Wuchang: Fallen Feathers review – The must-play Soulslike of 2025

If Elden Ring Nightreign’s shift to a more multiplayer focus has left a Soulslike-shaped hole in your life, Wuchang: Fallen Feathers is here to fill it, armed with one of the most satisfying combat systems you’ll find all year. As long as you can put up with some torment. 

Ever since FromSoftware created and defined its own genre with Dark Souls, Bloodborne, and Elden Ring, plenty of games have come along to try and recapture the same magic, from Nioh to Phantom Blade. What separates the pretenders from the real deal is the ability to innovate upon FromSoft’s fantastic formula.

That’s exactly what Wuchang: Fallen Feathers does. After hours upon hours of having my head mercilessly kicked in by giant centipedes or being crushed by surprise boulders, the debut project from Leenzeen Games is just as punishing as Soulslike sadists would expect, while delivering razor-sharp combat that’s well worth playing through the pain for. 

Wuchang: Fallen Feathers screenshots

What is Wuchang: Fallen Feathers about? 

Set in late-Ming Dynasty China, you play as Wuchang, a pirate who wakes up with no memory and discovers that she’s been afflicted by the Feathering – a mysterious disease that transforms people into bone-chilling monsters. 

She heads into the dingy but often beautiful land of Shu to look for a cure and discover more about her past, what brought her here, and the terrifying creature haunting her dreams. 

From there, the setup will be instantly familiar to any veterans of the genre. You head into large areas with branching paths to explore, hoping to reach the next Shrine to save your progress but respawn all of the enemies. 

The story is rarely the main attraction with these games, and it’s certainly not here either. However, it’s a compelling enough reason to battle on, and the Feathering nicely explains why everything in Shu is trying to kill you and why half of the inhabitants look like a waking nightmare. Seriously, what kind of Satan’s spawn is this? 

Leenzee Games / Dexerto

Combat to die for

The best thing about Wuchang: Fallen Feathers is the excellent combat system, which is right up there with the standard set by Black Myth: Wukong. 

Although blocks and parries are possible, fights are all about perfectly timed dodges, which allow you to unleash powerful attacks or flashy spells by charging the Skybound Might meter. This resource can also be earned by landing different attacks depending on the type of weapon you’re using and the skills you’ve unlocked. For example, Longswords offer one charge every time you connect with the second hit of a light combo.

This encourages you to stop cowering in the corner like a wimp and play aggressively, getting in the enemy’s face to build up your Skybound Might before choosing the perfect moment to show them the business end of your sword.

In that sense, every single enemy, whether it’s a lowly grunt or a towering boss, is a puzzle that needs to be solved. Get too confident and attack at the wrong time, and they’ll quickly bring you back down to earth by melting your health bar. Mess up the timing of your dodges, and you won’t have charges needed to use your best moves when the window opens up. 

Yes, it means a lot of trial, error, and cursing your own thumbs for not moving fast enough, but that feeling when you finally master the patterns and come out victorious never gets old. 

Leenzee Games / Dexerto

It’s a good job too, because make no mistake about it, this is a bone-crushingly difficult experience. That’s par for the course in this kind of game, of course, and the fun fights always make it worth powering through, but it does occasionally stray from challenging to obnoxious. 

In fact, there are a number of sequences that feel designed to test your patience rather than your reflexes. Cannons hidden out of sight suddenly take most of your health, or multiple enemies attack at once on perilously narrow walkways above a sheer drop, where one wrong move sends Wuchang plummeting and your controller flying. 

Descend into Madness

As a side effect of the Feathering, dying or killing human enemies causes Wuchang to lose her sanity, which also affects the amount of resources lost with each death. Once the Madness meter hits 100%, the amount of damage you deal and receive is significantly increased. 

If you die in this maddened state, your Inner Demon will manifest and hunt you down from the spot you were defeated, giving each death an extra consequence that makes every single fight feel vital. 

Initially, it felt like a system that punished me for failing, especially when it triggered during a tricky boss that was already getting the better of me. But once I learned to use it to my advantage by unlocking skills that grant buffs at higher Madness levels, such as increased spell power, I soon began actively trying to descend into madness. 

It’s a fantastic idea that really makes Fallen Feathers feel unique, starting out as an extra obstacle before slowly influencing your entire playstyle. 

Leenzee Games / Dexerto

Bosses are fun but familiar

Wuchang: Fallen Feathers has quite rightly earned a few comparisons with Black Myth: Wukong, and not just because Wuchang and Wukong sound eerily similar. They both successfully take the Souls formula and add their own extra twist.

But the one area where Wuchang falls short of its counterpart is in its boss fights, which never quite hit the same dizzying heights. They’re impeccably designed, but they’re just not memorable in the same way. 

Although a few encounters do occasionally mix things up with some interesting mechanics, most play it fairly safe. There’s the rapid swordsman who never gives you a second to rest, the huge insects trying to poison you, and the one who floods the battlefield with smaller enemies to deal with. 

Again, they’re all engaging and many are stunning to look at (in a gruesome, horrifying sort of way), but there’s always a nagging feeling that you’ve been griefed by this abomination before.

Leenzee Games / Dexerto

Verdict 

Wuchang: Fallen Feathers is yet another great Soulslike with an entertaining and satisfying combat system that’s impossible to put down. I wish its boss fights would break the mould a little more, but the depth of the Madness feature makes even the more irritating areas worth the pain.

This is the next challenge that fans of Elden Ring, Dark Souls, and Black Myth: Wukong need to face. You’ll probably end up using swear words you didn’t even realize you knew, but if you can stomach the difficulty, you’ll be rewarded with the standout Soulslike of 2025.