frustration comes in great weight and can push a lot of people away. Anyway, a choice of developers for players to face with great patience.

The game features some very cool ideas, such as the inner demon system, which you should control your madness bar: killing humans rises the level while killing emplumated beings reduces it. Such a system, with the bar full, springs a powerful demon where we die. On the other hand, being with this bar at most causes you more damage to enemies, just as they give you more damage as well. Buying special items using red mercury (your XP) will also increase this bar, so be smart or everything will be much harder for you on this journey.

As I am playing Wuchang: Fallen Feathers well after the launch, after some patches, probably I have not seen certain problems reported by the community. But there are others who persist, such as collision bugs, in the artificial intelligence of enemies, failed animations and frequent instability in the frames per second in the console version. On PC this also happens, even if you have a well -equipped computer.

Post-launch controversy

A recent controversy, involving censorship in China for improper representation of historical Ming Dynasty figures, resulted in a patch (1.5) that changed the history of the game, changing dialogues and even the presentation of the bosses. The PC community, which was playing by weight at Steam in the launch week (with a peak of 131,000 simultaneous players), was angry. Fortunately one was created, returning the game to version 1.4. Very sad to see this happening with a work of fiction, as every game is, but anyway…

Wuchang: Fallen Feathers, despite all your problems, is a good soulslike. It has a great sound atmosphere, with impactful effects, original Chinese voice acting to have the full experience, is a very beautiful game and the combat satisfies too much. It is more than 60 hours, with 4 different finals. Apart from censorship, this is a wine that will get better over time and new patches. So we hope.