Wrapping up my Summer Game Fest 2025 coverage, I have to share some thoughts on Wuchang: Fallen Feathers, an action role-playing game from developer Leenzee and publisher 505 Games.
I played Wuchang: Fallen Feathers for about an hour in L.A., taking on some of the bosses and exploring the team's fantastical take on Ming dynasty China. Overall, it's an interesting experience, though even by the genre's standards, I found it to be brutally punishing, with some fights that punished the tiniest mistake.
First revealed during 2024's Xbox Games Showcase, Wuchang: Fallen Feathers is explicitly described by the developer and publisher as a "Soulslike" title, taking heavy inspiration from FromSoftware's Dark Souls trilogy and 2022 masterpiece, Elden Ring.
The game's opening sees you awaken as Wuchang, a pirate who has been struck with amnesia. Even worse, she has feathers growing out of her left arm, a sign she's been afflicted with a mysterious curse-like disease.
Seeking answers, Wuchang starts to explore, quickly learning that China is full of new threats, from desperate bandits to twisted monstrosities.
Combat is fast and fierce, with quick attack speeds even for larger weapons, and Wuchang feels responsive to control as she dodges and rolls away from enemy strikes. She can't take many hits, though, and it's extremely easy to perish because of just one mistake, as you'd expect from a game in this genre.
After exploring this opening zone for about 30 minutes, I'm taken to a save several hours into the game, where I have the chance to take on two of the game's bosses. One of them, a fast-moving acrobatic warrior, seems basically unbeatable with the setup I had, dancing around with ease and making it impossible to even land a blow.
My fight against the other boss, a corrupted monk (that can be seen in the image above), goes a fair bit smoother. I'm not quite able to beat him before my time is up, but I got far closer, only faltering when I'm hit with a poisoning attack that rapidly drains my life faster than I can heal.
I'd also be remiss not to mention the game's outfits. Leenzee seems to be taking a page out of Stellar Blade's playbook, as I noticed a large number of the different sets available for Wuchang show a fair bit of skin. My limited time hands-on means the selection wasn't exhaustive compared to what'll be in the full game, but still.
Wuchang: Fallen Feathers was by far the longest hands-on time I had with any game at Summer Game Fest, but I'm still not sure about the overall balance. I've struggled against difficult bosses in games before, but this was extremely difficult, and I was left wondering what I could possibly have done better or improved.
I want to be fair here, as the setting and lack of build-up to fighting these bosses means players going through the game at launch will almost certainly have a more gradual experience that leaves them better-equipped than I was.
Despite the difficulty, I'm looking forward to giving this another shot, and fortunately, I won't have to wait long, as Wuchang: Fallen Feathers is set to arrive in just a few weeks. It's a multiplatform release, and it's also launching day one into Xbox Game Pass, giving players using Microsoft's game subscription service the option to easily dive in.
Wuchang: Fallen Feathers is slated to launch on July 24, 2025, across Xbox Series X|S, Windows PC (Steam and Xbox PC), and PlayStation. It's also included day one in Xbox Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass.
