Cliff Notes – Wuchang: Fallen Feathers review taking the soul out of Soulslike
Wuchang: Fallen Feathers review summary
In Short: A wearingly competent Soulslike that seems to have no interest in inventing anything of its own and which is nowhere near as refined as FromSoftware’s best games.
Pros: The combat is perfectly entertaining, with a wide range of weapons and impressively vast skill tree. The madness stat is an interesting feature that should’ve been expanded on further.
Cons: Everything in the game has been done a dozen times before and usually to better effect. Nasty difficulty spikes and simplistic storytelling.
Score: 5/10
Formats: PlayStation 5 (reviewed), Xbox Series X/S, and PC
Price: £44.99*
Publisher: 505 Games
Developer: Leenzee
Release Date: 24th July 2025
Age Rating: 16
-
Lack of Originality: Wuchang heavily borrows from established titles like Dark Souls and Bloodborne, offering little in terms of innovation or unique gameplay mechanics.
-
Mixed Combat Experience: While the combat system is enjoyable and features a variety of weapons and skills, it suffers from predictable difficulty spikes and lacks the refinement of its inspirations.
-
Underwhelming Narrative and Design: The graphics are decent but not exceptional. The storytelling is simplistic, and although the level design has clever elements, it fails to match the artistic depth found in other games of the genre.
Wuchang: Fallen Feathers review – taking the soul out of Soulslike
Wuchang: Fallen Feathers – originality is not its strong point for 505 Games. A new Soulslike set in China’s Ming dynasty borrows from both Dark Souls and Bloodborne, with some interesting madness effects to keep you on your toes.
For decades the Chinese video games industry has been focused solely on the PC and its home audience. For reasons that are not entirely clear, but seem to involve the oversaturation of the mobile market, Chinese developers have suddenly begun to embrace console gaming and in terms of technical prowess their output has been exceptional from the start.
What’s been disappointing though, is how they already seem to have got themselves into a rut, where almost every single high-profile game is a Soulslike, or at least Soulslike adjacent. Starting with Black Myth: Wukong, and now this, there’s a dizzying array of very similar looking titles on the horizon, including Phantom Blade Zero, Lost Soul Aside, Tides Of Annihilation, Project Jinyiwei, and more.
We guess that means Dark Souls and the rest of FromSoftware’s oeuvre is popular in China but while some games, especially Black Myth, do deviate from the formula Wuchang follows it all too closely. It’s a competent copy, more so than many we’ve played over the years, but in terms of gameplay it adds absolutely nothing new.
Wuchang is set in what is now Sichuan province during the late Ming dynasty, in the 17th century. But while the game does feature some real historical elements the overall plot involves a supernatural pandemic called the Feathering Disease, which… well, the clue is in the name really.
Playing as a female pirate named Bai Wuchang, you start the game with amnesia and your arm covered in feathers. Ordinarily this would mean you’re about to turn into a monster but for initially unexplained reasons it grants you access to a number of magical abilities.
Dark Souls will be 15 years old next year and while it’s had a huge influence on the games industry, there can be no other game that has been copied quite so much while changing so little. If you’ve at all familiar with the genre you’ll know exactly what to expect from Wuchang, in terms of the third person combat, the multiple weapons, the stats that can be influenced by armour and talismans, and the unusually high difficulty.
Every different weapon has its own related skills
Wuchang hits every note predictably and accurately but in every way it feels like From Lite. Even the difficultly isn’t quite as extreme as the games it’s copying, while being uneven enough that you still can’t recommend it to newcomers to the genre.
Every different weapon has its own related skills, while each of the five weapon types (swords, dual blades, longswords, axes, and spears) has associated discipline skills, which are unlocked from a skill tree and assigned to whichever weapon you want.
This is all enjoyably intricate, with discipline skills also determining whether you’re able to deflect or parry with a particular weapon. All skills and weapon abilities are powered by something called skyborn might, which by default is gained by performing a perfect dodge.
The combat is enjoyable but it’s also extremely familiar. The only thing that’s surprising about the game is that as well as Dark Souls it steals quite a bit from Bloodborne, including a version of Insight, where if you kill ordinary humans (who, because of the feathers, assume you’re about to turn into a monster and attack you on sight) your state of madness increases – while killing monsters decreases it.
The bonfire equivalent are shrines, if you were wondering (505 Games)
Your madness level alters the effectiveness of certain skills, while going above 90% means you both take and deal out more damage than usual. Plus, if you die when at maximum madness an evil demon version of yourself appears and is waiting for you when you come back to recover your lost souls red mercury (although because the game is generally less difficult than the Soulslike average you usually only lose about half when you die).
The level design is also reminiscent of Bloodborne, since this isn’t a true open world game like Elden Ring, and generally that’s a compliment. Although while the intricately designed map and unexpected shortcuts are clever the landscapes and art design is never anywhere near as interesting.
Wuchang is perfectly fine, but it feels so watered down compared to actual FromSoftware games it’s hard to see under what circumstances it could ever be recommended. Especially since the bosses – usually the highlight of any similar game – are so unsatisfying. They often involve a sudden difficulty spike and the later ones have almost no margin for error, while also being irritatingly defensive fighters, forever flitting off out of reach.
The game’s best elements are its expansive skill trees and everything related to the madness rating. If it was us, we would’ve focused more on that and added more of a horror element to the game, but that never seems to have been a consideration.
While this is not the worst Soulslike we’ve ever played we’re struggling to think of another one that feels quite so generic. When there are so many other games doing almost exactly the same thing this needed a more substantial selling point than copying from both Dark Souls and Bloodborne. But alas, Wuchang: Fallen Feathers never really takes flight as its own unique experience.
*available on Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass from day one