I have been playing some more of Wuchang: Fallen Feathers. I have now spent 27.7 hours to complete one and a half chapters out of five, and later chapters seem to have about the same amount of content based on glancing at some walkthrough maps.
It is an interesting game in some ways. It is a quite traditional soulslike full of mimics, hidden secrets, NPC quests with cryptic goals, challenging non-respawning enemies, unlockable shortcuts, Estus-like recovery items, and even the classic Dark Souls feature of not including an in-game map.
It is a huge game in a somewhat dizzying way. Remember the massive metroidvania game Afterimage? That game was also developed in China, came out of nowhere, and presented a vastly bigger metroidvania map than most others in the genre while maintaining a surprising level of quality. It is the same deal for soulslikes with Wuchang. It is not a dual design with soulslike maps placed in an open-world setting like in Elden Ring, but a massive connected soulslike world, which surely must be one of the biggest ones ever designed — possibly with some competition from Dark Souls 2.
The quality of level design does not seem to decrease as you get further into the game, with the areas in the second chapter being more atmospheric and more complex while introducing interesting new gameplay mechanics, such as freezing cold environments that can only be survived by having line of sight to the sun, standing close to fire, or being indoors. The game has also included huge subareas hidden in plain sight — after falling down cliffs, walking across an invisible bridge, and so on. The game truly seems vast, with hidden riches in every corner in the best possible way.
Some criticism has been directed at the game for changing some of the boss encounters to make historical Chinese figures survive instead of being killed, for censorious reasons. That criticism may possibly be well-founded, but the game does not come off as a tame, toned-down experience at all. The depictions of war, raiding of civilians, and opportunistic killing are quite provocative, and definitely contribute to the atmosphere, flesh out the world-building, and make the exploration feel more suspenseful.
I have already written a lot, but the progression systems are also quite interesting. The game must have one of the most complex progression systems in a soulslike. You start in the middle of a huge grid of interconnected unlockable combat abilities, passive abilities, entirely new gameplay mechanics, stat upgrades, and weapon upgrades. The weapon upgrades are somewhat interestingly unlocked for the entire weapon type, so if you have +5 for one-handed swords, that includes all weapons in that category and not only the specific weapons you choose to upgrade. Spell use is more widely supported than in most other soulslikes, but you have to have quite an advanced understanding of the gameplay systems and unlock appropriate nodes in the progression system to get a good build.
Finally, the graphics are outstanding, and the music and sound effects are pretty good as well. Some people seemed to have performance issues when the game was just released, but the game runs very smoothly with basically maxed-out settings on my 5090 + 9800X3D gaming PC.
In conclusion, based on what I have played, Wuchang: Fallen Feathers stands out as one of the most ambitious and interesting soulslikes I've played in the last couple of years. I would broadly recommend the game to fans of soulslikes.
