In July of 2025, Chinese studio Leenzee Games released Wuchang: Fallen Feathers, a dark fantasy soulslike ARPG set in the dying days of the Ming dynasty. The players take up the role of Bai Wuchang, a pirate woman who returns home after a long absence to find her war-torn kingdom beset by a mysterious plague called the Feathering. The Feathering causes men to begin sprouting feathers, slowly transforming into birdlike monsters out of some avian cosmic horror nightmare. Wuchang almost immediately contracts this disease, loses her memory, but manages to maintain her humanity whilst still gaining the power of the avian monsters.

Wuchang Fallen: Feathers hits all the grimdark boxes: every single character, including Wuchang, is morally ambiguous if not outright evil. War is on all sides, with no clear heroes or villains. No matter the choices you make, lots of people, some of them innocent, will die. And, of course, there’s aforementioned horror elements.

While Wuchang: Fallen Feathers drew numerous comparisons to Dark Souls—which are fair comparisons—I actually found it in many ways more similar to FromSoft’s other beloved franchise, Bloodborne. Combat in Wuchang is fluid and faster than Dark Souls, which taken in conjunction with the spreading plague, hidden cosmic horror, and uncertain implication over what’s real and what’s a dream, it feels a helluva lot like Bloodborne but set in Ancient China.

Which, by the way, is not a bad thing. Bloodborne is a masterpiece, and Wuchang earned its place right alongside it as one my all-time favourite soulslikes.

Like any soulslikes, Wuchang: Fallen Feathers gameplay features punishing combat that rewards learning the environment and move sets of various enemies, especially the bosses. For all that, perhaps because of my build, I did not find it especially difficult as soulslikes go (except for Demon of Obsession, which was by far the hardest fight of the game).

Builds essentially consist of exploring down skill trees for any combination of five weapons, and a base tree that develops overall capabilities (like healing potion uses). You can respect at any shrine, a mechanic I find a mixed bag. On the one hand, I feel like cost-free respecing reduces the impact of choice on build, and build represents the primary player engagement mechanic in most RPGs. On the flipside, it does mean if you get stuck, you at least have options to change your mind.

Online, many say the game requires you to regularly respec to beat bosses. That mentality I actively dislike, as I feel it speaks of lazy design … but I didn’t actually find it true, either. I used a combination of longsword and dual swords, and it saw me through every encounter except one.

The five weapons give a variety of interesting gameplay, though I cannot say I found them all equally viable. Many claim axe is best, but the longsword whip is hella fun, and dual short swords eviscerate most humanoid enemies. Magic, from what I saw, is also a viable route, though I didn’t use it as much other than buffs. You can also enhance Wuchang’s Feathering abilities in this way.

It’s somewhat of a tradition for Dark Souls (and Bloodborne, Elden Ring, etc.) to make gamers work for the story as well as the game. If you just play through without paying attention, reading the snippets of lore, and putting pieces together like a puzzle, you wind up with richly atmospheric, challenging games that make very little sense. Wuchang: Fallen Feathers, which wears its inspirations on its sleeve, plays into this, which means, it would be easy to play through and have no real idea what’s going on.

I actually kind of think it’s a bit of a shame, consider, like Dark Souls, it has some really, really rich lore. I’ll try to tackle it really briefly, with a bit of warning for spoilers, given, as mentioned, uncovering what the hell is going on is part of the experience.

While the setting is an alternate history of the end of the Ming Dynasty, a lot of the story revolves around the much older kingdom of ancient Shu (a real ancient kingdom in what is now Sichuan; Shu fell in 316 BCE). In the game, the people of ancient Shu discovered red mercury (cinnabar), a substance with alchemical properties that could allow them to strive for immortality.

One group in Shu, the Bo people, began attempting to use red mercury to such ends. As a side effect, it transformed them in monstrous avians. The Bo, in fact, worshipped avians before this, so there is some question about cause and effect here. The avian Bo had an ancient capital, from where they ruled as god-kings of such power they could bend time and space. Sometimes, however, though Bo mutated into monstrous akin to the Feather in Wuchang’s time. Regardless, red mercury, the source of transformation, became desired above all things.

And it had to be watered with human blood. People were sacrificed en masse to transform the lucky few into gods (or monsters if unfortunate). At some point, the Bo fought a terrible war against a mysterious enemy, and the kingdom of Shu vanished into the mists of history.

Almost 2000 years later (around 1640 CE), the Ming dynasty is collapsing. But alchemists, one more seeking immortality, have re-discovered red mercury, and started this whole mess over again.

If I had a main complaint about Wuchang: Fallen Feathers, it would be its trophy system was not necessarily well-thought out in terms of how players actually play. It’s a game that wants to reward exploration. Yet many quests can break simply by going to the wrong area out of order (though the game gives little warning this may happen). This locks one out of certain trophies for an entire playthrough, which is less than ideal.

A vast number of trophies are missable, which means, trophy hunters have no real choice but to frequently consult guides … or else make an absurd number of playthroughs when going for all trophies. I think a game should respect our time enough to acknowledge most of us don’t want to play a game 4-6 times all the way through to “complete” it.

These are minor gripes, of course, but something a certain subset of serious gamers do care about.

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