Wuchang: Fallen Feathers Review – Fighting the Inner Demon

Wuchang: Fallen Feathers Review

In the ever-growing and saturated Soulslike genre, standing apart is no small feat. Yet, after extensive hands-on time with Wuchang: Fallen Feathers, Leenzee Games appears to have cracked the code. This punishing yet thrilling action RPG, set against a gorgeously unsettling reimagining of the land of Shu during the dark and tumultuous late Ming Dynasty in China, isn’t just another clone—it’s a formidable contender that boldly mixes tradition with innovation.

The Premise: Black Myth Meets Black Powder

From afar, Wuchang: Fallen Feathers might seem like yet another stylish Soulslike, and perhaps it is. Where some might dismiss it as “Black Myth: Waifu Edition,” it quickly proves that there’s far more depth beneath its striking surface. Initially skeptical, my first couple of hours completely shifted my perspective, with gameplay mechanics that were genuinely fun and captivating. In WUCHANG: Fallen Feathers, you step into the boots of Wuchang—a pirate warrior battling monstrous birdlike abominations and her own slow transformation due to a mysterious affliction known as feathering, all while having amnesia.

Set during the late Ming Dynasty in the war-torn Shu region, Wuchang builds a world steeped in folklore, history, and horror. The feathering disease twists people into monstrous avian hybrids, contributing to a hauntingly beautiful landscape marked by decay and abandonment. The world is steeped with people trying to find a cure, or others hidden behind locked doors, afraid to gain the affliction.

The level design and creature aesthetics create a deeply immersive atmosphere, giving the world an authentic, lived-in feel. Some set pieces are absolutely stunning, and bosses are amazing – the level design is a great feature in and of itself, begging you to explore every nook and cranny, and the bosses you encounter are unique, tough, and some are even controller-breaking difficult in some cases.

Yet, the narrative itself, focused on this Feathering disease, feels overly familiar. Despite the striking protagonist and visually captivating settings inspired by ancient Chinese locales, the storytelling lacks originality, diminishing potential emotional impact. The storytelling is vague like in most soulslikes, but it’s a spoiler spot here, and Wuchange herself remaining silent is a disappointment.

Customization & Progression: Absorb the Fallen

The crux of Wuchang’s success lies in its deeply empowering gameplay mechanics. Gone is the typical fragility found in soulslikes; instead, you command a powerful pirate warrior named Wuchang.. The unique “Skyborn Might” combo system brilliantly elevates combat encounters, rewarding aggressive and strategic playstyles. Every weapon in your extensive arsenal feels genuinely distinct, allowing you to execute dazzling aerial maneuvers, devastating counters, and flashy magic spells that wouldn’t feel out of place in Ninja Gaiden. For this system alone and the Impetus Repository upgrade tree, we recommend you experience the game. The build crafting is rich, and you can retool your build to match any area or boss on the fly throughout your journey.

Customization is really where Wuchang opens up. The game offers:

• 5 core weapon classes with branching variants
• Over 40 spells
• Deep skill trees and stat tuning via Red Mercury
• Boss ability harvesting à la Mega Man
• Armor Transmog day 1

Combat is fluid and rhythmic, almost like an elaborate dance. Each battle is precise rather than frantic, weaving attacks, dodges, and stance shifts into a hypnotizing choreography. Mastering a deflect, block, or alacrity spell dodge feels so satisfying and what most fans of the genre crave. Customization adds depth, with the ability to absorb boss abilities, enhance weapons with elemental enchantments, and utilize Red Mercury for tuning. These mechanics encourage a blend of strategic thinking and mechanical execution, though some refinements may be necessary to ensure consistently rewarding gameplay over extended play.

You don’t just level up—you curate your arsenal from your victims. Whether it’s embedding elemental effects, tuning damage types, or altering dodge-counters, the game hands you an overwhelming toolkit. This flexibility is welcome, but it risks intimidating less experienced players unless tutorials or onboarding are improved before launch.

A standout element is the game’s approach to enemy progression. Rather than merely dropping resources, defeated foes yield their combat abilities to you. This mechanic transforms every encounter into a thrilling learning experience, gradually building you into a composite of your conquered adversaries. By the mid-game, you feel less like prey and more like a hunter—a delightful inversion of typical soulslike dynamics.

Boss Battles and Enemy Difficulty

Boss battles in Wuchang consistently deliver intense and memorable showdowns. Each boss brings distinct strategies and punishing movesets that demand mastery of Wuchang’s combat intricacies. A notable duel against a fiercely agile swordswoman showcased the game’s demanding yet fair design philosophy. Victory felt earned, a testament to skill and adaptation rather than brute force. I don’t want to spoil much, but there’s an early centipede-style boss you can find that was extremely frustrating. I quickly learned grinding is likely a MUST for people who struggle with brute forcing and tiny amounts of damage early on.

This isn’t necessary, but it’s also one of the best or most frustrating parts of Wuchang. Red Mercury, like souls, is used for everything – buying armor, upgrades, and buildcrafting. Focus on this early, but you can tweak, refund, and rebuild any piece at any time, which I did multiple times when I couldn’t beat a boss.

I admit I was frustrated and audibly said I was not having fun early on- I kept dying a lot, on a tough boss I had gotten to, and became frustrated. This occurs frequently throughout the game. Some bosses are tough, but others have a huge difficulty spike. I had to die about 30 times against a certain boss before I realized I had focused on the wrong tree and could unlock a deflect (parry) on my longsword and refund points from other nodes to solely focus on this skill tree to increase my attack power. I beat the boss in 2 more attempts and grinding three more levels to increase my attack power.

Soulslikes are soulslike and pretty much anything in the world can kill you quickly – the environment, afflictions like despair and blight, traps, and larger groups of enemies. Of course, there’s the environment and ways to beat them – like swapping armor to match the resistances you need for the level you are in.

Couple this with amazing, varied backdrops, and that sense of relief and happiness felt the same as some of the epic bosses of recent games in the genre and classics like Wukong and Elden Ring. This occurs throughout the game, and its challenge is amazing but not so unbalanced that you wouldn’t be able to overcome it. Admittedly, you can and will make animation lock mistakes – if you overcommit to an attack, a boss can delete your health, or if you dodge the wrong way, a group of enemies can immediately overwhelm you. This will frustrate some gamers and can turn many off right away, but the systems here allow you to become predator instead of prey with a little investment.

Worldbuilding & Art Direction: Feathers, Fog, and Forgotten Shrines

Leenzee’s worldbuilding shows serious ambition. Wuchang paints a haunting portrait of decay—temples rotting in overgrowth, abandoned villages overtaken by avian abominations, and sky-splitting vistas rendered in painterly hues.

What truly sells the setting is its atmosphere. Every ruin feels lived-in, every monster a part of a world overtaken by unnatural blight. Creature and boss designs are grotesquely beautiful, pushing horror without falling into absurdity.

The narrative, however, leans on tired tropes. A plague turning people into monsters has been done to death (Bloodborne, Lies of P, Thymesia), and Wuchang’s amnesiac journey feels serviceable but not emotionally gripping—there are some great story beats however and there appears to be around 4 endings (from what I have found so far) in the game based on your choices in the late game.

Technical Performance: Loading Woes

Early performance hiccups, notably long load times after defeat, slightly mar the otherwise polished experience. Given the game’s demanding combat, optimization will be critical. Thankfully, developers are already addressing these technical issues ahead of launch. We will have to see the day 1 patch, but we experienced a ton of the following:

– Xbox controller has a known bug degrading performance, set to be patched
– HDR is semi-broken at points and set to be improved/patched
– DLSS 4 had massive stuttering and issues before the latest driver and is already heavily improved. The game is very demanding in 4k, and we are currently interested in testing how lower-end rigs will perform post-launch.

Most of the time, however, the game ran beautifully and has FSR, DLSS, including DLSS 4, and looks stunning. Here is a direct comparison:

See below for the full system requirements list:

Minimum

Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
OS: Windows 10 64-bit
Processor: Intel Core i5-8400/AMD Ryzen 5 1600
Memory: 16GB RAM (dual channel recommended)
Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 6GB/AMD Radeon RX 580 8GB
DirectX: Version 12
Storage: 60 GB available space
Additional Notes: HDD Supported, SSD Recommended. The above specifications were tested with DLSS/FSR enabled.

Recommended

Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
OS: Windows 10/11 64-bit
Processor: Intel Core i7-9700/AMD Ryzen 5 5500
Memory: 16GB RAM (dual channel recommended)
Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070/AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT/Intel Arc A750
DirectX: Version 12
Storage: 60 GB available space
Additional Notes: SSD Required. The above specifications were tested with DLSS/FSR enabled.

Style & Substance: A Pirate with Presence

Fashion plays a significant role, offering striking wardrobe variety and bold design choices that pair nicely with stat boosts. This sense of style, along with fluid animations and momentum-driven mechanics, showcases a clear creative direction that could help Wuchang carve a niche among its peers.

Ultimately, Wuchang: Fallen Feathers confidently stands out in a saturated field. Balancing brutal difficulty with empowering combat mechanics, it promises a rewarding experience for action RPG and soulslike fans alike. Leenzee has all the right pieces; now it’s about execution.

Final Verdict

Wuchang: Fallen Feathers offers an exhilarating twist on the soulslike formula, distinguished by potent combat systems and a hauntingly beautiful world. Technical imperfections and familiar storytelling are minor blemishes on an otherwise outstanding action RPG experience. It has the potential to become a staple in genre, and it’s a must-play for your backlog in 2025, provided the developers refine and execute on their promising vision.

Wuchang: Fallen Feathers is stylish, strategic, and surprisingly empowering once it fully opens up. It proves that a Soulslike doesn’t have to be slow, bleak, and punishing to feel satisfying. With mesmerizing combat and strong design direction, Leenzee Games shows that China’s indie action-RPG scene is leveling up fast.

There’s still work to be done in smoothing technical edges, and we would have loved them injecting originality into the story, but the foundation is solid. Wuchang could very well be the genre’s next cult classic. Our major hope is that the day 1 patch resolves most of the minor technical issues we experienced.

Wuchang: Fallen Feathers is a solid effort, and we score it an 8/10 – a must-play for any fan of the Soulslike genre. For other gamers, this is a great entry point with a ton of great backend systems to enjoy and play with.

Happy gaming!
A copy of Wuchang: Fallen Feathers was provided for review by 505 Games.