WUCHANG Fallen Feathers Review

Great Combat, Tedious Paths

Watch the review or…

Read it here!

Title: WUCHANG Fallen Feathers

Release: July 23, 2025

Platform: PS5 PC Xbox X|S

Developer: Leenzee

Publisher: 505 Games

Genre: Soulslike Action

ESRB: M

Reviewed on: PC

Time Played: 26 Hours

Where it starts

A skilled pirate warrior, Wuchang, is afflicted with a debilitating illness called the Feathering, which causes side effects such as amnesia and a slow slipping into madness. With whatever time she has remaining, she will battle through bandits, marauders, and others lost to the Feathering as she searches for answers and a possible cure for her condition.

Weapon Styles

You will have access to several weapon types, each with its own fighting styles and speeds. Every weapon you find will come with two abilities, with the option to swap out the discipline if you have learned a different one. You can carry two weapons at a time and swap them whenever you see fit. A unique mechanic in this game is the inability to block with any weapon you want; to block incoming attacks, you must be using a weapon with the innate ability.

Wei Stones

Scattered across the land, you can find Wei Stones, special items you can attach to your weapons for a little extra boost to your preferred fighting style. They also come in sets, and if you’re observant enough to find three, equipping all of them on the same weapon will give a strong set bonus, further enhancing your fighting abilities. A Wei Stone can only be equipped on one weapon at a time, but you can move them around at a shrine.

Skymight Charges

Weapons skills and magic won’t work until you’ve acquired a few Skymight charges, which are usually gained during combat by perfectly dodging attacks and other methods depending on your equipment and skills. Denoted by small feathers filling in, a set amount will be used when you cast magic or perform a special move with your weapon. With the right equipment and skills, having Skymight charges can significantly boost your stats.

Red Mercury

The currency used to buy items and increase your level is called Red Mercury. You earn it by defeating enemies and using special items, as well as left on the ground when you die—requiring you to pick it up again or lose it forever. Once you have enough, you can refine it into Red Mercury Essence, which grants you a level and one point to assign in the skill tree. The skill tree includes all weapon types and a general branch for potions and magic. Unlike other ‘souls-like’ games, you purchase your stat increases in the skill tree, as well as special skills for your weapons. If you change your mind about how to spend your points, you can refund them at any time without using any items.

Ever Present Madness

Because Wuchang has the feathering, you will always need to monitor her madness levels. As her madness increases, both the damage you take and deal will go up. There are options in the skill tree to build around having a lot of madness if you want to fully embrace it. Madness can be accumulated by killing humans, dying, and using items. The only ways to reduce it are by using items at a shrine, killing feathered foes, or confronting your inner demon. If you die with full madness, your mercury will be protected by your inner demon. If the inner demon kills you again, your mercury is lost. No matter how the fight ends, you will no longer have any madness to worry about for a while.

The Best Fit

The armor in this game does not increase your fighting weight, so you don’t need to worry about slow dodges if you want a lot of defense. Instead, you’ll be looking at what kind of environment or enemies you’re going into and equip the appropriate attire to defend against attacks or ailments. For example, magic underwear with excellent defense against despair buildup, a nasty effect that will kill you instantly when full.

Finding Your Way

Wuchang Fallen Feathers has many branching paths for you to explore while navigating the game. Many of these paths seem to go on forever, making it hard to tell what leads to a secret and what is the way. Quite a few of them eventually wrap around and meet up, so you’re always making progress; it’s just difficult to determine the most efficient way through the game. However, with all the different options, if you’re having a hard time with a boss, chances are you can explore some other vast sections to strengthen yourself before returning.

Can the kids watch

In terms of language, you won’t have to worry about any crude words. The main issues would be the bloody mess you create when using your weapons and skills on enemies. It doesn’t stick to the ground, but a lot of it does fly out of their body with every hit. Also, the spooky design of several monsters. It’s a fun game to play, but it might be too graphic for younger kiddos.

Final Thoughts

I would love to hear any thoughts or questions you have about the game or my review, so leave me a message in the comments below. While you do that, let’s move on to my final thoughts and ratings.

Wuchang Fallen Feathers is another souls-like game with several unique differences. At its core, you’ll find many mechanics familiar if you’ve played other souls-like games: challenging combat, periodic save spots to level up and rest, enemies respawning, and experience dropping on death that must be retrieved. Major differences include stats gained from nodes on a skill tree, magic usage, the inability to block unless the weapon you’re using has that feature, and gear that is weightless. When I started Wuchang, it was easy to learn the basics, but they introduced a lot of mechanics very quickly, making it hard to remember everything and figure out how to use all my options. Nearly thirty hours in, I still don’t understand everything that’s happening. However, I can still progress and fight enemies along the way, so maybe not everything has to be fully understood to succeed.

Out of the six weapon options, I chose to stick with the dual blades. I found the attack speed of most weapons to be too slow for my liking, so I didn’t use them much. What I loved about the dual blades was the clashing mechanic during fights. Deflecting was an option if my weapons had a block, but clashing was always available. When I swing my weapon at the same time as the enemy, they clash, reducing the damage I take and still hurting the enemy. With the right skill points, I would gain health and skyborn might with every clash, making most boss fights easy—unless they used a lot of magic and I couldn’t clash with their attacks.

The Skyborn might mechanic might take some getting used to. I’m not generally a big magic user, so it wasn’t a big deal for me, but if you want to use magic, you’d need a build that can quickly gain Skyborn to have enough charges for casting spells. The same applies to some weapon attacks as well. The easiest way to gain Skyborn was by performing a perfect dodge or shimmer in this game. Dodging is very important in this game, no matter what build you have. Since you can’t weigh yourself down with heavy armor, dodges are always quick and can easily help you get out of trouble.

The madness system in the game was interesting. I didn’t care for the increase of damage I would take, so I avoided a madness-focused build, but that didn’t mean I completely avoided madness. Depending on how many times I died or the enemies I was facing, my madness would eventually accumulate. I found a way to lower my madness, but it involved traveling to a shrine near the start and sacrificing items—a task I didn’t want to do. Instead, madness would build up until I eventually died to an enemy, forcing me to face my inner demon upon returning. At first, the inner demon was a tough opponent, often defeating me and taking all my red mercury with it. Making me, yet again, walk back to that spot to move forward with the game. It was annoying at first, but once my build could easily handle the inner demon, it became just another small obstacle to deal with now and then.

The biggest problem I had with the game was trying to navigate the areas. Although they were well designed and very pretty, the branching paths caused a lot of frustration and extra work. The distance between tough enemies and the nearest shrine was significant; sometimes I was lucky enough to find a nearby shortcut, but I spent too much time walking back to where I had died just to find some nasty surprise that immediately killed me after only a few feet of progress. The distance between safe spots, along with the various paths to take wasted a lot of my time. I love a good challenge, but more often than not, this game just felt cruel and tedious at moments like that. It’s rare to find a game where the stages before a boss are much more difficult than the actual boss.

I found myself changing armor frequently depending on the area or enemies I was fighting, based on the type of damage I would be taking. Some zones would constantly poison me, so I needed to switch into clothes with high poison resistance. Swapping clothes didn’t take long, but having an option to save equipped armor for quick swaps would have been a huge help. There were quite a few times I needed my magic underwear to handle magicians, only to switch out for defensive pants to fight a guard moments later.

Wuchang is a fun game and a good souls-like. For most fans out there, this is one you would want to check out; however, I would not recommend it as your first dive into the genre. I had plenty of moments to enjoy, but there were many moments I did not have any fun at all. For me, a good souls-like provides a challenge I can figure out; this one, more often than not, just seemed to want to pick on me and throw too many curveballs too fast for me to constantly enjoy myself.

And with that let’s convert these thoughts into numbers and place this on a shelf.

The visuals were great, the different environments looked gorgeous and some of the enemies were very cool, I’m giving it a 4

The story was alright, trying to learn about your past in the midst of a land being harassed by bandits, rebellions, and a demon disease made for quite a trip, I’ll hand out a 3

The gameplay had moments that seemed simple, and moments that left me scratching my head. It all worked as it was supposed to, but I don’t feel like I got enough instruction, that’s another 3

Not a lot of replayability for me, there are multiple endings to strife for, but I wouldn’t want to put myself through some of those situations again, it’s getting a 1

I wish I could have had more fun with the game, learning about my favorite weapons and overcoming challenges was great, but to many times it threw me down and drove me mad, I’m giving it a 2

Earning WUCHANG Fallen Feathers an average score of 2.6 out of 5. Placing it, on my Mid Shelf. I’ve spoken with a few souls-like afficionados that really enjoyed their time with this game, it just didn’t quite click with me. If you’re a fan of the genre, check it out, you may find another love for your shelf, if you’ve never played a souls-like before, I’d recommend checking something else out first.