Wuchang: Fallen Feathers preview – Agile action creates a unique flow

One of the reasons I’ve always struggled so much with soulslikes is that I do not have the patience or sense of rhythm required to get good at parrying while also managing all the other things you need to think about in the heat of battle. At the first sign of trouble in an action game, I tend to start spamming the dodge button to get as far away as possible from whatever attack is pressing down on me, which in most soulslikes, will just lead to an empty stamina bar and, very soon after, an empty health bar.

That’s why Wuchang’s dodge-centric system appealed to me when I got the chance to get hands-on with the early sections of the game. You get to use the powers of the Feathering – a disease that normally turns people into mindless monsters, but for some reason has given you special powers. In this system, performing a perfect dodge gives you a charge of Feathering, which you can use to unleash special attacks.

Despite how it sounds, the window for a perfect dodge is just generous enough that it isn’t nearly as punishing as most parry-based systems in this genre. There were a few times when I got hit where I really felt like I hit dodge in time, but for the most part, it felt great to evade each attack as it came my way and transform it into powerful strikes of my own.

You can assign two of these special attacks to LB/L1 and LT/L2 on your controller, and these vary greatly across the game’s different weapon types, of which you can have two equipped to switch between in battle. The starting greatsword is entirely offense-focused and teaches you to focus mainly on dodging, as it has no defensive abilities at all. Meanwhile, other weapons like axes and spears do have block and parry abilities, but even these are the special abilities that you need to use Feathering power to activate, further emphasising the idea that you should focus on nimble mobility in this game above all else.

All of this comes together to make a combat system that feels surprisingly graceful once you get the hang of it. The action comes in waves as you wait for your opponent to attempt a strike before deftly evading and launching a counterattack, sometimes weaving these strikes and dodges together in sequence for bosses that have longer combos. This is furthered by the fact that you can use a Feathering charge to quick-switch between your equipped weapons, immediately unleashing a powerful strike with the new weapon, letting you stay on offense while switching up your playstyle mid-battle.

The downside is that some boss fights can feel very by-the-numbers after you get over the initial learning period. I only got to play early-game bosses in this preview, so these fights are designed to give you a bit more of a chance than others, but I found that the thrill of execution wasn’t as strong as in other titles in the genre. Once I’d learned a boss's patterns, it became a bit of a slog to sit around waiting for them to strike so I could charge up my Feathered abilities and deal meaningful damage. I know a fight is always going to be easier once you’ve “solved” it, but other soulslikes do a better job of keeping the intensity of combat going, even once you know every move your opponent is going to make.

I also question the game’s madness system, which arguably makes the game harder for players who are already struggling. When you die, alongside losing a chunk of your Red Mercury (the currency you use to level up and upgrade your abilities), your madness stat increases. Once you reach a certain level of madness, you reach a state where both your damage dealt and damage taken are increased. 

While plenty of players will be able to make very good use of this, it can make an already challenging boss all the more difficult for a player who’s struggling. What’s more, if you die while at maximum madness, a unique enemy spawns at the location of your death, which you must kill to recover your Red Mercury. Die to it, and your madness will be reset at the cost of all the Red Mercury you failed to recover. Again, this feels like a harsh way to punish a player who’s already dying a lot (unless the special enemy accidentally throws itself off a cliff like it did when I encountered it). Still, I can also see how more skilled players can use this as a fun risk-reward system where you gain more power at the cost of added vulnerability.

Despite those issues, Wuchang: Fallen Feathers is in a good spot. Emphasizing dodging over parrying is a simple choice, but it gives the game’s combat a unique flow compared to the rest of the genre. I think the full game still has something to prove, as I hope the late-game boss fights offer more complexity than the early ones, and I didn’t get that great a sense of the game’s story in this preview, but it has all the makings of a sleeper hit.

Wuchang: Fallen Feathers releases on July 24, 2025, for PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S.