Beating a soulslike is hard. Making one is, by every appearance, much harder. Developed by Leenzee and published by 505 Games, Wuchang: Fallen Feathersis the latest in a torrent of soulslikes, but it follows on the heels of mostly mixed successes at best. The genre is built around staples like intricate boss fights, precise mechanics, and punishment for minor mistakes, and if any one element is out of tune, the whole affair can feel like a slog rather than a challenge. Wuchang, thankfully, knows what it’s doing.
Set in the late Ming dynasty, Wuchang follows the story of an amnesiac pirate afflicted with the Feathering, a disease that’s been ravaging the lands and creating monstrous threats. Wuchang, however, is narrowly managing to hold onto her sanity. Uncovering the full scope of the narrative requires you to pay attention, but even if you never fully digest its secrets, you’ll certainly feel its effects through the grotesque boss fights and creeping Madness that affect how Wuchang fights.
Wuchang: Fallen Feathers Delivers The Soulslike Essentials
Borrowing & Building On A Strong Foundation
Making progress through Wuchang starts simply enough. Winding your way through a relatively linear area, you can meet your first NPCs, take down your first enemies, and get your first upgrade without encountering anything terribly complicated. It doesn’t take long, however, for the game’s complexities to start unfolding. Areas become multilayered and interconnected, the skill tree reveals more nodes at every turn, and Capitalized Terms start showing up everywhere.
None of its systems or ideas fundamentally fail to mesh.
It’s a lot, and the tutorial prompts often arrive late, but the intrinsic learning curve is intuitive. Naturally, familiarity with the genre will help. Even more than the soulslike tag suggests, Wuchang is deeply indebted to Fromsoft’s titles, and its presentation is sometimes more interested in emulating than innovating. Squint, and it could occasionally pass for a new Sekiro.
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Discounting a game for its lack of ground-level originality can be tempting, but Wuchang builds on its inspirations with a rare degree of assurance. Its modest iterations can be found across virtually every aspect of the game, and none of its systems or ideas fundamentally fail to mesh. The centerpiece, of course, is the combat, an area where Wuchang confidently delivers.
Complex Systems Support Elegant Boss Fights
High-Stakes Encounters Are Both Strategic & Thrilling
At times, Wuchang‘s fights are all about the essentials. Some enemies are best defeated with a heavy blow and backstab, and some bosses rely on the dance of deflection mastery. Often, though, you have plenty of options. Relentless attacks and perfect dodges build up a resource called Skyborn Might, which empowers a wide variety of weapon abilities. My rhythm became heavily dependent on a sword with a whip attack, but you can just as easily invest in status ailments or even gunfire.
Many of the game’s bosses strike a perfect soulslike balance.
Defense is just as strategic, and once it gets going, Wuchang will start drowning you in outfits and items with long lists of resistances. Challenges frequently shift in nature, and swapping accordingly feels especially essential. As a side bonus, much of the gear is stylish, and if you’d rather avoid the more blatant fanservice options, you can always transmogrify them into bulky armor.
Even if you initially resist its dizzying array of possibilities, Wuchang‘s difficulty will likely push you into embracing these opportunities. Many of the game’s bosses strike a perfect soulslike balance. Upon meeting them, they can feel like a wall, but learning their patterns and developing a fight strategy rapidly reveals the light at the end of the tunnel. I wouldn’t say everything is tuned to absolute perfection, and I’m still suspicious of a hitbox here or there, but nothing ever felt truly unfair.
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There’s also no shortage of risk-reward elements, and leaning into specific offensive capabilities tends to come with interesting costs. A frequent build-up of Madness makes you take more damage from enemy attacks, but it also opens up plenty of opportunities in your skill tree, giving you a greater chance to control the pace of an encounter. While I largely built my strategy around getting health back from attacks, those braver than I can build up synergies that focus on poisoning bosses or breaking their posture as quickly as possible.
Wuchang’s Level Design Is Its Secret To Success
Mastering A Tricky Gameplay Loop
Wuchang‘s most memorable moments are all found in its boss fights, and finely honed mechanics serve as the foundation for those highlights. The glue that holds the whole affair together, however, is the level design. With the emphasis on striking encounters, it’s easy for soulslikes to turn into glorified boss rushes, a fate that Wuchang nimbly avoids.
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Every area is a puzzle of both vertical complexity and maze-like sprawl, but never in a time-wasting way. Well-tuned enemy placement and a reliable sense of forward progress make reaching every shrine tantalizing. It uses some classic restraints to make things easier — you can’t jump, for example — but it doesn’t stoop to relying on invisible walls.
The scenery doesn’t change with any special frequency, but it’s dotted with gorgeous vistas, and one late-game area blends autumnal colors and forest bioluminescence to fantastic effect. In contrast to the surplus of Unreal Engine 5 games that sacrifice any sense of art style in pursuit of realism, Wuchang effortlessly balances environmental detail with bespoke choices in color and lighting.
A Complete Package Built On Familiar Bones
Sometimes, Getting The Basics Right Is Enough
How much you get out of Wuchang‘s story will generally depend on your willingness to pursue its threads, although it makes that process slightly easier than FromSoft tends to. Cultural context will also help, but there’s no Rosetta Stone for the plot in the same manner as Black Myth: Wukong‘s connection to Journey to the West. Either way, Wuchang is dripping with the immediacy of decay. Even if you miss the item description that explains a corpse’s fate, grisly environments won’t fail to make an impression.
Wuchang doesn’t reinvent the wheel, but it does both trick the wheel out and keep it rolling. If you’re looking to scratch the Sekiro itch, you won’t do much better than a few of the fights here, and even those who don’t normally care about builds might have some fun setting themselves up for each encounter. While plenty of soulslikes have fantastic peaks, Wuchang: Fallen Feathersis one of a select few that know how to make the valleys feel worthwhile.
Wuchang: Fallen Feathers
Reviewed on PC
8/10
- Released
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July 24, 2025
- ESRB
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M For Mature 17+ Due To Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, Partial Nudity
- Developer(s)
-
Leenzee
- Publisher(s)
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505 Games
- Engine
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Unreal Engine 5
- Multiplayer
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Online Multiplayer
- Strong grasp of soulslike fundamentals
- Complex systems worth engaging with
- Attractive presentation and memorable boss fights
- Blazes little new ground for the genre
Screen Rant was provided with a digital PC code for the purpose of this review.
