„Solid action, boring conversations” Wuchang: Fallen Feathers demo at Summer Game Fest

Over the weekend at Summer Game Fest, I had the opportunity to spend an hour with Wuchang: Fallen Feathers, from developer Leenzee and published by 505 Games, set to be released next month. I’ve never considered myself an expert on challenging action games like this, and that was proven time and time again during my time with the demo. If it wasn’t for another extremely challenging indie game, this could have easily taken the record for my most in-game deaths at Summer Game Fest. Overall, Wuchang: Fallen Feathers has some highlights, but didn’t quite blow me away.

Wuchang: Fallen Feathers is a solid souls-like game, but it’s not perfect

Wuchang earns its souls-like genre with no issue. The action is challenging and punishing. Strikes from even the weakest enemies can be devastating, and the two bosses I encountered dispatched me quickly without issue. But a souls-like isn’t just a challenging action game. Whenever you die, you drop your resources in place, and it’s up to you to reclaim those lost resources before you die again and lose them altogether. In Wuchang, rather than souls, this resource is called Red Mercury, and it’s what you use to level up and increase your abilities.

But Wuchang takes this one step further. At the start of the game, the protagonist, Wuchang, learns that she has been afflicted with a mysterious plague. Feathers are sprouting on people’s bodies and slowly turning them into monsters. This introduces a madness mechanic. Your madness increases every time you die and every time you kill a human, rather than a monster. Build up enough madness, and the next time you die, rather than just picking up your Red Mercury off the ground, you’ll have to fight for it. A skilled demon warrior waits for you at your place of death. Kill them and take back your experience, or die again and lose it all. This extra layer of challenge is a clever surprise the first time it happens, and an intimidating challenge to consider from then on out.

Wuchang’s action is solid. If you’re someone who’s played a lot of other action games like this, it likely won’t be anything too shocking. Perfectly dodging an attack is satisfying and unlocks the ability to use more powerful skills. Otherwise, the combat experience primarily focused on locking on target and timing your attacks effectively. I was able to try three weapons: the sword, a heavier axe, and a spear. They all felt distinct and enjoyable to use in the right situations. You can have two of them equipped at a time and swap between them at will. Throughout my hour-long demo, I never felt like I had mastered combat, though I certainly made progress.

One downside of the experience is that enemies will respawn. This is not an uncommon feature, but especially in a challenging game like this, it made respawning feel like a chore. Checkpoints took some traveling to reach, so I often found myself retracing my steps and fighting off old enemies time and time again. This can be fine, but over an hour, it did get repetitive.

Then, maybe the low light of the hour-long demo was anytime I had to talk to an NPC. This rarely included any input from me, either through the character of Wuchang or my own dialogue choices. The NPCs essentially monologue at you for a while as you stand there, character and camera locked in place. The voice lines are delivered slowly, and they tend to go on longer than necessary to convey the point.

Related:Chinese Soulslike Wuchang: Fallen Feathers on First Gameplay

For example, at an early moment in a temple, there are a handful of people to talk to. I decided to interact with a man lying on a bed, covered in bandages, writhing around in pain. He seemed to be afflicted with the same ailment as Wuchang. With no input from me at any point, this NPC shared his entire life story. He used to be a warrior, but since this feathery plague, he has been bedridden. He is ashamed that his brother has to find medicine for him. He asks me to take a pendant into town, find a woman, and tell her he has decided to go out into the world to make a name for himself, and that he’ll be back once he’s accomplished that. He’s too ashamed to tell her the truth. It’s a sad and compelling story, but by the end of it, when I regained control of Wuchang and the camera, I didn’t look back as he coughed out his last line of dialogue.

Thankfully, most of these interactions are optional, so after a few “conversations,” I decided to skip talking to anyone else in that temple. Maybe if I were playing at home, on my own schedule, rather than an hour-long demo at Summer Game Fest, I would have felt better about spending the time to learn more about the NPCs in this game. But that wouldn’t change how bad it feels to have no input or control over the conversation, to have to sit and wait for the monologue to end.

If you’d like to form your own opinion, you won’t have to wait very long. Wuchang: Fallen Feathers launches next month on July 24, 2025. It will be available on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC via Steam and the Epic Games Store. Pre-orders are available now. Thanks to Leenzee and 505 Games for the opportunity to play this challenging souls-like game.

Wuchang: Fallen Feathers

July 24, 2025

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• Overview

• action games
• 505 Games
• soulslike
• Summer Game Fest
• PC
• PS5
• XSX