Leenzee’s debut Soulslike blends brutal combat with haunting visuals and deep lore for an unforgettable plunge into a cursed ancient world.
WUCHANG: Fallen Feathers is an ambitious new action RPG like Souls that was made by Leenzee Games and published by 505 Games. It comes out July 24, 2025, for Xbox Series X|S, PS5, PC, and Game Pass on the first day. Leenzee is new to the Soulslike scene, so he takes a big step by combining Chinese mythology, history, and a scary plague into a dark fantasy world that feels both new and heavy.
While some Souls-like games try to make the game easier, Wu Chang sticks to the classic difficulty of the genre by adding a single challenge mode that forces you to learn, adapt, and master the game’s mechanics in order to stay alive.
The developers of WUCHANG: Fallen Feathers are known for carefully creating a world that looks and feels like it’s from the late Ming Dynasty, mixing realistic ancient Chinese landscapes with supernatural elements. Leenzee Games’ first game shows how much they love combining deep storylines with tough combat, making this a unique addition to the Souls-like series.
WUCHANG: Fallen Feathers‘s story takes place in the war-torn country of Shu in the 1600s and is about a strange and deadly disease called the Feathering. People with this curse turn into scary bird monsters that threaten to eat the land. You play as Wu Chang, a pirate whose body has the same disease and has a cursed arm that grows feathers.
Wu Chang has lost all memories of her past, so her journey turns into a desperate search for the truth about the plague and who she is. A dark alternate history with evil warlords, mythical creatures, and evil rituals is put together through environmental storytelling, cryptic NPC dialogue, and notes that are all over the place.
The story is atmospheric and full, but it’s not too wordy. Wu Chang is mostly quiet, which makes her more mysterious but can also make it harder to connect with the player. Even though WUCHANG: Fallen Feathers is hard and has a dark tone, the world-building, which is based on Chinese culture and mythology, is interesting enough to keep you exploring every corner. Different endings based on your choices and actions make the story more interesting and make it worth playing again.
At its core, WUCHANG: Fallen Feathers is a typical Souls-like game. You explore connected, but mostly linear, areas that are full of dangerous creatures and secrets. Exploration, combat, character growth, and careful resource management make up the main parts of the WUCHANG: Fallen Feathers loop.
You go through a lot of different areas, such as foggy ancient ruins, snowy mountains, poisoned swamps, and cities on fire. Each one is beautifully realized with lots of small environmental details. Getting ahead in WUCHANG: Fallen Feathers mostly depends on leveling up your character by collecting red Mercury, which is used as experience currency. You then refine and invest this experience in the Impetus Repository, a skill tree that is specific to weapons.
WUCHANG: Fallen Feathers is unique because it has a dual-weapon system that lets you equip and switch between two weapons at any time. The Skyborn Might mechanic also helps. You gain Skyborn Might by attacking, dodging, and parrying. You can then spend it on strong spells, weapon skills, or heavy charged attacks. This makes combat more strategic.
There are a lot of different skills in the skill tree system. There are disciplines for weapons, general upgrades, healing improvements, and spell improvements. Since respeccing at shrines is free and never ends, you can try out different builds as you get used to fighting tougher enemies or bosses.
Additionally, you are in charge of pendants (buffs) and Benedictions (rune-like improvements) that change weapons and add extra bonuses, making customization even more complex. WUCHANG: Fallen Feathers‘ transmog system lets you change the way your armor looks right away without losing any stats. This is great for people who want to look cool while they’re killing enemies.
Combat in WUCHANG: Fallen Feathers is fun and hard at the same time. Timing moves like dodges, parries, and counters, as well as controlling Skyborn Might, are at the heart of combat. With longswords, shortswords, axes, and spears, among other weapons, attacks feel heavy and powerful. Each has its own set of moves and weapon disciplines that open up new ways to fight.
The madness mechanic adds risk and reward: as you kill enemies and die over and over, your madness meter rises, making you do more damage and taking more damage at the same time. When Max goes crazy, an Inner Demon appears. This is an enemy version of yourself that you have to defeat to get back experience that you’ve lost. Higher madness makes bosses hit harder, so this mechanic can add tension but also frustration, especially when you have to fight the same boss over and over.
There are skill ceilings and rules that make boss fights stand out. Some bosses teach you important mechanics early on, like how important sword counters are. However, not all weapons can support all mechanics, which can be confusing. Pattern recognition, precise timing, and build optimization are all problems that the boss has to deal with. Similar to how Elden Ring is paced and played, WUCHANG: Fallen Feathers wants you to explore other areas to grind and get better before going back to a tough boss.
It’s the combat system’s fluidity and variety that make it stand out. It’s fun and interesting to be able to switch weapons in the middle of a fight and use Skyborn Might to do tactical moves. Changing your spec and trying out different types of weapons is easy to do, which encourages experimentation and personalization. When you figure out how to beat bosses with well-thought-out move sets, it’s satisfying.
In practice, though, the madness system feels more like punishment than reward, especially during tough boss fights when frustration is at its highest. It can make trying over and over again more tiring than fun. Some players might find the learning curve for combat steep, and the lack of build points early on means you can’t make changes until you level up or enter New Game Plus.
Also, there are some minor camera issues, and it’s awkward that you have to attach basic combat skills like parrying directly to weapons. Players who want to play with other people may be let down by the lack of full co-op (only NPC summons).
You need XP, which is called “red Mercury,” to level up your character’s stats and unlock skills in the Impetus Repository. You get it by beating enemies and bosses. Before you can invest in your skill trees, which have both weapon-specific and general upgrades, you have to refine red Mercury.
Grinding is a normal part of the process. When bosses get too hard, you should go to other areas, do side quests, and farm experience to make your build stronger. This cycle of death, exploration, and slowly gaining power is typical of the genre, and Wu Chang uses it to its fullest.
With New Game Plus, you can progress even more. As you get more skills and spells, it makes the combat system easier to understand and gives you more options for how to play. Interestingly, enemy health doesn’t change much in NG+. This means that your powerful build can make later runs feel easier in some ways, rewarding players who know what they’re doing and put in the time and effort.
WUCHANG: Fallen Feathers is beautiful to look at. It uses Unreal Engine 5 to create a dark and haunting version of ancient China that is truly amazing. Everything in the world feels real and alive, from misty forests and crumbling temples to snowy peaks that shine in the moonlight and battlefields that are bloody.
The lighting is amazing, with soft glows from lanterns cutting through the thick fog to create a dreamlike, almost supernatural atmosphere. Soft snow covers the ground, leaving deep, long-lasting tracks as you walk. Bright greens stand out against the crumbling buildings. Every corner feels like it was carefully made, begging to be explored even though there are dangers nearby.
Even though the world is mostly linear, it has beautiful views and interesting stories about the environment that are worth paying close attention to. I only wish that the environment could be more interactive—imagine cutting through bamboo while fighting or triggering more dynamic effects—but WUCHANG: Fallen Feathers is still a pleasure to explore just because of how it looks.
The sound is just as atmospheric. The music is a mix of traditional Chinese instruments and dark movie scores that go well with the creepy setting and tense gameplay. The eerie intro menu theme sets the mood right away, and the music in WUCHANG: Fallen Feathers swells and changes quickly to build suspense and make battles more intense.
The voice acting is good, and Wu Chang’s British accent gives her mostly silent main character a cool edge. NPCs say what they’re saying with real emotion, and when you defeat an enemy, they mutter haunting phrases that make the experience more real.
However, audio mixing isn’t always perfect, and voices can feel like they aren’t connected to other sounds. Lip sync is clearly off, and mouth movements that don’t look natural take away from performances that are otherwise strong. These bugs in the technology get in the way, but they don’t ruin the experience. The sounds of battle, like swords clashing, grunts, and magical effects, are clear and satisfying, keeping you interested in the action.
WUCHANG: Fallen Feathers is a great first game from Leenzee Games. It combines classic Souls-like gameplay with a world full of Chinese history and mythology that makes you feel like you’re really there. Its stunning graphics, moody music, and complex combat system all work together to make an experience that is hard, rewarding, and atmospheric.
The level of difficulty is punishing but fair, and the progression pushes you to change your builds and look around a lot. Some bugs and the “madness” mechanic may be annoying, but WUCHANG: Fallen Feathers‘s strategic combat and world design are what make it great. New Game Plus makes the game easier to get to and gives you more freedom to play, which makes the second run more fun.
Even though WUCHANG: Fallen Feathers has some problems, mostly with the audio and some weirdness in the fighting, it stands out by adding a new look and story to a well-known and loved genre. At $50 or free with Game Pass, it’s a great choice for anyone looking for a Souls-like game with a lot of dark beauty and its own story.
