re: Wuchang: Fallen feathers 76% Meta No story spoilers

I know I originally had 7/25 in the title but I was wrong. I didn’t want to confuse anyone and make sure it if I did to correct it. The game releases in about 12 hours when the clock rolls over. Not 7/25.

The ability to upgrade weapon types instead of individual weapons seems like such an obvious idea, but it needs to be standard practice in all of these games moving forewords. Including from softs

Apparently the game is really easy until a certain point where an insane skill check gets put in front of you and then the game gets gradually more complex and difficult at an exponential rate.

From what I can tell this is probably about 10 hours into the game. So if you were going to graph the difficulty it would look something like a flat line for 1/3 of the game then sky rocket up a 45 degree angle for the final 2/3.

I’m not sure everyone is really going to like this but I think it sounds fine. You can do a lot of things out of order apparently

It’s going to be on Gamepass? I will have to download this. It looks really good.

Gotta say the more I'm playing it the more I absolutely love it.

The negatives for sure are

- The microstutter. There is this fairly persistent microstutter that haunts you. NO real rhyme or reason to the cause. I'm playing on a base PS5 with all the optional graphical shite turned off but it still happens. They absolutely need to patch this up, it's a huge wart on an otherwise great game.

- The menu inefficiencies. There are two main menu, the game menu, accessed while you play, and the shrine menu. Both are completely separate and divorced from each other. They need to make it so you can access the game menu from the shrine first off. And second they need to make a lot of the shrine only stuff "read only" reviewable from the game menu. I get locking changing things to shrines, but there's no reason I shouldn't be able to review my loadout out in the field.

The good:

- The world is great. This is the first soulslike in a long time where the world is actually dangerous. It keeps you on your toes and makes exploring the world exciting and fun. They pack a ton of little paths through the same places. Lots of alternative routes each with their own little snares and items. Enemy density is fairly low, but their placement and tricks are good.

There's a lot of super tough trash mobs lurking about, usually they drop something good or are guarding a nice shortcut or something.

They go oldschool soulslike in that healing charges are quite low and there are often times very large distances between shrines. That is something modern soulslikes have noobified as the years have gone on. They give you way too many healing pots and "bonfires" are everywhere making getting through the world not a challenge.

The combat is deliberate, you really have to pick your spots. if you just run around spamming attacks you get chewed up.

- Customization

The skill tree is very complex and interesting. The ability to cusotmize your weapon discilines as well as what gems you socket in them, a ton of flexibility in how you build your character. Even the stats on the gear is highly complex. There's gear that has very speicfic strengths and weaknesses. I think they want to encourage you to swap out gear for sepcfici fights nad builds.

- Boss Fight. I've only done one legit boss fight so far but it was outstanding. The first few little intro bosses were cake, but I loved the only real boss i've seen so far.

It’s running well on my PC now that I got the settings right (Gamepass not Steam). Averaging right at 100 FPS. Game is pretty

It runs well for me (6900xt), but this game needs optimization. I enjoy it otherwise! Every new release is just an unoptimized mess... frustrating.

quote:

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just got to this boss and I can see why so many people hit a wall there, but for most people it's likely because they refuse to change tactics.

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Which boss is that? I've beaten quite a few bosses and haven't found one to be crazy challenging yet .


Edit. Nevermind I think I found her. I'm guess your talking about the boss once you drain the water.

Absolutely, modern souls likes have definitely softened themselves around the edges over the years as they have gained a wider audience. One of the most noticeable ways is how much more forgiving the world itself is.

There are a ton more "bonfires" all over the place and there are in general way less insta-death dangers. Getting knocked off a ledge to your death or killed by a trap or ambush were trivially easy in Demon Souls and Dark Souls.

I love surprise gotchas though, like the roof or ledge collapsing from under you, something that used to happen a lot in FromSoft games but no so much anymore. It keeps you on your toes and engages you while you play, you aren't just a bulldozer going from checkpoint to checkpoint, you really have to engage with the environment. I have had more non-boss deaths out in the world at a pace not since Dark Souls 2.

I also love how they have multiple routes to get to various places. I'm in the next major area and it's clear where I'm supposed to go, this big fortress on a mountain, but there are like 3 ways up there so far I've found.

It's very much an OG style Souslike design which is a huge pro for it, not a con. Still got a long way to go but I could easily see this end up being my favorite non-FromSoft souls like game, since they are copying the games from the series I like the best.