Wuchang: Fallen Feather Review – IGN
Blog Andrew Joseph 23 Jul , 2025 0
This is a great time to become a Sulslikes fan. Between the magic The first berserker: Kazan Earlier this year P's Lies: Overture DLC Last month, multiplayer/cooperatives focused on Elden Ring: NightfregWe're eating well in 2025 – You can add wuchang: Falling Feathers as another dish for that meal. Developer Leenzee Games's debut game has impressed me from the start with exciting, fast paced and dynamic combat. It also has one of the best skill trees in the genre, as well as a complex and interconnected horizontal design that guides us through gorgeous visions and weird attractions in the same way. That said, its difficulties were everywhere, with real wild dip and spikes walking from relatives in the park to “Oh my god, when is it my turn to attack?!” Later on some bosses' level of aggression. So when I beat it I had a little whipping, but for anyone who was craving more it was still an easy advice.
In a typical soul-like way, Wuchang hopes you do the heavy lifting when you piece together their stories – but it's not handled as well as Fromsoft Game or something like P. L's lie is so elegant. Starting from a personal journey to discover who she is and heal the pain, she then turns it into an annoying bird beast into a descending, into a dark fantasy, as the mystery of this disease, known as feathers, begins to reveal and fight those who have been transformed by its effects.
It was a nice start, but by the end of the 45-hour exercise, I lost many of the characters that popped up, said a few lines of dialogue, and then disappeared for 10 hours or so until they appeared in a brand new position again. People keep quoting names I've never heard of before, which prevents me from following the conversation. Knowledge that loves to dig out weapons and item descriptions may get more of a difference from the story than I did, but the same way I played with, I have a lot of other games, which means its huge revelation fell to a large extent.
Skills Game
However, the combat has flexibility and depth that allows me to always reach the end in my style and is ready to use many different offensive and defensive options. Wuchang's distinction from others who use familiar endurance lightweight attacks to get you from checkpoints to checkpoints is that its focus is on skills and abilities that will be associated with your weapon with the discipline skills you unlock on the absolutely huge skill tree. For example, while using FlameBringer longsword weapon, equipped with the sword parry discipline skill, which allows you to use its Hellfire Weapon skills to build a burning state disease while also giving you a defensive counter-attack option. Alternatively, you can pair the same weapon with something like Crescent Moon, which still gives you the same burning ability, but also lets you in and out to avoid counterattacks while still being able to build aerial attacks with built-in escape. Most importantly, you can exchange two weapons between the two weapons, even double your choice.
It's better to have these extra options too, as this is not a game you can only get through the basics, especially when it comes to more intense combat. Powering your skills and spells depends on the generation of a resource called Skyborn, which is mainly obtained by perfectly avoiding enemy attacks at the last moment, but can also be obtained through certain weapons, such as the fourth hit with the axe, the fourth hit with the axe, the second fight against the long tone, or the second hit with a single hand, or the automatic spinning weapon, or the automatic matching, that is the automatic matching weapon, but automatic matching.
I exploded to find ways to incorporate weapons and discipline skills into combat to allow limits like stamina, as Skyborn may charge, usually bringing you powerful attacks that won't drain your meter, or letting you defeat your enemy's strong defenses in the enemy's strong defense and get huge pieces out of health in the second second. I feel like I usually have more interesting decisions to make at each level than most souls that have done in defining my build.
A big part of that is whenever you get enough money to reach levels, instead of just increasing your preferred stats and getting the numbers up, you use a process system similar to Final Fantasy X and a sphere grid of Salt and Sanctuary. It has six ways to drop and gradually unlock more powerful skills, five of which are dedicated to statistics and weapon upgrades, enhancing each different type of weapon, and the last one focuses on more universal Confucius such as additional healing costs, general recovery charges, execution of certain techniques, and more. Upgrades are available. It's a lot, but thankfully, Respec is free and you're free to change the entire build with zero cost or fines, whether it's simply trying new weapons or changing the game plan for challenging bosses. This is an excellent system that encourages experimentation while also rewarding you with a clear understanding of the build you want to make.
There are also quite impressive different types of enemies, each area can pack a large number of new twisted creatures with brand new attacks and skills, and you need to learn how to tweak your build and coping strategies. Everything in this game can be threatening: from small hunchbacked guys hit just one or two hits, but can sneak up on you with a hugely destructive snatch, to those towering demons that are almost like little charming. This breed remains fresh throughout the adventure and I nervous whenever I am willing to enter a new area because I never know what to expect around the corner.
A bumpy road
However, in the first 10 hours or so, I didn’t have to make a lot of adjustments to be a breeze in most battles. It's not to say it's a walk in the park, but I play a lot of souls in the day and once I'm eager to avoid the last blow of the enemy combo and charge a heavy attack to stagger them right away, I initially feel like I'm wondering about Wuchang.
Most of the deaths I do experience come from a lot of cheap “trap” moments, such as: Click to reveal
To be fair, a lot of souls have similar moments, but in Wuchang it's so frequent that it feels like I'm constantly being mischievous by developers – and at some point, the jokes get older.
Besides that, it was mostly a smooth sailing until I met a boss named Commander Honglan. She wasn't a difficult one because it meant at least some degree of tilt or ramp because she was like running into a brick wall. It took me about two hours to beat, and although I was still out on the other side of it, most people loved the intensity of the battle, but Honglan acted as a non-liar for a few later boss fights that I didn't like.
The biggest problem is that the punishment window for correctly and precisely dodging most attacks is very tense, which makes it truly satisfying to avoid a series of huge fluctuations. Compare with games like Sekiro or Khazan, you damage your boss’s posture bar every time you block the attack accurately, and once you completely rule out the attack, you get closer and closer to a serious hit that can cause destructiveness. There is no satisfying midfield progress here, as the perfect Dodge will only give you Skyborn a fee, and you still need to find a vacancy that can be used. Wuchang does have a pose meter against the enemy, but it only increases when you land and after a while, which makes it difficult to get the reward of subtle aggression when your chances of causing damage are so minimal and so brief. Not every boss fight after Honglan is like this, but those who are attracted to a certain extent will reduce their fun.
Darkness falls
All these ups and downs in the world happen throughout the secret, interconnected paths that satisfyingly connect the entire part of the map, as well as the tough optional challenges with appropriate rewards. I like to gradually descend into dark fantasy – you start with a very colorful and beautiful Chinese village only Shows subtle signs of a terrible disease sweeping through its population, and then as your underground and feathers absolutely destroyed areas, it starts to become more and more like a horror game.
There are also some very clever sequences that can create tension and confusion even if it doesn’t involve combat. An example is a part where you can start directly from one end and they just build an instant kill state by watching you. To escape his gaze and pass, I had to go crazy by a bunch of enemies, climbing up the ramp, while avoiding poisonous dripping from the ceiling and navigating the tough monsters that constantly lay eggs, created by another outside enemy. This is a great example of a good enemy design grid melting, designed at a clever level that can create an absolutely intense sprint through dangerous environments.