Wuchang: Fallen Feathers puts you in the shoes of the titular Wuchang. She awakens in an ancient temple, where she is being treated by an old monk. The monk informs Wuchang that she has been inflicted by The Feathering, an illness that causes people to grow feathers on their body. As time progresses, they lose all of their memories and eventually transform into horrific beasts. With her memory already gone, Wuchang is aware she has only a limited amount of time to discover a cure before she loses herself completely and joins the Feathered.

I had some trouble following Wuchang's plot. The basic stuff is easy to pick up, but I struggled with the characters and relationships, with characters being introduced and vanishing seemingly out of nowhere. It wasn't the standard Souls "the lore is in the item description" stuff, but events sort of happen with little rhyme or reason. It wasn't enough to get in the way of the gameplay, but the events left me rather cold. It doesn't help that Wuchang's outfits are composed of the skimpiest strips of cloth, so it's difficult to watch many of the cut scenes and take them seriously.  There is a transmog feature that helps with this, though.

Wuchang fits firmly in the Souls-inspired action/RPG genre. When you first boot it up, you're going to encounter a lot of familiar things, from the basic feel of combat to the presence of limited healing items that are filled at bonfire-like worship shrines. There's a collectible resource that's gained from defeating enemies, and it's lost upon death but can be recovered by returning to where you died. There are also powerful bosses hidden behind foggy doors, and so on. If you've ever played a Soulslike, you have a basic idea of the flow and design of the game.

Perhaps the most distinctive part of the Wuchang combat system is the Skybound Might system. Skybound Might is Wuchang's version of the MP bar found in other games. Unlike those games, Skybound Might is entirely based on how you play. By default, you can hold one stack of Skybound Might — up to eventually five. Every time you narrowly dodge an attack, you'll gain a Stack, which you can spend on various spells and special abilities. However, each weapon in the game also has its own way of getting additional Skybound Might. The standard longsword can build up Might by performing combo strings, while the one-handed sword naturally builds it over time but gives you a stacking buff that makes it auto-fill faster. Not only does Skybound Might let you use certain moves, but it also can be used to modify other moves, such as instantly charging your R2 heavy attack instead of needing a few moments for it to reach maximum potential. There are many special moves that have a weaker version if you lack Might and gain new abilities and properties if you have it.

I like the Skybound Might system because it adds some fun thoughts to how you approach combat. Being constantly encouraged to do near-misses because you're rewarded with additional stacks means that being aggressive and staying close to the enemy gives you additional resources to play around with and encourages aggro even as a magic-heavy play style. It also means your various cool moves and abilities can be used freely instead of having to be conserved. I like it a bit more than the Dark Souls/Elden Ring method of using a second mana flask.

The system does have its flaws. It makes magic and ranged abilities a little too overpowered. It becomes trivially easy to plink down a lot of bosses by standing outside of their standard attack range and baiting their (usually easily dodged) ranged attacks or charge moves. The balance between the weapons isn't perfect, so some weapons hemorrhage Might stacks, while others are slow to build them. Having stacks is such a significant bonus that it made the weapons that built them slowly feel weaker.

Another distinct feature is the Madness system. The Feathering causes madness in those who are afflicted by it. In practice, this mean that you gain madness by dying or killing humans and lose madness by killing Feathered beings. When your madness maxes out, you deal and take additional damage, and a demonic version of your character appears — either at the location of your last death or at specific locations in the world. Defeat this avatar, and you'll drain your madness back to zero. However, there are benefits to having madness, including special skills that grant power buffs and a store to get useful items.

The madness system didn't work for me. The nature of the game means you're not able to decide if you're fighting feathered or non-feathered enemies, so rather than it being something you balanced, it is just something that fills up naturally over time. There was very little reason to cure madness, since the damage boost was more significant for you than for the enemy. In theory, there's a greater risk because if you're at lower madness, you don't lose all your resources upon death, but since losing all your stored souls and having to recover them is standard for the Souls-like genre, it doesn't necessarily feel like a consequence.

Speaking of leveling, Wuchang has a pretty interesting take on how it handles leveling. You spent the collected resources you gather to create Red Mercury Extract, which is used to fill out skill trees. There is one skill tree for every weapon type and trees for things like healing items and self-buffs. These trees contain stats and new passive and active skills you can get. Instead of leveling Vitality +1, you fill a Vitality +1 node on your way to a skill that makes your basic attack give you extra Skybound Might. You can also re-spec at any time for no cost, so you're free to build and rebuild your character.

In addition, weapons are fewer in number but more significant. Instead of weapons having raw stats, they have a combination of skills and attributes, with most weapons having some kind of passive bonus in addition to an active skill. In some cases, the weapons can significantly change how they function, such as a spear that can split apart to get additional range or an ax that doubles as a flamethrower. Instead of upgrading weapons, you upgrade the weapon's skill tree, which gives them the standard +(x) bonuses. You can even refund these upgrades, so if you want to swap from an ax to a spear, you can do so without any grinding.

I like Wuchang's leveling system significantly more than those in most Souls-like games I've played. The fact that it is a tree instead of passive numbers actually makes upgrades feel more significant and meaningful, while the ease of re-specs means that at no point do I feel trapped into using a specific build or weapon. It made it fun to experiment and try out new things, and I felt like I could swap over to a specific gimmick weapon for the boss area it excelled in without feeling like I was crippling my damage output. It's probably the high point of the game.

The easiest way to describe Wuchang is that it's perfectly competent with occasional moments of excellence. It's a well-made game in an overstuffed genre, and in terms of the Soulslikes I've played, it's in the higher tiers but never quite reaches the levels of raw excellence of something like Lies of P or FromSoft games. It is still a lot of fun to play, and if you're a fan of Soulslikes, there's a lot to enjoy. Anyone feeling burned out on the genre isn't likely to be revitalized by it, though.

In terms of graphics, Wuchang is a mixed bag. The game looks good for the most part, but it has some areas with surprisingly bad texture work. The boss fights feel nicely epic and exciting, and the environments are varied and beautiful. However, I encountered a surprising amount of hitching during my playthrough even with the game set to Performance and with the FPS lock activated. There is a day-one patch coming that should hopefully alleviate this, but it could have run smoother. The game's soundtrack is solid but not exceptional. It does its job well, but I wasn't left with a strong impression of any of the songs. The voice acting is cheesy and somewhat hokey, but that's so standard for Soulslikes that it could be considered as much a plus as a minus.

In terms of overall design, I really feel like Wuchang: Fallen Feathers falls firmly in the "solid and fun but not exceptional" category. While the boss fights are fun, they didn't knock off my socks. I had a good time with it, and it's a solid entry in the Soulslike genre. It does its job quite well, but it doesn't really stand out from the crowd, either. It has some great design choices. I hope to see other games in the genre adapt in the future, but otherwise, it's a fairly by-the-numbers Souls game that is a good time but a little too safe for its own good.

Score: 8.0/10