Wuchang: Fallen Feathers Could've Been Incredible. Here's Why It's Not.

Wuchang: Fallen Feathers is the latest high-profile Soulslike game, this time coming from Chinese developer Leenzee. Unlike some of the most recent Soulslike releases, Wuchang is more faithful to the formula created by FromSoftware's Demon's Souls and Dark Souls, but the changes it does make might be the game's downfall.

Wuchang is an ambitious Soulslike, which helps it stand out in what's one of the newest and most popular subgenres around. What keeps it from being great is that all these new systems are a chore to actually understand and use. I'm sure that if players perfectly grasp a balance of the systems, they could make a character with some amazing capabilities, yet it's hard to reach that sweet spot playing through the game.

Just to get it out of the way, Wuchang's story is like a lot of Soulslike games. You play as the titular Bai Wuchang, a pirate warrior suffering from amnesia who has to fight through different areas in ancient China during the Ming dynasty. People have been victims of "feathering," the game's sickness that makes the infected sprout feathers and eventually turn into monsters. Wuchang can harness the power of feathering, making her the ideal warrior to uncover what's going on.

Is this a confusing and vague storyline? Yes, because it's a Soulslike and that's practically a requirement. The people you meet speak vaguely about other people and subjects that don't make sense until you piece them together with item descriptions, clues found throughout the areas and environmental story elements. It's hardly a storyline that you could fully figure out in a casual playthrough, so I'll be depending on the lore guys on YouTube to piece the story together in the days and weeks after the game's release.

What's important for Wuchang -- and any Soulslike that aims to stand out in the subgenre -- is the gameplay, and it's certainly unique. It's dynamic but almost to a fault, with a lot of complexity getting in the way of combat flow.

As Wuchang, you have access to five classes of weapons: axes that do big damage but are slow; longswords that do good damage while allowing for parries; twin swords that allow for quick attacks at the cost of lower damage; one-handed swords that are in the midrange for damage and speed; spears that do solid damage while also being able to poke at a longer distance.

Throughout the game, you'll come across different weapons of each type. There's 25 in total, and they all have a unique look, abilities and stats from each other. So you're not as overwhelmed as, say, in Elden Ring, where you have more than 300 weapons to choose from.

To make full use of these weapons, however, you have to work your way through the skill tree, and this tree represents a hurdle for the game as it overcomplicates things.

The skill tree reminds me more of the Sphere Grid from Final Fantasy X. It's split into six paths, one for each weapon and one for general-purpose use with universal upgrades like adding to your healing flasks, being able to do more damage with certain effects, and getting more magic points. Along each path are also various stat improvements like adding an extra point to strength, endurance, agility and so on.

When you acquire enough red mercury, the souls or currency in the game, you can gain a level, providing a red essence that unlocks a spot on the grid. You need to go down these paths to power up Wuchang as well as the weapons, as improved attacks and mastery of a weapon also require going down each path. Then, at a certain point of unlocking more spots on the grid, the path extends to give you even more stats, abilities and so on.

If you're confused by reading this, it's going to be just as confusing when you try it out for yourself. It's one thing to level up a character and put points into various stats, but it's another to level up and realize that you need to spend skill points unlocking a path to get more healing flasks.

Where the leveling system messes with you is when you don't unlock a certain path that you need for a boss. One boss in particular was kicking my ass, as it's the first boss you need to use deflecting, or parrying, to beat (unless you're a Soulslike ace who can play perfectly). I had gone down the axe upgrade path and didn't realize that I was ill-equipped for the fight. While there is a tip message that comes up mentioning deflecting, this was the first time the game even mentioned this capability. After failing to beat this boss for hours, I decided to take a long look at the grid and saw that the deflect ability was a few upgrades into the longsword path.

Fortunately, you can respec these points at a shrine for free, which I did, and I defeated the boss after a few more tries. Mind you, I could have beaten the boss the other way -- playing perfectly -- but deflecting and parrying to expose the boss's weakness was far easier. And prior to this, the bosses weren't giving me much trouble, just requiring a few deaths in order to understand their pattern.

This upgrade grid is super interesting, but there are far too many abilities and benefits that should be unlocked from the start to help reduce the frustration when playing.

Another interesting idea in Wuchang is the madness system. This is a play on the Humanity and Kindling found in the original Souls games, with a bit of Insight from Bloodborne -- a sort of passive stat that changes how the game world evolves as you play. As you die or defeat certain enemies, your madness will increase. As your madness increases, you can become more powerful. In that path I mentioned about gaining more healing flasks, there are unlockable traits where, if you have a certain amount of madness, you do more damage or gain some extra ability.

Madness is based on your level, so the higher the level you are, the higher the maximum madness increases. If your madness is low, you can even acquire a certain amount of madness to buy an item at a shrine.

So what happens when your madness is at max? Well, that's a bad thing for two reasons. The first is that you'll do more damage, but you'll also receive more damage. This is going to be great for the hardcore Soulslike player with perfect dodge and parry timing. I'm sure speedrunners will make use of this trait. However, when you're getting your ass kicked by a boss, the last thing you want is for them to hit you for more damage.

Arguably the most interesting part of this madness system is that if you die at, or near, max madness, the spot where you died that has some of your leftover red mercury will take the form of an evil doppelganger that you'll have to fight. Defeat it and you'll get an item as well as removing all of your madness.

It's an interesting feature, but it's also a pain. To get rid of the madness, you can kill certain humanoid enemies, but sometimes to kill those people, you need to kill non-humanoid enemies, which increases madness. Alternatively, you can find and buy items that will reduce madness at a certain temple, but those aren't widely available.

Where madness really causes a problem is with bosses. If you die repeatedly at a boss and your death spot is in the boss arena, the doppelganger won't show up, so you're kind of stuck with max madness unless you decide to go get killed somewhere else, take down the doppelganger and be back to zero madness.

Wuchang performs as well as any Soulslike game when it comes to the action and graphics. The speed of the gameplay is just a step below Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, FromSoftware's parrying-intensive Soulslike, but also a step above its other popular title, Bloodborne. It's fast-paced, but it's also dynamic.

I say it's dynamic because of the Spirit Points system, which is the game's version of mana. Unlike most Soulslike games, you don't have a mana pool to draw from when casting magic or doing special attacks. Instead, you need to acquire Spirit Points, and the easiest way to do this is by dodging. A perfectly timed dodge nets you a point that will let you use one special ability or one basic spell. On the grid, there are spots to unlock more points as well as more ways to get the points from deflecting attacks, doing a certain combo or having a certain amount of madness.

This system requires players to be more active in fights, so someone can't make a glass cannon magic character right off the bat who fights at a distance, although I'm sure there is a build where that's possible in the late game. You need to really get in there and mix it up with the enemies, which I can appreciate.

Then come the visuals, and Wuchang has some great-looking scenes. Bosses in the game are also unique in both their attacks and visuals, something highly prized by Soulslike players.

The game's presentation overall is on par with any of the AAA titles out there. The English voice acting is a little weak, but people talk so little in the game that it practically doesn't matter.

I played the game on a standard PS5, and there were instances when the PS5 did seem to have some issues with dropped frames. It happened after a certain amount of playing and not due to too much going on-screen.

Wuchang is a great effort by Leenzee. While the game won't revolutionize the Soulslike genre, it does the next best thing by offering some ideas that they, or maybe another developer, can refine. Maybe it will become a mainstay for the genre in future games. If anything, I believe a Wuchang sequel could be an incredible game if it happens. But right now, the formula just isn't there yet.

Wuchang: Fallen Feathers comes out on July 23 for PC, PS5 and Xbox Series consoles for $50. It will be available on Xbox Game Pass on day 1.