Wuchang: Fallen Feathers

Wuchang: Fallen Feathers is a third person soulslike action roleplaying game developed by Leenzee. The game's Chinese name is 明末：渊虚之羽 (Míngmò: Yuānxū Zhī Yǔ) which Google translates to something along the lines of "Late Ming Era: Feathers of the Abyss". The first part certainly wouldn't have sounded good in English. 'Wuchang' comes from the (silent) protagonist's name: Bai Wuchang.

Initially way underrated Chinese soulslike

The game released to a surprisingly negative reception on Steam in July but far less so when you removed Chinese user reviews from the total. That was quite the mystery: language and culture barrier impenetrable. Overall, performance may have affected the user score, although from what I watched a streamer play it, the game seemed to run fine on a high-end machine.

For my ancient desktop PC, Fallen Feathers turned out to be too CPU-heavy, pretty much refusing to run at all. But like with the Dead Space remake, my laptop came to the rescue even if its weak GPU was again below the minimum requirements. On minimum settings, the game ran stable at around 30 fps, and higher in tighter areas.

A portion of the Chinese negativity appeared to come from the game's regional pricing being off but there evidently was problematic content as well. In patch 1.5, four of the game's bosses were made to become exhausted instead of dying upon defeat and some late game human enemies are no longer hostile to you. It sure beats me why them being killable was offensive. This kind of cultural blindness is one of the reasons I don't touch Japanese games: it's so easy miss the context of something. The patch also made a character called Magalhaes to no longer teach you the Christian prayer emote.

Fantastical alternate history

The working title of Fallen Feathers appeared to have been Project Plague. There indeed is some sort feathery plague going. Even your character Wuchang is afflicted by the Feathering but she's not going crazy like the usual victims even if it has caused memory loss. Wuchang's ultimate goal turns out to be trying to resurrect her younger sister Bai Yu using a magical chisel. I don't quite have a proper understanding of the plot points; I focused mainly on the action and challenge.

On English audio, NPC voices not having any attempt to sound Chinese seemed so off that I just set the game's audio to Chinese. That provided a lot more authentic experience. I also enjoy how spoken Chinese sounds, especially in wuxia-style works.

Despite NPCs monologuing like in Lies of P due to the protagonist not speaking, the flow in the subtitles seemed a lot more sensical in Fallen Feathers. I don't know how accurate the translations were but at least the writing wasn't bad. Some of the game mechanics related texts have odd wordings but far less than what I saw in Lies of P.

There is ultimately a reincarnation cycle theme in the story as well, just like FromSoftware's games tend to have. To my understanding, breaking the cycle is what an enlightened one should be going for in these. The game's bad ending -- Jarful of Medicine -- is actually bad and only begins the cycle anew. The true ending, while requiring the most work, is not quite the best one either. Its name -- Dream's Sweet Deceit -- even suggests so.

The good ending -- Bound by Fate's Threads -- heals Wuchang's Feathering and she accepts that Bai Yu is gone. There is also a premature ending in the previous chapter. If you refuse to help the Storyteller NPC, defeating a certain boss will finish the game then and there with the Successor of Bo ending.

There are no saves to reload, so the intended way to get all endings requires four playthroughs (though NG+ runs will surely go faster.)  Alternatively, you can simply make backup copies of your saves at critical decision points and replace the current saves with them once one ending has been achieved.

I followed PowerPyx's guide to 100% the game in one go. The guide gets the bad ending out of the way immediately in the final chapter because you can simply run through the map to the final boss. With hindsight, I wouldn't necessarily do that even if it saves you from replaying the final chapter. I at least found the boss immensely difficult without an NPC summon and lacking the final Manna Vase (healing flask) and Temper slot upgrades. And even with the upgrades and all the practice on the bad ending run, the boss still took few tries when killing him the second time for the other two endings.

Not a walk in the park

Wuchang: Fallen Feathers was a pretty damn sweaty game for me. I'd say it's probably not the best idea to choose spears as the weapon type to use and stick with through the whole game -- at least not with my level of skill. You can completely respec your skill points at any time and go for any other build for no cost of any kind. You're not permanently committed even to weapon upgrades. In addition to having to learn how another weapon works, the negative aspect with the respec is that it removes all points at once. At high character levels it will take a good moment to redistribute them all.

A better weapon choice -- if you're not going to switch around throughout the game -- might be dual blades. They're apparently an easy mode against the majority of bosses. You just spin to win and let the Clash mechanic and lifeleech keep you alive. I read that axe is a good weapon type as well. There are also one-handed swords and longswords -- and numerous spells if you want to go caster route.

I played with a controller and after noticing that parry takes two buttons, I decided I wouldn't want to do that. Spears sounded cool and they're not much of a parrying or deflecting weapon in this game. If you're not using a defensive Discipline on your spear, your only defensive move is dodge. And the dodge is what caused me quite the trouble because it's a very short dash with a narrow i-frame window. You have to learn the exact timing of enemy attacks to not get hit. And you never get any upgrades to improve the dodge either.

Difficulty has been adjusted

At release, Fallen Feathers could be very punishing if an enemy attack knocked you down. It would take Wuchang many seconds to recover, all the while she could still be attacked. One mistake and you were fucked. But you don't have to worry about that in the current version because you no longer seem to take damage while on the ground.

Occasionally it feels like enemies do have ridiculous amount of tracking in their attacks. One time I witnessed an elite enemy doing an unabashed u-turn mid-air when I happened to dash past it during its leaping attack.

Fallen Feathers wasn't tremendously difficult for a while, just challenging. Not until I got to Commander Honglan who's the end boss of the first chapter. She's like a warning of things to come, although no other boss challenged me quite to the same degree (with the exception of the final one). Honglan was definitely one of the hardest soulslike bosses I've ever fought. It was as if she was playing a different game, spamming gravity-defying spinny wuxia moves while I was mostly stuck with boots on the ground with a slow spear that needs Skyborn Might stacks to be effective.

Cool spear technique -- when it works

At that point in the game, I was using the Steampowered Spear and I did have a clear battleplan with it. Unfortunately, the plan had multiple points of failure in its execution. The first issue was accruing the Skyborn Might stacks that with the build come from either successful dodges or first building up Boldheart stacks via light and heavy spear attacks that are then converted into Skyborn Might stacks by using Solar Leap. The latter method was not happening against Honglan due to spear basic attacks being so damn slow.

The second part of the plan was using the Steampowered Spear's Steam Chain attack that with two stacks of Skyborn Might will turn the target's back to you. With a third stack of Skyborn Might you can then quickly use a heavy attack that, thanks to a perk, will be a charged one without charging. If the attack hits the target's back, they will fall on their knees, allowing you to do a high damage Obliterate attack (backstab).

The Chain's turn will not work if the boss is in the middle of their signature move or such so you have to time it right. It is also possible that you will end up facing the boss's side instead of back and so the charged attack will not stun them. Once I finally managed to pull off the Chain to stun combo twice within the same attempt, the boss fight was over very quickly. But it took around 30 attempts to get there.

Other bosses that offered similar level of high challenge were Ming Commander Liu Cheng'en and Bo Magus. Liu was kind of like Honglan but with Bo Magus the problem was her shield bubble. Taking it down with damage in her second phase seemed to take ages. Then I discovered that managing to stun her will instantly break the bubble as well.

Are runbacks really required?

Another update addition, in 1.7, to Fallen Feathers was boss fight retries. After dying to a boss, the game will ask if you want to spawn back at a shrine or retry the fight. The latter will spawn you outside the boss arena, saving you from a runback. This feature seemed to have been copied from The First Berserker: Khazan and I'd say it's quite welcome one.

When repeatedly attempting a boss, you might be tempted to use the Ancient Chisel that uses all your carried red mercury (souls, which you probably no longer have after dying repeatedly) and teleports you back to a shrine to give you a random strong buff. But because it takes another loading screen even when you're already at a shrine, it gets tiresome pretty quickly, especially if there's a long runback to the boss. There's also a weaker version of the random buff from consuming an aurum feather which are dropped by the noisy birds scattered around the game.

In Fallen Feathers, you don't drop all of your red mercury on the spot upon death, just a big percentage. I'd say it doesn't matter much, however, because the game is so generous with the currency anyway. It is easy to accrue.

There's a madness mechanic related to the red mercury. When killing humans and/or dying yourself, your madness goes up, and by killing feathery monsters, it goes down. You can also increase/decrease madness with certain items or by buying consumables from a shrine. High enough madness gives you a bonus modifier on red mercury accumulation and makes enemies hit harder. The difficulty increase is not that high and there are also passive perks whose effects become active at certain madness thresholds.

If you die while at maxed madness, an Inner Demon spawns at the place of your death (though not in boss arenas), picking up your mercury. The demon is basically another Wuchang with a wide weapon and spell arsenal. The demon is not aligned with other enemies either, so it can possibly clear the immediate area for you. Or it might just die without you doing anything.

A solid audio-visual experience

Fallen Feathers has a selection of skimpy-ass clothing pieces and Wuchang has breast and butt jiggle physics too. You sure don't get this stuff in a big Western game without mods (although the upcoming Lords of the Fallen 2 might be an exception.) Transmogrification system (it's as if every game has it these days) allows you to wear what you want while still equipping the most protective pieces. I'm not entirely sure how much of a difference even stacking one type of defense truly makes, though. Just making sure you don't have a key stat in the negatives might be enough. It's better to not get hit at all.

Music is also good: pretty much what you'd expect to hear in a setting like this. Certain enemies provide diegetic music by playing a wooden wind instrument when not disturbed. I thought that was a great touch.

The end credits song stuck with me for few days after finishing the game even though I have no clue of what's being sung. Cradle of the Abyss, the track that plays in-game when you're approaching the final boss, was rather rather epic as well. It created an amazing atmosphere.