There’s nothing quite like that pressure in a Souls-like of real risk vs reward.

You see the bright, shiny object off in the distance and you start drooling. For that split second, you just forget yourself, run across that bridge, arms outstretched and go to grab it. Only for the bridge to fall in on itself beneath you or you get ambushed by a deadly attack from the sides of the ceiling. Instant regret.

Wuchang: Fallen Feathers plays all the tricks you’ve seen in Elden Ring. Dark Souls. Lies of P. You name it, it’s like a greatest hits compilation of every brutal Souls-like you’ve played over the last fifteen years. But it also makes some bold, interesting choices that at least attempt to freshen up the formula. And I kinda dig it!

There’s no set classes for one thing. No character customisation or the choice of which artifact to carry around with before you begin. The game just dumps you right into its story and slowly but surely introduces you to each and every concept.

Story, actually, is one thing the game really does try to shine at. Whereas many Souls-like play a lot of rhyming games with the player, speaking in riddles and jumbling everything up so it doesn’t always make sense where you are, what you’re doing and how you got there. But at the start of Wuchang, there’s a clarity in your character’s uncertainty.

You awake in a cave, one arm transforming via process known as ‘Feathering’. You’re not entirely sure what’s happening to you or how you got there, but as you fight through the initial waves and get to the first safe haven, you learn that the people there brought you to safety to try and relax and stay out of sight. As apparently when certain people see you with a feathered arm, they’ll attack on sight. Branding you a monster.

Yeah, you’re kinda a bad egg. Or at least, perceived to be. In reality, though, you’re a poor tortured soul just trying to find answers.

And sure enough, as you die and die again, an inner demon starts to consume you and fill you with a rage that, once fully taken over, sees you afflicted by madness. On paper, this may not seem like a bad thing, as your damage output increases and makes you more powerful against the enemies you face. But it also means you take more damage. And there’s an even bigger problem to worry about.

Where you drop your Red Mercury – aka your Souls – instead you’ll find a mirror version of yourself, extremely well armed and dangerous. And the only way to reclaim your Mercury is by defeating them. It’s a bit like the Phantoms from the Souls games, but these are lethal, fast-acting, will throw fire bombs at you and will dice you up before you’ve had a chance to dodge.

Backtracking a bit, though. To defend yourself, you can select different weapon types, like dual blades, longswords, axes, spears and build them up using the mercury you collect from your foes and from random drops. The game has one extended talent grid – known as Impetus Repistory – that you gradually fill out, very similar to classic RPGs and will see you place points against weapons and attributes as opposed to levelling up individual health or stamina or magic.

Basically, you’ll need to select a weapon you favor and make your way through the skills in order to reach upgrades to health or agility, endurance and magic. Even Feathering. The same also applies to the Manna flasks that you use to heal yourself with the only way to upgrade these by finding specific items in chests in order to increase your charges and their overall potency.

It adds a very interesting approach to the game and makes it even more important to decide where you’re going to place your points. You may not favor one handed swords for instance, but it gives you quicker access to more magic which you do use frequently. All while unlocking new skills to learn and master for your respective weapon, keeping combat fresh throughout the game.

You can hold two weapons at once at the start and in so doing, there’s a powerful ability that allows you to quickly change weapon in the midst of a combo to weaken and stun an enemy, making them rife for a devastating critical strike or counter attack.

This is also a game that very much encourages dodging as it builds up what’s called your Skyborn Might, which essentially gives you spell charges to use in battle but also powerful weapon stacks that increase your weapon’s strength and power. To be honest, it took me a minute to get my head around things as the game struggles a little bit with some tutorialisation and this will take some getting used to as it’s not what you’re normally used to. But once you get into the rhythm with it, the systems really start to click and are actually fun to experiment with.

In fact, I found Wuchang a bit like a dance of death. There’s a fluidity and finnesse to the movement, that inspires you to keep moving, ducking weaving and then lashing out with devastating strikes. Where the Souls games can tend to work a bit slower with more blocks and counters, in Wuchang, I was regularly looking for high ground, weaving around my opponent’s most powerful strikes and barely able to stop for breath, lest I’d become a shish kebab.

Wuchang goes further, though. As you stop at shrines throughout the game, you can also temper with your feathered arm, adding special effects to it to enhance yourself and make you even stronger. Using specific bone needles, in the arm, you can gain additional benefits to slash attacks, stabing motions, elemental resistance and more. It’s just another way you can customise yourself but not actually define yourself as a particular class. You can kind of just be what you want to be.

I definitely appreciate this sort of openness Wuchang offers. We’ve definitely seen hybrid builds play a big part in people’s progress in Souls-likes and this lends itself to that idea by letting you jab with a spear while casting devastating magic arrows.

And Benediction adds even more to that by letting you socket weapons with Oath, Memory and Wisdom stones, all with different properties, while Discipline adds new skills to the game’s unique weapons.

Wuchang is dizzying. It might even make you motion sick for how fast you have to dart around and try to stay on your own two feet. But enemies are hyper aggressive, often charging right at you or glowing with a menacing energy to suggest their attacks are fast and unrelenting. You’ve still got big clunky enemies that you can find ways around but these are often accompanied by annoying little igits that shoot at you from range or enemies that you can fall right into and become corrupted pretty sharpish.

Yet the game always feels beatable and you feel confident in your skills the more and more you progress. There’s a good balance to the action and areas, and you can even take risks by invoking the madness, using your mercury to acquire new items in exchange for bringing out your inner demon. It’s up to you to decide if it’s worth the trade off.

Wuchang is also a beautiful looking game, one of the most stunning, best presented titles on PS5 to date, with far-off mountainsides, deep, dark caverns, and stunning towns atop running water. The characters are stunningly presented and the voice acting compliments the story-telling very well. All that and, of course, the bosses really give you a visual tour-de-force with their special moves and actions.

I did experience screen-tearing when balancing between quality and performance – a warning the game does give you, and I did find Quality Mode choppy and tricky to play. You’re going to want fast-paced and frame rate for Wuchang unlike any other Souls-like you’ve played before. This game is fast-paced.

But it’s also hard not to want to experience the game at its most splendid, particularly with the beautiful score that plays peacefully in the background and the satisfying sounds as you whisk around, listen to wind chimes and become one with your environment. The game is a true delight.

As for where it ranks compared to other Souls-likes, I have to say I really dug the formula once I got my teeth into it and found it very difficult to put down. The game presents a good challenge with areas – and even sub-enemies – sometimes even being trickier than the bosses. But there’s a good feel to the balance and the game does a nice job of onboarding, getting you comfortable, before piling on the pressure. And believe me, that pressure will come!

But there’s also nice options available to the player as the game opens up, not constraining you to one path necessarily, but allowing you to explore, open up shortcuts, try to grind a little bit and find a better weapon to help you with tougher fights.

Next to Lies of P, it’s one of the best Souls-likes I’ve played outside of a From Software game and as far as I’m concerned, that’s about as high of praise as I can give. There’s a good variety to the environments, the story is actually more interesting than you’ll usually find in these games as you want to learn more about Feathering and where you’ve come from.

But there’s also some nice bosses, though they do often fall into a similar pattern of dodging and ducking and weaving, and patterns feel a bit easier to learn than you might expect. I do also find, like so many other games that try to mimic From’s style, they sometimes over compensate by making certain sections too difficult and not making a level and enemy layout fair or give you anything to learn from. Just bash the button and hope it helps. I also got stun-boxed by a few enemies that became pretty annoying and tedious as you wait for animations to finish, and also didn’t appreciate being attacked while reading the game’s literature.

I do also sometimes feel like the game feels a little constrained from a sense of progress. While I do feel stronger as I progress and develop, I can still take a surprising amount of damage from a random mob if they catch me off-guard for a second and I’ve just gone back to an earlier area to grind or look for hidden secrets. I do also feel like you can catch some of the game’s afflictions a little too easily unless you make sure to give yourself a large amount of protection against them.

And, yeah, there’s definitely more than a few armor sets that are…quite revealing for our young lady protagonist. While you can absolutely choose not to wear them, of course, I found some of the better types actually had more flesh exposed. It’s definitely nice to see a woman in a lead role for a game of this profile, but making these costumes very sexually charged is… a choice. Especially when I look at how ultra layered my Elden Ring and Dark Souls characters are by comparison. Coincidence? I think not, sadly…

However, the general atmosphere, ambiance, style, flow, pace, narrative and aesthetic really come together on this one to form a solid, enjoyable game that, once you get to grips with its mechanics, you’ll genuinely be flying around and having a blast with it.

Verdict

Wuchang: Fallen Feathers is one of the boldest, most interesting and enjoyable Souls-likes I’ve played outside of a From Software game. Its approach to the traditional style offers some neat tweaks and adjustments to keep it fresh, while still maintaining what makes these games enjoyable, engaging and difficult to put down. Despite some screen tearing and some issues with balance and progression, Wuchang is a beautiful game that really brings out the best of modern platforms across its diverse and varied environments and pits you against memorable, menacing enemies that match your movements with ferocity and fire. 

Pros

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Wuchang: Fallen Feathers is out July 24 on PC, PS, and Xbox Game Pass

Played on PlayStation 5

Code kindly provided by 505 Games for review purposes