‘Wuchang: Fallen Feathers’ Review: A Nearly Parodic Soulslike

If nothing else, Wuchang: Fallen Feathers makes you empathize with its amnesiac heroine, Wuchang. You’re by no means fairly certain about something in Chinese language studio Leezee’s Soulslike. What’s the take care of the apocalyptic fowl flu that’s turning individuals, together with the protagonist, into avian creatures? What brings you to this fortress, or this swamp, or this forest? When you’ve unlocked the flexibility to mild your sword on fireplace, how do you really get it aflame? Have you ever been down this path earlier than, or are you mixing it up with considered one of its untold lookalikes?

It might be one factor if Wuchang have been merely complicated, nevertheless it’s additionally relatively confused. Like quite a few video games impressed by Darkish Souls, Wuchang each misunderstands the ethos of that zeitgeist-defining work and fails to heed the teachings taught by its flaws. The result’s an formidable journey that, betraying solely glimmers of conviction, verges at occasions on parody.

Wuchang’s fantastical reimagining of the Shu province in the course of the late Ming Dynasty goals for the wondrously intertwined construction of Darkish Souls’s Lordran however as an alternative proves exhaustingly convoluted. There’s no map to consult with, which isn’t inherently an issue, however the recreation’s typically lovely environments are too winding and monotonous for a way of course to settle in.

The disorientation is exacerbated by the truth that Wuchang can’t resist placing a fork within the highway. The panorama involves resemble a hydra: Every path splits off into two extra, then two extra, and so forth, till the serpent feels untamable—or the prospect of felling it feels tiresome.

Then there are the numerous shortcuts: the doorways that need to be opened from the opposite facet, the ladders that have to be let down from above. Such gadgets, sparsely, can function welcome rewards for decided exploration; when applied deftly, they’ll even set off epiphanies concerning the geography’s coherence. However in overabundance, they lay naked the world’s contrivance, prefer it was twisted and warped with the only goal of dotting it with locked gates.

Nor do the shortcuts spare you irritating runbacks. Regularly, when racing to retry one of many recreation’s exacting bosses, you’ll have to slide by enemies and wait out excruciating elevator rides. Towards the backdrop of Wuchang’s stage design, which appears hell-bent on sapping the enjoyment from traversal, the dearth of pre-boss checkpoints scans as an unthinking replication of generic norms popularized by, and largely moved previous since, Darkish Souls. (The ultimate space, a morass of pesky standing results, ambushes, and treacherous heights, would check the persistence of a saint.)

Wuchang’s fight, in distinction, is confidently lean, if maybe too skinny. Exact dodges empower your blows and sure assaults in combos deflect enemy strikes, making a rousing suggestions system between protection and offense. You decide up new strikes by investing in a talent tree, whose free resets encourage experimentation, although the perks stop being thrilling roughly midway into your journey. So do the more and more repetitive bosses, however your battles in opposition to them stay sufficiently atmospheric to encourage resilience via the sport’s ache factors.

Wuchang might have distinguished itself within the crowded Soulslikes discipline with its thematic deal with the plights girls face in warfare and past. All through your quest, grieving widows and traumatized women beseech the protagonist—a uncommon determine within the recreation who’s lethal, righteous, and never a person—for help. However there’s an overriding ickiness to the execution, from the innumerable corpses of girls civilians littered on the bottom—the identical physique gratuitously and dehumanizingly copied and pasted advert nauseam—to the remedy of Wuchang herself.

You see it most prominently within the tools out there to Wuchang. The flavour textual content of 1 armor set alludes to the distinct horrors inflicted on girls, bringing to thoughts your function as an avenger. However whenever you equip it, you discover Wuchang dressed, primarily, in lingerie. Your wardrobe can even abound with deep-cut tops, uncinched robes, and different oddly revealing and impractical clothes—an inventive selection that undercuts Wuchang’s message. The sport’s politics, like its labyrinthine world, gesture at which means however discover nothing to know.

This recreation was reviewed with a code supplied by Renaissance PR.