Wuchang: Fallen Feathers Is a Beautiful Soulslike

By Veerender Jubbal | July 22, 2025 | 10:00pm

Video Games Reviews wuchang: fallen feathers

Wuchang: Fallen Feathers Is a Beautiful Soulslike

Wuchang: Fallen Feathers, the most recent game from developer Leenzee and publisher 505 Games, isn’t content to be just another Soulslike game. It regularly looks for new ways to improve or add to the genre. You do not really have established Soulslike women protagonists in the genre, especially one like Wuchang, who is a Chinese pirate. Pretty much every Soulslikes with established character protagonists go the route of having a dude protagonist, and most of the time, a white dude. Even outside of Wuchang being a playable Chinese woman in this genre, Wuchang takes all new paths to improve the Soulslike genre that has become a mainstay across the video game landscape.

Many games can get bogged down with far too much story at the start, especially in genres where action and combat are the main focus, but Wuchang cuts straight to the meat of the game with very little background given. Wuchang wakes up in a cave and hears a name calling for her before you take control and start to discover the wide and vast world ahead, a world new to both you and her, with bountiful forests, dimmed caves, snow-covered mountains, and grotesque swamps.

To avoid too many spoilers, Wuchang is cursed, has amnesia, and is trying to find her sister. Wuchang is of the Feathered now, and people who have been Feathered lose control and then become monsters that attack humans. As a Feathered, Wuchang can use abilities to cast targeted spells, but unlike most she’s able to power through and remain in control. Sadly for Wuchang, almost everybody sees her as a monster, and even though you can control her Feathered abilities, she’s seen as the enemy more times than not.

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Red Mercury will be your main resource to upgrade Wuchang. Unlike other Soulslikes, though, such as how Lacrima is used to upgrade individual stats in Khazan: The First Berserker by defeating enemies, Red Mercury upgrades Wuchang’s base level. Upgrading this level grants you Red Mercury Essence, and this Essence can then be used and placed in the game’s massive Impetus Repository skill tree. Similar to the Sphere Grid system in Final Fantasy 10, you will have an immense amount of decision making to place your Essence into different paths that are also weapon dependent to increase your core stats like health or stamina. This massive grid also allows you to learn new abilities both passive and active that can turn the tides of battles. I found myself constantly respecing, going down different routes, and trying new passive or active abilities to better serve the situation. With no limit or downside to respecing, I could reuse Red Mercury Essence to focus more on Magic and Feathering abilities or unlock new melee combos with specific weapon types.

Wuchang: Fallen Feathers

Being a pirate, Wuchang is able to expertly wield many different weapons such as spears, longswords, one-handed swords, and axes, to name a few. It’s good to have these options; if the style or feel of one weapon is not to your liking as a player, perhaps one of the other six will become your primary.

Another core aspect of Wuchang’s combat is Skyborn Might. You earn this when you dodge—or, as it’s called here, Shimmer—at the last moment of an enemy attack. Skyborn Might can be used to cast spells or make your item-dependent Discipline skills (like powerful kicks or counterattacks) stronger, and you can also create seamless combos with two weapons throughout a fight. Unlocking more nodes in the Impetus Repository can even allow you to gain Skyborn Might by dishing out light attacks; I became a Longsword and One-Handed Sword player to continually build Skyborn Might in the flow of battle. It truly looks and feels majestic, and the flow of being rewarded for my gameplay decisions is almost like a dance: dodge to gain Skyborn Might, dish out two Longsword light attacks to get another Skyborn Might, and then midcombo switch to the One-Handed Sword to do an Evasive Maneuver to avoid being hit, before using a spell that allows me to dodge to cast fireballs, and then closing the gap to use my last Skyborn Might to quickly unleash a heavy attack that would not have been as powerful had I not been continually creating Skyborn Might and juggling so many different combat maneuvers all around. It does not just look beautiful, but feels beautiful with the weave and flow of combat. Skyborn Might makes me feel beautiful.

In another unique turn for a Soulslike, dying doesn’t make you lose the entire amount of Red Mercury you’re carrying. It drops an amount dependent on Wuchang’s Madness. Madness can be increased or decreased depending on factors such as defeating specific enemies or dying, and you can also increase your Madness to earn items that can heal or provide you with stat benefits. If you die with more than 90% Madness, you will lose all of your Red Mercury, but if you die with less than 50% Madness, you will only use a tiny amount. You can cleanse this Madness, but it will always be fluctuating, increasing and decreasing. Higher Madness will also increase your damage taken and received. The Red Mercury you can earn from defeating enemies will also be increased, but when the cap for Madness reaches the full amount, your Inner Demon will appear to chase and fight you. Soulslikes are constantly threatening you with despair, from surprise enemies to treacherous environments to the constant fear of losing all your souls. Wuchang’s Inner Demon mechanic adds an extra layer to that. The rewards for increasing your Madness are glorious, but will you, as the player, allow that Madness to consume you with a powerful demon that hunts you down and can quickly kill you?

Save points here are Shrines, and to use them Wuchang has to cut her hand open to bleed onto it. I winced every time, but it underscores how even in a safe haven like this, this unforgiving world is built on sacrifice. Wuchang pouring her blood over the Shrine doesn’t do anything else gameplay-wise, but it’s a thematically resonant detail that helps make the world more realized. In other Soulslikes, when you go to a save point that heals you, almost all of the enemies you’ve killed respawn again. In Wuchang, if you just want to go to a Shrine and upgrade your skills, you can do that without enemies respawning, but if you “enter the dream” and refill your health all of the enemies are brought back. Much of the time I found myself not even entering the dream, so I could just go to these save points, upgrade or unlock new skills in the skill grid, and then be on my way. Even how you want to save the game brings new avenues in the Soulslike genre as a whole.

Earlier this year, two of my all-time favourite Soulslikes released with Khazan: The First Berserker and Elden Ring Nightreign. Khazan showcased that you can have an incredibly tough Soulslike with an Easy Mode available for players who want to use it, and additions like gaining resources to level up in boss fights even if you lose. Nightreign showed off that having a solely multiplayer Soulslike game that’s cheaper than a full-priced game can still bring about new wonder in the world of previously established IP. And Wuchang is now the third all-time great game in this genre in 2025.

I have never played a Soulslike close to Wuchang. There are so many nooks, crannies, and discoverables in the game by unlocking new routes or making it easier to run through the world, since many gates are closed. The level design is among the best I have ever seen and played, and creates a strong sense of place. Still, it’s not perfect. One of the main issues I had is occasional screen stuttering, particularly when using the game’s easier traversal options. This happened a lot in the first area of the game. Later parts don’t cause these stutters or slowdown on PlayStation 5, but it’s not uncommon in the first large part of the game.

Outside of those technical issues that I hope can be fixed, Wuchang: Fallen Feathers is easily one of my favorite games of the year and one of my favorite 3D Soulslikes of all time. I’m not sure how people who have little experience with Souls-style games will take to it, but it’s the rare Soulslike with a woman of color as the lead. If any of its features outside of that representation cross over to become a staple within the larger genre, it will be the Impetus Repository, which allows the player to coordinate a skill tree grid with boundless player decisions. Sometimes it felt like I was losing hours of playtime just to coordinate these skill trees. And its incredibly generous attitude towards respecing is a wonder, letting the player easily change and try new things without being punished. Wuchang is a Soulslike that mutes some of the genre’s stricter precepts without sanding away all of the friction or rough edges, and that should really help this fallen feather float.

Wuchang: Fallen Feathers was developed by Leenzee and published by 505 Games. Our review is based on the PlayStation 5 version. It is also available for Xbox Series X|S and PC.

Veerender Singh Jubbal is a Sikh freelance journalist, critic, consultant, and reporter. Jubbal writes for a plethora of different publications with news, interviews, guides, essays, and reviews on the newest video games. Veerender’s utmost passion of more than a decade is critiquing/analyzing alongside providing consultancy work with Sikhism, Sikh, and turban representation in a wide variety of different mediums.