Wuchang Fallen Feathers Review - Dark Souls Waifu
Wuchang Fallen Feathers is a souls-like game set in a Chinese 17th century dark fantasy setting and I’ve spent more than 50 hours with it before I managed to beat it. Developed by a Chinese Leenzee Games and published by Italian 5055 Games it is a new entry in the soulslike arena that is getting more and more quality games that are made by someone else beside From Software. Games of this type are hard to make and souls fans are a hard bunch to please. That’s probably why many developers didn’t dare throw their gloves into the ring. This being Leenzee’s first foray into big game development I was curious to see what they managed to do.

Everything is different, yet also the same
First impression is that the game is beautiful looking with a brighter setting of a Chinese inspired countryside. Game mechanic wise everything falls right into place for experienced souls players. There’s melee weapon combat with harsh punishing of mistakes, exploration of maze like levels and story that gives you just enough to keep you wondering where is this all going. Although the game starts throwing all of this new terminology at the player right from the start, after a while you’ll figure out that it’s all stuff from Dark Souls and Elden Ring that you are already used to and that Wuchang Fallen Feathers is a proper souls-like with everything you’d expect from it.

Innovation or Reiteration
The biggest example of the game throwing too much info at you is the big skill tree that initially feels like it came out of Path of Exile. After a while you figure out that you’re just upgrading stats like you would in a normal souls game and are unlocking weapon skills. The one cool thing about this system is that you upgrade an entire weapon class, instead of just a single weapon item, so you can use different weapons of the same class and still not worry about getting materials and souls to upgrade it. Also, you can respec at any time at no cost, so you can choose a different playstyle at any time or correct bad leveling decisions. This felt rather freeing.

Another thing is the dodge mechanic. There’s no slow roll dodge in Wuchang. You’ll teleport dash out of the way of hits, and it is a very generous dodge. This makes gameplay more dynamic and actiony. Still, all enemies will punish you if you get greedy. So, don’t expect to be landing a lot of hits after good dodges. You’ll have to carefully manage a tight balance between dodging and doing counter attacks. There’s also parry, block and clash mechanics tied to the weapon class you’re using to help with damage mitigation, so you can choose the one closest to your playstyle.
There’s also several other improvements or variations of familiar souls systems, like the madness mechanic, but they didn’t really impact the gameplay enough for me to pay too much attention to them, except for the Skyborn Might.
Magic is for the Weak
Perfect dodges and some weapon moves fill your Skyborn Might, which is basically mana sections you spend on spells and weapon skills. There is no mana flask and mana pool you draw out of. You have to generate Skyborn Might with dodging and special moves and only then can you cast spells. There’s no spamming of skills and long range magic. Each weapon has two skills that you can use and that are enhanced by Skyborn Might. You can also unlock additional weapon skills (or weapon arts if you want to use Dark Souls/Elden Ring terminology) in the skill tree.

All of these mechanics and designs let you play Wuchang the way you want to. Whether you’ll go old school Dark Souls combat or use weapon arts à la Elden Ring is up to you. This makes it possible to have dynamic combat fitting different types of players.
Bosses Schmosses
You might think that all of these changes might lower the difficulty and lose the souls magic, but with clever level design and enemy placement the game maintains the level of difficulty that will feel just right for dark souls fans. The only thing that bothered me was that bosses were just not challenging enough and I managed to beat most of them in just a few tries at first.
But, as the game progresses things become more and more difficult until in the second half of the game you’ll be spending dozens of attempts on some bosses and everything will again be alright with your masochistic dark souls fantasy.

Wuchang: Fallen Feathers is a beautiful looking game set in a Chinese dark fantasy setting that feels and plays like a proper dark souls game. I’ve entirely enjoyed playing through the game, especially in the second half and I must recommend it to all fans of the genre. Even those that are trying a soulslike for the first time will probably enjoy Wuchang more because of how the bosses are not an insurmountable obstacle in the first half of the game.
Wuchang is a proper souls-like and you should just go into it as if you’re playing Dark Souls 3. The biggest difference really is the graphics quality and feel. The game is visually rich and the tone is brighter and less oppressive than From Software games. It is good that more and more developers and teams are capable of producing a proper souls experience and that we can experience variations of these fantasy worlds that are not all of the same tone and mechanics, while keeping alive the true spirit of the genre and what makes it fun to play.
Highs
- Great looking game with less oppressive atmosphere.
- Excellent feeling of souls mechanics.
- Fun to explore and finish for fans of the genre.
Lows
- Only a few bosses present a true challenge.
- Not enough weapons to find and choose from.