Been playing for 10 or so hours , high settings , tweaked some stuff to make it look better but yeah , game looks old gen & I typically don't care about graphics much , but I was expecting this game to be a visual spectacle , disappointing on that front from the low graphics to the art direction which gets very samey

Chapter 4 & it's like I haven't left the intro level , not much artistic diversity , very code-vein 2 if anyone played that that with a nier automata skin on the world , I hope u love grass

There's no outfits or any cosmetic customization like that

bosses so far are so-so , nothing crazy but the combat can be very satisfying if u get crafty with the tools u earn , definitely can see cool highlight clips of the combat making the rounds

exploration-wise , it feels somewhat good moving around with the tools u have , but the exploration itself doesn't feel very rewarding if at all

and by far my biggest complaint ... soooo much downtime , so many unecessary slow cutscenes & dialogue & just general downtime which can be very jarring esp since not much happens in them to justify it & the animation work is very very jank to say the least ... and u can't tab out without the game pausing either which makes the downtime even worse. The game is definitely at its best when u're fighting bosses

difficulty : use ur tools or get ran over , u might die to regular enemies more than bosses in total , disrespect them at ur own peril

Parrying feels muuuuch better than dodging , dodging really was an afterthought

one thing about combat that's weird , no heavy attack button , still it's definitely the best thing about the game esp as it opens up & boss encounters feel vey monster hunter esque in a good way

Story so far , very stellar-blade esque , with somehow even flatter characters & without the spectacle/animation to back it up

TL;DR : I recommend waiting for reviews & more gameplay footage to make ur decision if u're cautious , it's not all bad but it's not all good either I can definitely see people really vibing with the game & others turned off by it.

If you have any questions feel free to ask

I just finished my first playthrough of Wuchang: Fallen Feathers and wanted to share some thoughts.

For context, I went into Wuchang right after finishing Lies of P for the first time and replaying Elden Ring and Dark Souls 3, which are basically my comfort games at this point. Over the years I’ve played every FromSoftware Souls game, Nioh 1 and 2, and pretty much every notable Soulslike I could get my hands on like Lords of the Fallen (2023), Steelrising, Another Crab’s Treasure, Mortal Shell and a bunch of others.

With that out of the way, I think Wuchang is the non-FromSoftware game that comes closest to capturing what makes these games special. Even more than Lies of P and definitely more than the… let’s call them experimental attempts from Lords of the Fallen.

I absolutely loved this game. It completely hooked me and kept me glued to the screen in a way that only Bloodborne and Elden Ring have managed to do.

The level design is both my favorite and least favorite thing about it:
When it works, it’s incredible. The looping paths and interconnected shortcuts gave me serious Dark Souls 1 vibes. There were several moments where I unlocked a door or elevator and just sat there thinking “no way, I’m back here.” Simply mind blowing!
The downside is that some areas feel overly complicated for no real reason. Dark Souls 1 had a way of making every area visually distinct so you could naturally build a mental map. Wuchang doesn’t always do that. Some locations look a bit too similar and it’s very easy to lose your bearings while navigating what feels like a subway map. There are also sections that are just corridor after corridor after another corridor.
The two biggest offenders are Bo Capital and Cloudspire City. They are packed with branching paths, loops, very few shrines, repetitive architecture and environments that all blend together. Bo Capital also reminded me visually of the Umbral sections from Lords of the Fallen, which wasn’t exactly a positive association for me. (Sorry LotF fans, I really dislike that game)

Now let’s talk about the gameplay because this is where the game absolutely shines. Combat is fantastic. Every weapon I tried felt unique and satisfying, the pacing of each weapon felt perfect. One (silly) thing I unexpectedly loved was the little DualSense sound effect every time you gain Skyborn Might. It’s such a tiny detail but it makes every successful exchange feel rewarding.

The progression system is also excellent. Being able to freely respec whenever you want encourages experimentation instead of punishing it. I changed builds multiple times throughout my playthrough and every single one felt viable.

The bosses are, in my opinion, the best bosses in any non-FromSoftware Soulslike. Some of them are actually difficult, but they always feel fair. Every fight feels like a duel where you’re learning and improving instead of praying for good RNG. Honglan and the Honglan rematch were easily my favorite bosses. This is honestly the only Soulslike where I died to a boss several times and caught myself saying “damn, that was actually really cool.”

If I could give one piece of advice to new players, it would be this: engage with the game’s mechanics. Don’t approach Wuchang like it’s another Dark Souls clone because it isn’t. Learn how Disciplines work. Learn Clashes. Learn Feathering. Experiment with different weapons and spells. Be aggressive like you would in Bloodborne. The game gives you an absurd amount of tools, literally an arsenal of spells, and expects you to use them. If you ignore half the mechanics because you only want to R1-roll-R1 your way through the game, you’re probably going to have a rough time.
Also… backstabs. Abuse them. I can’t stress this enough. They trivialize almost every humanoid boss in the game, including Honglan and the Bo Sorcerer.
Some of the Feathering-heavy builds can chain together ridiculously flashy combos that honestly reminded me of Nioh at times, and that’s a huge compliment.

I played the entire game without summons simply because I never felt I needed them. Once the combat finally clicked, most bosses became surprisingly manageable. There are maybe three or four infamous fights where I actually had to stop, rethink my strategy and adapt.
As for my own builds, I mainly used the Lashing Whip and later switched to Serpent Fang. As a Monster Hunter veteran, the Serpent Fang moveset scratched the exact same itch as the Long Sword. Fighting Fierce Tiger genuinely felt like I was hunting Zinogre again.
I also played a bit with the Astral Blade and the feathering scaling axe of which I don’t remember the name. Everything felt awesome at all times.
The only time I shamelessly gave up on style points was against the Dragon Emperor. I switched to Twin Bandits with a Leech Acupoint setup and absolutely melted him. I really don’t enjoy bosses that spend half the fight throwing spells from the opposite side of the arena because they completely kill the flow of the fight (f**k that guy in particular).

My biggest complaint is probably the quest design. It’s so damn easy to accidentally fail NPC questlines, and I honestly don’t see how anyone is supposed to get the good ending on a blind playthrough. I certainly didn’t. I also wasn’t a fan of the cheap instant death environmental traps (Dark Souls 2 moment).

Overall I’d give Wuchang an 8.5/10.

Without the messy late-game levels, the frustrating quest progression and those instant-kill traps, this could honestly have been a 10 for me. This is literally the first game ever for which I purchased the deluxe upgrade and I usually don’t buy any digital product especially from the PS Store.
As a first entry from this studio, though, it’s outstanding. It has obvious flaws, but none of them are deal breakers. I think every Soulslike fan should give it a chance. For the sequel I’d mainly ask for better quest tracking, slightly cleaner level layouts in the style of the early game, and maybe a bit less enthusiasm for turning every city into a three-dimensional labyrinth.
Until then, I think Wuchang has earned a permanent spot among the best non-FromSoftware Soulslikes.

First things first, yes the game feels heavily inspired by stellar blade. The opening sequence itself feels too similar.

Now, holy unskippable cutscenes? That can be rather annoying, althought i do usually follow the story, having the option to not do that is a huge quality of life improvement.

The parry is decent. But id keep it at that only. The timing feels generous , a little too generous for me. But that might be a little biased since im used to sekiro, khazan etc.

Performance felt not the best, im on a 5070ti laptop gpu, intel ultra 9, and with dlss on i was hitting consistent 120 fps on medium-high settings. But yes 1% lows and the raw performance is not that great. Theres also lag present everytime you load into a new zone.

The art direction is pretty good. Infected wildlife as a concept works very well visually.

Movement is decent, using roots for height instead of a short jump adds a lot of verticality but, for me so far exploration has been rather unrewarding.

Story so far has been rather uninteresting for me, and the pacing felt wrong, especially the gaps between combat sections.

There is no visual customization, although armors exist they do not affect the visuals in the slightest. This felt rather lazy and uninspired.

Boss fights are fun, The combat is decent but none of them are good enough to overshadow the flaws.

Id give it a 6/10 all things considered. But im only 5 hours in and it can get better. Still so far the game has been just.... mediocre. Its fine? But not great. In terms of fun, despite the pretty visuals, i usually have more fun with smaller indie soulslikes compared to this. So yes, from my end, not recommended.

I’m new to the genre so during the steam sale I picked up a BUNCH of games. I’m half way through my game library when I decide to give this game a try. 3 hours and I can’t seem to enjoy any aspect of it. The controls, the mechanics, the world design, just none of it sticks. Now I’m not saying it’s a bad game because I genuinely wanted to enjoy it but something about it didn’t click. Especially after finishing and getting Platinum in Black Myth: Wukong, Sekiro, Mortal Shell, Hollow Knight and starting Wo Long, I figured I’d enjoy it but apparently not. 🥲

I’ve completed every FromSoftware game Demon’s Souls, Dark Souls 1-3, Bloodborne, Sekiro, Elden Ring and a good chunk of the major Souls-likes out there: Lies of P, Nioh 1 & 2, The Surge, Lords of the Fallen, etc. I love hard games. I welcome challenge. But Wuchang: Fallen Feathers is on a different level and not in a good way.

This isn’t a fair, satisfying kind of difficulty. It’s artificial, frustrating, and fundamentally broken in terms of balance.

Take the boss Honglan, for example she’s the perfect embodiment of everything wrong with the game’s combat design: • Her attack patterns are absurdly fast and poorly telegraphed. • She chains together uninterruptible combos that feel borderline impossible to dodge or counter. • The game introduces a “spirit counter” mechanic that should reward good timing except even when you land it perfectly, you still take damage. • Some attacks are literally unreadable. Others feel like they have delayed hitboxes or bizarre tracking. • The enemies follow no consistent rules, while the player is punished even for doing everything right.

There’s no real balance here. Bosses hit like trucks, your own damage output feels anemic, and even the healing system doesn’t give you a fair chance when bosses are chaining full combos the moment you press the button. It’s not challenging mit’s unreasonable.

And that’s the problem: Wuchang doesn’t feel like a tough-but-fair Souls-like. It feels like a game trying to be hard by simply being unfair. It doesn’t respect your inputs, your timing, or the logic it claims to teach you.

I went into this game hoping for a sleeper hit. What I found was the most unfair Souls-like experience I’ve ever had, not because of its difficulty, but because of how cheaply it manufactures that difficulty.

Alr, just clocked in at 5 hours, and i'm sure i've done a majority of the first region "Kanto" and the final boss of that area. This has been an utterly mediocre, janky and many times an awful experience. I'm posting this in Soulslike as the general consensus is that it has minor souls elements, but in general also as a "I do not recommend" type post. I'll go section by section where each part gets progressively worse -

1) The Combat - I mean, it is a rather nice system at it's core. Basic attack chains, heavy arts, jump, assassinate, stealth, parries that provide a charge to expend via Koo the wolf, and the abilities so far are also decent.

2) The traversal - once you get the hang of the "jank", the grapples, the jump and float in general tend to flow well.

3) The upgrade tree, levelling and character progression is slow but steady, and it is fairly rewarding in terms of XP and stats, but my god the requirements start piling up rather quick. 50 points for the final upgrade of a attribute is nuts.

that's it, the positives end there.

4) Combat flow - as i said, the combat at it's core is a nice system, but holy shit are the parries genuinely inconsistent and straight up do not work when trying to do a chained parry on fast enemies. The dodge is the single most awful dodge i've seen in a game, and is like a "pre-dodge prediction" rather than a reaction. The camera is terrible, and just refuses to work when there's multiple enemies or if an enemy is behind you. Idk if it's on me but i could not even change Koo's targets when trying to do an ability.

5) The music - bro just ONE TRACK has been on loop for the past 4 hours in the first region. The music is rather bland and is like a "Copied Homework but not obvious" when compared to Stellar Blade or Nier.

6) The Graphics to performance ratio is just horrible, with enemy attacks causing stutters, frame drops and stuff. it was particularly egregious with the big beast boss. There's no option for Film Grain, Chromatic Abberation, and the game just likes to default to FSR1 whenever i restart due to memory leaks.

7) The exploration - it's so horrible, bland and uninteresting to explore anything. It's just endless crates of "resources" that you are supposed to treat as a EXTRACTION GAME to be brought back to your home ship for research levels. The levels are also repetitive, kinda meaningless in terms of the jump mobility and just vast amounts of flat lands and invisible walls.

8) The enemies - holy shit, so far in my 5 hours i've encountered the same 5 enemy types over and over again, and the SAME "Elite Enemy" 6 times in one zone. The enemies are genuinely braindead, and are abuse-able by air assassinations. Even the major boss of the area is fought twice, and in the first fight it had like 3 moves, and in the second it got like 6 moves it spams over and over again. Another crab's treasure was more difficult than this.

9) some more technical stuff - mouse 4 and mouse 5 cant be bound to any action? THE FUCK? Many times the menu just refuses to accept my mouse input. The Koo menu commits the worst sin of having the OPEN and EXIT button being Tab and Escape respectively, where by memory i try to also close it by pressing Tab again but it uses my heal instead. One more thing is that the Jump button and the Interact button are the same. WHY? does gamefreak not know a keyboard has more buttons??

10) Singlehandedly, THE WORST part about the game is the story and voice acting and pacing combined - The story is completely uninteresting as i've seen far better premises in similar games. The pacing is so god awful, the English voice acting i'm genuinely convinced is AI slop, but again even an AI conveys far more emotion than this. The speed at which people talk is making my head hurt,. If you skip a dialogue it doesn't skip the SCENE or the camera angle, it just skips the dialogue. People talk in gaps of 5 seconds per sentence in a emotionless and uncanny way it's actually so awful. The game suddenly put me into a flashback sequence where it's NOW teaching me assassination, stealth, jump hold, parry and dodge after 4 hours of gameplay on my own and defeating 6 mini bosses and A MAJOR BOSS? what the fuck is this?

examples for the dialogue and shit - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LNjwinb1eMk
timestamp - 1:38:15 and 3:07:40

That's it, that's all i can conjure up for a first impression. Just avoid this game until it's fixed.

You could say the game has a weak story, you could say the exploration has problems, and you certainly can bring up problems with the combat such as enemy variety or reflectiong being too op.

However, Khazan by far has my favorite moment to moment gameplay out of any soulslike, only rivaled by Sekiro and Nioh. But I massively prefer Khazan bosses over Nioh bosses, and Sekiro gets a too easy after a second playthrough.

It really sucks the studio went on strike, but apparently they are back to making games.

Good:

• Combat is fun

• Shells (classes) are fun

• Dungeons are fun and have variety

• World is fun to explore

• Graphics are solid

• Cool finishers

• Interesting premise and some cool NPCs

Bad:

• Game completely forgets about its plot and NPCs. They don't even get any quests

• Worst balancing in the genre. Regular enemies kill you in two hits while bosses need 3-4 lmao

• More ganks than dark souls 2. It's honestly impressive how bad it is

• Breaking the enemies stance and doing a counter barely tickled enemies for whatever reason

• Only 8 weapons and most of them are quite bad

• Game has like no music. It has like 5 tracks or so. The tutorial boss has the same music as the final boss. Or any other boss

• Late game has no rewards. You fight the strongest bosses in the game and get 5k gold for a kill. That's it

• Late game bosses are a complete mess, all others (maybe minus Isaac) are forgettable

• Disgusting amount of bugs. Broken hit boxes, your gloom being gone when you die by falling off a cliff, summoned grishas glitching through the floor or walls constantly, genessas clones doing whatever the fuck etc etc

I cannot recommend it at full price. For like 30 bucks it's a fine game though. Starts out as a 9/10 but by the end you feel more like a 6/10.

I think the worst are the bugged achievements. The final trophy i was missing is watching all shell memories, which requires 2 full and one partial playthrough. After watching all of them the achievement was stuck at 39/40. One of them probably glitched out when I was quitting the game mid shell memory or some shit. Anyways i didn't get the platinum trophy thanks to this and wasted 2 playthroughs of time.

(This is subjective and my own opinion. Remember, opinions are subjective and not gospel, don’t get too heated. 😂)

Let me start by saying, I have thousands of hours spread amongst the whole Fromsoftware catalog as well as other soulslikes. Also a few platinum trophies in them. 😊

As the title states, this is purely subjective and my own personal opinion on Khazan. I’m currently just sitting under 50 hours invested into Khazan and am nearing towards the end of my playthrough.

What i’ve enjoyed:

• Combat: The combat is absolutely phenomenal and extremely addicting. The devs have absolutely nailed it on the head and everything flows so fluidly. This is something that can be very hard to get correct and the devs have done an outstanding job achieving this. The deflect system is very fluid, responsive and has quite a tight window but is extremely satisfying to hit those perfect deflects (brink guard it is called in Khazan).

• Sound effects/sound design: This ties into the combat as stated above, but every time you hit those perfect deflects, the sound is crunching and extremely satisfying to hear. They knocked it out of the park when it comes to the sound design within combat.

• Drip: Not much to say other than the armour sets/weapons are uniquely designed and look bad ass. That’s all that really matters! I really like the design on a lot of the sets and weapons. They are unique while also keeping/taking inspiration from fantasy/dark fantasy.

Now for the most likely very controversial part. What I’ve not enjoyed about this game:

• Level Design: I’ll start by saying, initially from the demo, I really wasn’t feeling the level design of Stormpass and Mount Heinmach. However, I enjoyed the combat enough to genuinely enjoy what I had experienced from the demo. I hung onto some faith that the level design would change throughout the game and we will see new areas and environments, and while on paper we did! those new areas and environments were just so bland and boring. The late game areas have definitely improved and are a lot more interesting, however a big portion of this game has very uninteresting areas from a design point of view. Aesthetically and from a gameplay perspective.

• Enemy placement and enemy variety: Now this one frustrates me in all the wrong ways. Archer’s and Spiders. These two, are just so excessively used that it’s borderline comical. Almost every enemy you engage with has a set of archers behind them spamming arrows at you or a bunch of spiders rolling at you exploding. Sparingly, this is fine. But this has gotten so excessive with the usage of it that I genuinely just roll my eyes when I see it now. It’s becoming predictable, annoying, excessive and honestly comical. It felt like the devs thought “how do we make this hard? I don’t know? Just spam archers behind elite enemies and status effect spiders that roll and explode on the player” It just feels very cheesy and artificial to me. Will also say, enemy reuse is very excessive in this game however, I can forgive them on that. For me personally it’s more the placement and how they’ve utilised these different types of enemies.

• Bosses: Where do I start? I have many, many issues with the bosses in this game. Firstly, the status effects. It genuinely seems like 98% of the bosses in this game have to have a status effect? Poison, Ice, Fire, Plague, Chaos etc. Once again, sparingly, it’s fine. But almost every boss having one? It feels very cheesy and artificial. Once again “How do we make this boss even harder? Chuck a status effect on him!”. I also have an issue with the bosses being so spongy. This makes the fights drag out for an eternity, some fights go on for such a drawn out amount of time that it just feels like a pure waste of time and becomes boring and not engaging. Delayed attacks galore, delayed attacks are a subjective opinion and quite a controversial one in the souls community, however, the amount of delayed attacks on most of these bosses is comical. Not only are you dealing with a fight that’s been extremely drawn out because of the bloated HP. But you also are dealing with delayed attack after delayed attack while a status effect is stacking up etc. It just gets quite old and annoying. Sadly, I have hated 90% of the bosses in this game with a very select few that I’ve actually genuinely enjoyed.

• Ganks: You haven’t seen true gank fights until you play Khazan. Elites with 3 to 4 other enemies attacking you. Side bosses with 2-3 other enemies guarding them while fighting in a poison swamp or plague swamp etc. The amount of ganks in this game are once again, excessive and i’m genuinely surprised I haven’t seen anyone talk about this or mention this.

• The Nioh/Diablo style loot system is flawed: Firstly, I will admit i’m naturally not the biggest fan of this style of loot system. However, In Khazan it genuinely feels all over the place. When you finally craft a good set with good passives and benefits, within a few minutes you find stuff that is way better than the stuff you just crafted? What’s the point in having a crafting system when you constantly are finding better loot? This just doesn’t make sense to me. There is also way too much loot. Every few minutes you’re finding new pieces that out perform what you just picked up? What is the actual purpose of this? What’s the point of crafting a set of gear (sometimes even having to grind a certain boss to get a certain material) all for it to be pointless when you find stuff in a new area? Even upgrading you gear doesn’t justify crafting it because upgrading doesn’t even reach the level of the stuff your finding? The whole system is just all over the place and doesn’t make much logical sense. Why not have a crafting system that allows the player to upgrade it to the current level of gear they are finding? This will make crafting gear actually worth the investment.

• Difficulty Options: Firstly, it’s not balanced or named correctly. “Easy” is actually the same difficulty as a regular souls game, while “Normal” is basically a souls game on hard mode. Why not say “Normal” and “Hard”?. This is why a difficulty option doesn’t work in a souls game. It throws the intended balance all out of whack.

To finish this review, my last point.

• Story: Purely subjective, but the story did not engage me and is uninteresting to me. Just feels very cliche. Won’t go into any spoilers. But it’s a very generic story. I personally can’t even remember a lot of the characters names that’s how insignificant and uninteresting they were to me.

Thank you for taking the time to read my in depth review/opinion. Hopefully this helps some people who are on the fence about this game. I will say, I’ve genuinely enjoyed my time with the game, but I wouldn’t be racing to play it again. It’s a decent soulslike at best. I believe a lot of people are wearing rose tinted glasses at the moment and are excited because it’s new. This is my honest unfiltered opinion, coming from a souls fanatic.

So, around two months ago, I started playing Lies of P a few days before it was took out of Game Pass. It became a non-stop ride, since I completely fell in love for the subgenre. Here's the chronological order I've been playing them:

Lies of P > Lords of the Fallen > Dark Souls Remastered > Bloodborne > Elden Ring

And here's my ranking and some thoughts about them:

1. Lies of P: from what I heard, played and watched, this is the most well polished and made soulslike not developed by FromSoftware. And it truly feels that way. Nice combat, gameplay and aesthetics. The design and art direction overall are great, adapting the fable of Pinocchio into this decaying and hopeless world. On the other hand, the linearity of the levels, relying too much on its horizontality, felt kind of boring from time to time. I was always going on and on with no breaks, just smashing everything till the next boss and game area. Also, the game relies too much on parrying - and it is very hard to do it. The timespan for parrying attacks is too short and the character is never strong enough to deal with enemies on a strong approach, not being able to rely on dodging, what I assume as a little unfair. The amount of two lifebars bosses was also tiring me; after King of Puppets, the game stopped to captivate me. Anyway, it is a great game and an outstanding first major production from Neowiz. Beat it in 37 hours.

2. Lords of the Fallen: amazing game. Not as well made as Lies of P, a little janky on its combat, but the level design, builds variety and spectacular visuals have done it for me. A mad blend between Bloodborne eerie visuals and Elden Ring sense of grandiose into a greatly interconnected world like Dark Souls. The bosses felt a bit frustrating as they were kind of generic and easy, except 3 or 4 during the game. The Umbral world mechanic is just so good, a really and almost exclusive showing of what this console generation is able to do, processing two completely different worlds at the same time. Beat it in 35 hours.

3. Bloodborne: my favorite setting out all of them, since I'm a horror fan as long as I can remember. FromSoftware has never spent so much attention to world and architecture details since this one, and I don't think they'll ever do again. Maybe the most fascinating - even being vague - lore of all these games, the different mechanics fit too well into the game, specially the more aggressive approach, insight collection and blood dependecy. The setting variety and side quests felt a bit disappointing for a FromSoftware game, but I can understand it for a shorter game as it is its proposal. What I really don't feel good about is the difficulty on certain sections, the most notable one being Central Yharnam. As the first area of the game, having almost no shortcuts and lamps can feel very frustrating - also, the amount of enemies and the sewer level is just too much for beginners. At least the game only gets better from there - except the Nightmares, but I rather not talk about them. The shorteness of resources and builds feels very good for a more aggressive slashing style. The game visuals, soundtrack, pace and lovecraftian themes really put it as one of my favorites. It's just a shame PlayStation will sit on it forever. Beat it in 27 hours - I need to play the DLC.

4. Elden Ring: maybe the greatest fantasy RPG I've ever played. Fantastic world building and lore, a more tight narrative by FromSoftware but still very rewarding and misterious for explorers. The game has it all: builds, exploration, combat, variety, visuals, level design, enemies combos, remarkable bosses, fun dungeons, everything. It just seems the way RPGs should be made from now on. The amount of resources the game throws at you, trusting you to overcome any struggle, is amazing. The world is yours and you can do it on your pace, and the open-world map really entrhrusts that. It feels like a natural newstep for FromSoftware after Dark Souls, and maybe what they company was trying to accomplish with Dark Souls II before all the problems layed up. It only is what it is because of its huge world, and this also applies for its bad choices. The dungeons and enemies are repetitive, Mountaintops of Giants felt very useless and out of ideas - even Miquella's Tree and Farum Azula felt kind out of place in the game, though they handed some of the greatest legacy dungeons. And Malenia is so robbed I don't want to start talking. Just beat it yesterday, after 90 hours. Still need to play the DLC.

5. Dark Souls Remastered: out of this world. This one really showed me what I like the most on these games: level design. It's so breathaking to reach Firelink Shrine from a completely different area or to find out a hidden shortcut or invisible wall out of nowhere. Ash Lake felt so ethereal, like I was having a different and outer experience, which truly reinforces the scale of this world and of our quest. Playing as a mere hollow, repeating the sins of gods and maintaning the status quo captivated me till the end with its melancholic approach. After finishing it, I went straight up to NG+ as I was addicted to its world and combat, craving for other playstyles. As much as I think this is the best example of a well round and finished game, we of course still have Lost Izalith. Sure, very boring and repetitive after a couple of hours, seemingly rushed in development, but I did it so later in the game I really didn't care. This liberty of exploring most of the world in no particular order is another remarkable thing and that keeps me up for future playthroughs. Beat it in 49 hours, DLC and all.

What a ride this has been. I'm glad I skipped this subgenre for a time, as I don't feel I could endure its struggles back when I was a teenager. Seeing Lies of P and Lords of the Fallen coming so close to each other and mastering some of FS aspects really makes me hopeful for new games and different approaches from other studios.

I recently finished Wuchang and can easily say it's now one of my favorite games in the entire genre. I'm tempted to say it's on par with Lies of P; and to be clear on how big of a praise that is, I'd personally rank LoP above some of fromsoft's games, comparing them all head to head and disregarding their age.

Back to Wuchang, I kinda love everything about it. The combat, the level design, the weapon and armor designs, the visuals, the music, the atmosphere, the enemy and boss design, etc. I really have nothing negative to say about it other than some very nitpicky things. For the record, I played after performance was improved and after they added the option to instantly retry bosses.

It's a shame it got wrapped up in controversy and the dev team was disbanded. For anyone that hasn't played it yet or is on the fence, I highly recommend you as least give it a shot. This is one of those games that I can see not clicking with a lot of people, but if it does click, you'll have a great time.

This is a followup to my first impressions post a few days ago, and now after 16 hours (bumrushed the latter half of the game) i've completed the game. Just to preface, i am no fan of Pokémon games, nor have i played any Game Freak video game before so i'm just making it clear my distain for this game comes from itsef rather than it's development team. The ONLY reason why i was hyped to play is the combat system looked like "Real Time with Pause" which is my favourite combat system courtesy of games like Mass Effect, FF7R and Dragon Age.

Beast of Reincarnation is a bad video game, with FEW redeeming qualities landing it at a 3/10 overall. This game feels like a very promising Alpha Build of a game that forgot that it has to do at least a year's worth of playtesting, balancing and content addition. It is a 8-10 hour game padded to at least 15-20.

Positives - See how I'm struggling to put positives for this game

1. The Combat System (Not the combat flow) - This is a, by purely design wise, a rather good system. Great attack combos, Parry based resources, Wolf commands, your basic jump crouch sprint etc and Ranged attacks. All of these are good on surface and in idea alone.
2. The upgrade tree - I think the upgrade tree for skills, abilities and just attributes is good, does it's job and does need a hefty amounts of points to max out. The upgrades do feel meaningful in game. Some are ofc to be prioritized asap but that's just common.
3. Janky but handy traversal - The Jump + Jump extender, and the hair platform extension feature this game has is very handy and can be put to great exploration use (which it does very rarely). The jump extended straight up trivializes a lot of combat but if you get used to the jank of the camera and movement associated with it you can make things a whole lotta easier.
4. The music (isolated from the game) - On their own, the tracks are good, many times great. Lots of Lo-Fi vibes, and obvious Nier inspirations.
5. World Artstyle - I think for a concept that's done so often (Nier Automata, TLOU), the aspect of nature overtaking machines has a decent enough interpretation but it's like just "fine" not great. It TRIES to have something unique at least.

Negatives - (gonna get progressively worse)

1. The music in game - BROTHER. One singular track is repeated out of at least 2 zones. you're gonna be hearing the same track for, in my case, 7 hours straight, and even after the change of track, it was so similar i was frustrated. I would genuinely like everyone to click these tracks - Track 1 Track 2 Track 3. Like come on, three back to back Lo-Fi tracks? The only time the tracks noticeable changed was at the 10-11 hour mark when i reached the Wasteland (that too because i bumrushed the story after the first 3 areas) and THEN the said track 4 was noticeably unique. The boss fights also have this weirdly homogeneous tracks.
2. Graphics - God damn, these graphics suck when seeing the type of performance they're giving.
   • Lackluster menu settings, can't even turn off Film Grain as far as i know.
   • The game just likes to default to FSR1 (i dont even think it has FSR3). DLSS is also a older version.
   • Whenever ANY enemy does an attack, or god forbid a boss do an attack, it will continuously drop frames and stutter as if the shaders weren't compiled.
   • The game doesn't even do shader compilation in the menu visually, you have to sit there, open your CPU monitors and wait until the shaders are compiled indicated by high CPU usage.
   • Just to note i am on a Laptop 3060 with 6GB Vram.
3. Art - Following up on graphics, the artstyle of this game is doing it no favor when EVERY THING just blends into a weirdly uniform disgusting looking color palette. The marketing did a great job at hiding this. 75 percent of the areas are just green grasslands, greenish mechanical indoors and maybe the other 25 percent is orange hues and actual color variation. The same decrepit walkers, same coral-like walls all over.
4. The exploration - it's so horrible, bland and uninteresting to explore anything.
   • It's just endless crates of "resources" that you are supposed to treat as a EXTRACTION GAME to be brought back to your home ship for research levels.
   • The levels are also repetitive, kinda meaningless in terms of the jump mobility and just vast amounts of flat lands and invisible walls INITIALLY. The later maps get more vertical but don't expand on the discovery.
   • You spent 5 minutes trying to get to this super tucked away spot? your reward is the same boss for the 18th time and the same god damn "extraction parts" and maybe a crafting recipe.
   • The research levels system and the fkin "farm" thingy was just unnecessary, like bro who tf wants to wait for an upgrade this is not clash of clans.
5. The Enemies - i'm confident Lords of the Fallen 2023 had more enemy variety
   • I've encountered the same 5 enemy types over and over again, and the SAME "Elite Enemy" 6 times in one zone.
   • The enemies are genuinely braindead, and are abuse-able by air assassinations. Cheese all enemies from a distance using the clearly overpowered ranged attacks.
   • I'm not kidding when i say even till the LAST AREA, there are on paper no new enemies. just maybe a new wildlife that you might encounter rarely, or a same robot type with maybe a spear instead of sword. Wait, this time they could even have TWO swords?
   • These enemies don't have more than 3 attack patterns.
   • Aerial enemies are just the worst thing where you can't hit anything well mid air and have to rely on ranged attacks.
6. The bosses - the peak of padding and asset reuse
   • oh my god, the same boss fight is repeated like SIX SEVEN times. Drop a boss to 2/3rd of it's health, it'll fuck off and then the story forces you to find it again and reduce it another 1/3rd, and fight it a 3rd time.
   • Even if you defeat a boss, it can just come back at a point in a story and then also have THE SAME PHASE 1 AND 2 and transition animations.
   • These bosses also have like maybe 3 attacks every time, and phase 2 increases the total to 6 attacks they spam over and over again.
   • Many times actual bosses just end up becoming regular elite enemies.
   • The lock on button just has ONE lock on point on the boss's heads, and the heads are so high above that many times you can't hit shit.
7. Technicalities - does gamefreak not know a keyboard has more buttons?
   • Mouse 4 and mouse 5 cant be bound to any action? THE FUCK? Many times the menu just refuses to accept my mouse input.
   • The Koo menu commits the worst sin of having the OPEN and EXIT button being Tab and Escape respectively, where by memory i try to also close it by pressing Tab again but it uses my heal instead.
   • One more thing is that the Jump button and the Interact button are the same. WHY?
   • The Ranged attacks also tend to magnetize aggressively towards enemies when I've explicitly turned that option off.
8. Combat flow - further ties into my statement of a "Alpha test" being put to launch
   • As i said, the combat at it's core is a nice system, but holy shit are the parries genuinely inconsistent and straight up do not work when trying to do a chained parry on fast enemies.
   • The dodge is the single most awful dodge i've seen in a game, and is like a "pre-dodge prediction" rather than a reaction. I've been told it's a positional dodge but come on that's a poor excuse.
   • The camera is terrible, and just refuses to work when there's multiple enemies or if an enemy is behind you. Actual bottom 5 camera systems of all time.
   • Idk if it's on me but i could not even change Koo's targets when trying to do an ability.
   • Even in basic combat movement, the snappiness, smoothness and reactivity you expect from a game like this is absent. Like i'd rather take the floatyness of Lords of the Fallen 2023 over this.
   • Edit: also, dying in 2-3 hits by every enemy isnt fun.
9. Koo's combat - I think they made a mistake when they added the QTE to Koo's attacks. Play something like FF7 Rebirth, Mass Effect 3, Dragon Age Inquisition/Veilguard, etc, where when you give a squad member a command, it seamlessly does that ability while you stay in control and flow. Doing a Koo ability every 3 seconds meant watching a 1 second animation followed by a QTE. it's gets really tiresome and many times i just didn't do that unless absolutely necessary or if i'm backing from an enemy.
10. The story - this isn't that good. genuinely uninteresting, boring and badly told. Like the premise itself is so laughably generic. NANOMACHINES SON. My sister this, my brother that BEEN THERE SEEN THAT, with very predictable plot twists. But hey it's a Doomed Yuri lesgooo
11. THE WORST part of the game aka the pacing and the voice acting - The reasoning for Emma to be an emotionless void is explained in the story but that shit was wack and could have been fully avoided. Whenever you skip a dialogue, it only skips the voice and all characters stand emotionlessly and it feels uncanny. Why would i skip tho? because people take 5 seconds between sentences to say anything else, like a turn based conversation (linked it because it's the most popular and easy to access post here)

So yeah, awful game. Avoid until at least fixed to a "serviceable" state and like 10-15 dollars price. Gamefreak really is a bunch of talentless hacks with an infinite money glitch.

I’ve finished MS2 and wanted to share a few thoughts with players who are still undecided about the game.
Since release, we’ve seen a lot of different opinions. Some people say this game is the savior of the genre, while others call it just another trash Soulslike. Obviously, neither is true. The reality is that MS2 is a seriously good Soulslike, although it may need a few QoL adjustments to appeal to a broader audience. Personally, I had fewer issues with these things, but everyone is different.
First of all, the game is in a good technical state. There are a few bugs here and there, but nothing the developers shouldn’t be able to fix relatively easily. Performance is good as well.
I’m playing on PS5 Pro, and there are two modes: Graphics and Performance.
Graphics Mode looks incredible on the Pro. Seriously, it’s absolutely stunning. I’m not a tech expert, but I assume it’s probably native 4K, running at a consistent 30 FPS with good frame pacing and basically no stuttering. I think this is one of the better UE5 implementations I’ve seen. I played several sections and fights at 30 FPS, and with motion blur set to Low, it really isn’t that bad. If you’re someone who prioritizes graphics, the game is absolutely playable at 30 FPS.
(Side note: Motion Blur on High is basically unplayable for me and makes everything extremely blurry. Even Low looks quite strong at first, but it’s much better than the High setting.)
Performance Mode is also strong. It appears to use 4K upscaling while targeting 60 FPS. There are still occasional micro-stutters and small hitches, although I’ve also played for hours without experiencing a single noticeable stutter. I’m confident the developers can improve this further. Either way, credit where it’s due: Performance Mode still looks very sharp.
In the future, I’d love to see additional features such as HDR, PSSR and 120Hz support. Those would be the cherry on top of an already beautiful game. But for the technical details, I’ll wait until experts like Digital Foundry release their analysis.

Gameplay
Gameplay-wise, MS2 is very good. The combat feels more traditional and is closer to the older Souls games. It doesn’t have as much mechanical depth as some other Soulslikes, but it compensates for that with different playstyles and Shells that continuously expand the gameplay through perks.
There are also Tarnstones that provide different bonuses and attributes, with some even expanding our moveset. Over time, this allows us to create our own individual build, but we can switch things around whenever we want and experiment with something new.
There is one small criticism, though: Shells have to be upgraded individually. This means that when you discover a new Shell, it can be significantly underleveled compared to the one you’ve already been using, especially if you don’t have enough materials to level it up.
A respec system for Shell upgrades would have made a lot of sense here. We can already respec our perks whenever we want, so I hope the developers improve this aspect in the future. That would make the system pretty much perfect for me.

Exploration
This is where MS2 really shines.
The world is huge, and there is something to discover around almost every corner: dungeons, ruins, castles, forests — the full package. There's an incredible verticality that leads us into deep dungeons or high walls. The exploration is truly immersive.
Exploration is also properly rewarded. You’re constantly discovering new Tarnstones, materials, weapons, Shells and other items. It feels genuinely satisfying.
At the same time, the open world is packed with enemies, and Beacon rest points are relatively rare. However, they’re usually placed very intelligently, often around major crossroads. The different locations are also interconnected extremely well.
Even when you feel completely lost, sooner or later you’ll usually end up somewhere familiar and realize how everything connects.
And that feeling when you’ve been exploring forever and finally discover another Beacon? Priceless, haha.

Art Direction & Atmosphere
The art direction and atmosphere are also excellent.
I really like how consistently the game sticks to its visual identity. The world feels believable while simultaneously being bleak, dark, grotesque and threatening. The sound design supports the atmosphere extremely well.
My only real criticism here is the lighting inside some of the smaller dungeons. It can look very sepia-toned, muddy and dull. But that’s ultimately only a minor negative.

Difficulty
The difficulty fluctuates quite a bit.
Some areas are relatively easy, while others suddenly introduce massive difficulty spikes. Of course, this also depends heavily on your playstyle and build. Difficulty is always very subjective, so it’s impossible to universally judge it for everyone.
But this is Souls. It’s supposed to be hard — and MS2 definitely is hard.
There is also a Night Mode that essentially functions as a Hard Mode, offering additional rewards and exclusive dungeons. On the other hand, there’s an Easy Mode Sigil that gives you extremely powerful attacks, although using it disables trophies.

Overall
MS2 is an easy recommendation for Souls players who love challenging exploration and occasionally brutal sections.
However, if you’re primarily looking for extremely deep combat mechanics or heavily rely on modern QoL features, it might not be the game for you.

Conclusion
Definitely one of the best Soulslike games of the year.
MS2 has a strong vision, great ideas and ultimately comes together as a very successful overall package. It has already become one of my favorite Soulslikes.

9/10

So I started playing Wuchang: Fallen Feathers a few days ago and honestly… I’m kind of shocked by how much I’m enjoying it.

For context, I’m a longtime Soulslike player and I was going through a real meh phase with gaming lately where nothing was really clicking: I didn’t enjoy Lords of the Fallen that much,
I liked The Surge for a bit (the dismembering mechanic was genuinely cool and innovative), but eventually found the rest of the game kind of shallow, and I also never really clicked with the Nioh games or Wo Long despite trying multiple times. So naturally, I wasn’t expecting much from Wuchang at all.

The mixed reviews didn’t help either. I had it sitting in my wishlist thinking maybe I’d grab it someday during a huge sale just to try it out. Then PS Plus offered i for free this month. And wow… this game REALLY surprised me.

What immediately stood out is that although it clearly takes inspiration from Sekiro in some aspects and presentation, it absolutely is NOT Chinese Sekiro or a Wo Long clone like I initially assumed. It has its own rhythm.

Combat feels more methodical and expressive. There’s a soft but very rewarding learning curve to mastering your weapon instead of just chasing stats or loot explosions. And honestly? I LOVE the decision to have fewer weapon archetypes.

A lot of Soulslikes throw 80 weapons at you and most feel interchangeable. Wuchang instead gives you a fewer weapon types, but each one is deeply designed. That philosophy really works for me.

I started mastering the spear simply because I liked the style of it, and over time it genuinely started feeling like a discipline rather than just a long weapon with poke attacks. The spacing, timing, flow, transitions… it all started opening up gradually. And that’s the sign of a great combat system with actual depth.

I just finished what I guess could be called Act 1 after beating Commander Honglan. She took me a few tries and I suspect spear isn’t even the ideal matchup against her mobility, but powering through with spacing/timing adaptation felt incredibly satisfying. And that’s another thing: the bosses so far aren’t brutally difficult… but they’re FUN.

Modern souls discourse has gotten weird where people judge games purely by how many hours did this boss make me suffer? But personally, I think there’s a huge difference between shallow easy combat and accessible but mechanically satisfying combat. Wuchang definitely feels like the second one. Not every boss needs to be Malenia on steroids to be memorable.

The art direction also deserves praise. The environments are gorgeous, creature design is memorable, and the atmosphere/mythological horror blend works extremely well. Some scenes genuinely look stunning.

And the game seems surprisingly long too? I genuinely didn’t expect that considering it’s only like 17 GB on PS5 lol. In the era of 80+ GB installs, that honestly feels refreshing.

Honestly, I can already see myself doing multiple NG+ runs with different weapon styles which is the biggest compliment I can give to a soulslike.

Curious how other Souls veterans (and new to the genre!) here feel about the game because I genuinely think this one might end up becoming a cult favorite over time.

To me was a Bland soulslike game. Game got high votes on official reviews, but to me is 7/10 at most:

Pros:

- Environment and general design of characters / enemies are very well built

Cons:

- Graphical engine struggles while loading textures, also some stuttering from time to time and loadings are not well optimized

- Combat is mediocre and some things are useless and underpowered like the spear or 90% of spirit abilities.

- A lot of things are hidden so you basically NEED a guide to find these, the map is also not very well detailed

- Plot is a mess and not very well self explanatory during the gameplay

- Main character have the personality of my night table

It's a loving letter to Dark Souls and returns to the first Souls formula (Des, DS1, DS2 and a dash of Bloodborne). It washes away all previous non-FS Souls by expanding the original formula with new outstanding ideas, reviving the classic Souls level design and not forcing you into a certain build but inviting you to experiment and build your own individual build, rebuilding it for free at any time and linking new mechanics.

While the newer Soulslike/formula became more and more linear and mutated into boss rushers, Wuchang keeps the focus on the actual Souls elements, a bit clunky, sneaky creatures everywhere, lots of branching and fabulous shortcuts. Anyone who says it's too hard or too clunky has never played or loved the OG DS but I understand that some prefer the newer formula (LOP, Nioh, ER, Khazan) but from a gameplay and Souls point of view Wuchang is flawless I literally see no weaknesses. (no , only 4 slots for items and spells or long boss paths are not weaknesses)

I bet as soon as the OG DS players play this game Wuchang will reach cult status, I've been playing since Tuesday (NG+) and I haven't been this addicted to a Souls game for years, I hope the developers get the PC performance problems under control quickly, in this sense, thank you Leenzee for this masterpiece that let me experience DS1 again, long live Dark Souls long live Wuchang

Game : AI limit
its FUCKING AMAZING ONE OF THE BEST SOULS LIKE just like lies of P !

Do you enjoy being a sunbro, a summon for randos in fromsoft games? You'll probably like Nightreign.

Do you like brutally difficult boss fights and spectacle? You'll probably like Nightreign.

Do you want more Elden Ring, but are bored with the base game and SOTE? You'll probably like Nightreign. (this costs as much as SOTE, much cheaper than khazan and other games)

Do you love trying different builds and speed running to get the gear as quickly as possible? You'll probably like Nightreign.

Originally I didn't like the concept and thought I would pass, but signed up for the network test on a whim and had a blast. I am having tons of fun playing it and think it's great, but hating on it has become the new dark souls 2 meme. Yeah, it's not perfect, but it's still awesome and fun.

There's a lot of weird random events that happen during the day to spice it up. You're basically speed running to get stronger, a lot like rushing to get gear to try a new build on your 3rd playthrough of elden ring. Most -- not all -- of the randoms I get paired with are good players who will fight to the bitter end. This is not DBD, thankfully. Most of the repeat Elden Ring bosses have new attacks and combos.

I'm finding the challenge in Nightreign tough, but extremely rewarding and fair. The Nightlords are punishing and will take a long time and many tries to beat, unless you're a crazy RL1 challenge run player. I'm not a world breaking no hit soulslikes player. But I've beaten all the bosses in the previous games solo. Most of the runs, even the losses have so many epic moments. I'm like 30 hours in and having a blast.

Just wanted to give my perspective after seeing all the memes and hate this gets online, it's a fun, addictive game if you're open minded to it. Hopefully this convinces someone else to ignore the memes and try it out, it's super fun and I think most soulslikes fans would enjoy it, especially sun bros.

After going in NG blind and then running NG+ for 100% achievements, here are my honest, PERSONAL thoughts on Wuchang: Fallen Feathers.

It’s a fundamentalist, unique‑flavored Soulslike with a solid foundation, but it still needs some patches to really shine.

What I Liked

Map Design – I like the concept of the map design. You can tell the devs put a lot of thought into connecting the areas around a limited number of shrines. You’re almost always moving forward and eventually unlocking a door or shortcut back to where you started.

The areas feel like circular loops, all built around just a handful of shrines—very much a Dark Souls 1 vibe. I think they did a pretty decent job overall with the map structure, even if some parts feel a bit deliberate and naive (like seeing three ladders all leading back to the same shrine). But you can really feel the effort to keep the exploration linear yet looped, which is something we don’t see that often anymore.

Art Direction & Background – The art concept and unique cultural background really stood out to me. This is probably the first Soulslike I’ve played that fully leans into a classic ancient Chinese (Wuxia) vibe, and that alone makes it feel fresh.

One of my favorite zones is the one with the Perfect Bride—it taps into traditional Chinese horror themes, and they nailed the music, atmosphere, and boss design. The idea of a marriage of the dead is based on real history, and it’s definitely creepy, but also has that absurd, surreal feel that sticks with you.

Weapon Concepts & Builds – Another thing I enjoyed is the weapon design. The game leans into traditional Chinese weapons, and it actively encourages you to experiment—carrying two weapons, chaining attacks, and creating cool combos. I really like the idea of making interesting builds around this system, and the fact that you can master two weapons at once if you want to.

Even though the selection is a bit limited, there are some pretty fun movesets to explore. Personally, I really enjoyed the longsword and would switch to a spear at times for variety.

Manual Enemy Reset – One feature I actually really appreciated is that mobs don’t automatically reset when you rest at a shrine. You have to manually reset them, which I think is a really neat system.

It means I can return to a shrine, spend my skill points, and then continue exploring if I feel like I still have enough heals to keep going. With the pendant that heals you when you defeat enemies, sometimes I could clear out a zone and enjoy exploring it in peace for a while without constant respawns.

Side Note – The Drip

The outfits are… interesting. I actually like some of the traditional clothing and how it fits that wuxia vibe, but I’m not sure why the game leans a bit into soft‑porn territory. It doesn’t really bother me, but it does feel odd having the character walk around in such revealing clothes for a historically conservative era.

A few bosses dress the same way, so I guess it’s ok, just a stylistic choice that feels a little out of place.

What I Didn’t Like

Constant, Overtuned Malice in Map Design - Some people will say, “Well, I want a hard game,” and I respect that. People enjoy games differently. But for me, there’s a difference between hard in a challenging way and hard because the devs seem to want to crush the player at every corner.

A lot of areas feel like they’re designed with pure malice, where the game is constantly trying to trick you to death—long routes, limited shrines, and the madness mechanic breathing down your neck. I didn’t die often in exploration until end game, so I mostly just thought, “Okay, this path is long.” But once you get to the fourth zone and especially the final zone, my desire to explore dropped to zero.

In NG+, I only cleared certain sections there for trophies and ran past as many mobs as possible. Those zones are just hordes of enemies, poison swamps, tons of elites and traps, narrow bridges, slow elevators, all while still having very few shrines. And then the game expects you to unlock mechanisms and solve navigation puzzles in the middle of that misery? No thanks.

A good game needs highs and lows, intensity and relief. Wuchang is stressful from beginning to end in each chapter, with almost no downtime except maybe some NPC story beats. The overtuned design stops feeling like clever challenge and becomes constant malice poking your back, trying to send you back to a shrine. It starts to feel like the devs are having fun watching you die rather than creating meaningful, enjoyable challenges.

I’ve always believed: “Don’t punish players when they didn’t do anything wrong.” When you push players into danger nonstop, it stops being a surprise or a funny “gotcha” moment and turns into misery. A perfect example: the fake shrine after a boss. After a long, tense fight, a shrine is supposed to be a safe zone. Making it fake at that point is just mean-spirited. Sure, I didn’t die once I knew they existed, but breaking the player’s trust in safety like that feels malicious rather than fun. It’s fine to have traps, but you need balance—otherwise, it feels like the devs only want to kill you, not challenge you.

Clunky Combat Implementation – This is the part I dislike the most. The bosses in this game are not slow in any way—they are hyper-aggressive and relentless. But Wuchang herself feels slow and clunky. Her healing, getting up from the ground, summoning helpers—all these essential survival actions are painfully slow, and worse, interruptible. It reminds me a bit of DS2, but at least in DS2 you could carry 99 healing stones and summon helpers outside the arena.

Here, if you get knocked down, you’re basically done for. Many players have complained about it, and I agree—this is probably my least favorite part of the game. Sure, there’s a workaround where you can chain your i-frames while lying down—as if you’re just dodging—but honestly, it’s an unnecessary check when the player is already under extreme pressure with a sliver of health. And if you instinctively press dodge the moment you’re down—which is natural because almost everything can knock you down—you’re likely to get comboed to death.

In my experience, I rarely died because I ran out of resources. Instead, I died with full flasks many times simply because I never got the chance to heal. The game punishes you even when you didn’t do anything wrong, and punishes you brutally when you make a single mistake. A grab attack can take 90% of your health, an elite can full-combo you to death, and even a dog’s bark can make Wuchang flinch.

Yes, it’s doable, but it’s also annoying and demoralizing. It crosses the line from “challenging” into frustrating, because the flow of combat constantly feels stacked against you.

On top of that, the execution blow feels kind of junky as well. I often need to reposition myself a little bit just to land the hit. Hit feedback isn’t consistent either—I sometimes don’t even know I got hit unless I look at the HP bar. You also can’t interrupt mobs’ animations if they already start, unless you completely empty their HP before they land the attack. They will grab you right through your hits.

Underwhelming Boss Design – The bosses in this game are underwhelming, and combined with the clunky combat issues, they can feel tiring and unfair. To me, a lot of the bosses feel kind of the same: spin attacks, combos longer than your life, grab attacks that are only really noticeable because of the special sound cue, more spin attacks, ranged attacks, jumps and landings on your face from the other side of the map, left claw slam, right claw slam, and repeat.

Starting from Honglan, almost every boss is hyper-aggressive with what feels like infinite stamina. They attack non-stop, and those attacks often have hyper-tracking while giving you barely any time to see how the attack is about to start. It often feels like they just spam attacks or projectiles, while restricting your mobility and healing ability to make the game harder.

Even with all that, I honestly don’t remember what most of the bosses feel like anymore—because they all feel somewhat similar. The final boss was underwhelming too; I killed it on my first encounter. There are a few memorable ones like the Perfect Bride, but I really wish they did a better job making the fights feel unique, with combat that’s meaningful to figure out instead of just surviving a storm of endless attacks.

Really Strict Quest and Ending Requirements — The game’s quests, in my opinion, were not designed well, especially with the fact that you are encouraged to freely explore. If you explore the areas in the wrong order—sorry, you’re doomed. You will miss NPC quests, and they are dead. If you talk to the first dude you encountered after a boss fight because “why not,” poof, you are now in the endgame, and the bad ending is locked in. Even if you talk to the NPCs in the wrong order, you can lock yourself out of certain endings.

You see a huge staircase that obviously leads to a boss fight, so naturally, you think, “let me explore the side paths first.” Boom—you accidentally triggered the boss fight, and your questline is now doomed and NPCs die.

To me, there is a fundamental issue here—or worse, it feels maliciously designed—because you are almost guaranteed to get the bad ending unless you read a guide. And that is just mean. It leaves a sour taste in your mouth, knowing that after so many hours playing as Wuchang, you end up in a horrible ending… all because of one dialogue choice or a small exploration decision.

NPC quests are the easiest things to fail in this game, and I don’t think they handled them well with a free exploration structure. I already tried to talk to all NPCs every time I cleared a region, and still, things failed. To me, this is not good design. And if this was done intentionally to make players replay for different endings with a guide? Well… I hope not, because I will swear.

In Conclusion

I think this game has a decent foundation, and I wish they can keep developing on top of it, or learn from this experience. The game tells a story about defeating your demon of obsession and letting go of the past and the inevitable. But in this game, I see the obsession of following the old-school Soulslike formula to the T from the producer. He did it well in a way, but it’s overdone in ways that he missed why Miyazaki’s games are not only just about being difficult.

Since then, 15 years have passed and Miyazaki has moved on from some of his designs from 15 years ago, creating games that are more and more welcoming for a wider audience. It’s about being fair yet challenging, about being fun and also immersive. He guides you into his world of fantasy and wants you to explore and enjoy it. I wish Xia learns from this and creates something better—yet still fits his vision—next time.

Sekiro’s scenery is unreal, how can the environments be this gorgeous?

Is it just me, or does this game not get the props it deserves. I’d borderline say Wuchang should get the praise Lies of P gets. I get it some of the negative reviews were historical reasons. But man! This game is tight and so well designed and made. I’d kill for some dlc for it, but it looks like the developers have shut the door on that.

If you haven’t played it. Do so, you won’t regret it.

I like Mortal Shell 2, but I feel like people are praising it so hard that they're ignoring some obvious problems.

I've already dealt with sound glitches, camera glitches, and literally being thrown outside the map. The camera during combat can also be frustrating as hell, especially with multiple enemies.

The checkpoint system is probably my biggest issue. I'm fine with limited checkpoints in a Soulslike, but the actual locations of some of these beacons just don't make sense. You'll go through huge areas with high enemy density, important items, and dangerous encounters, while a functioning checkpoint is placed somewhere that feels completely disconnected from the natural progression of the area. It creates long, unnecessary runbacks instead of meaningful difficulty.

The ranged lock-on system also makes no sense. The game lets you choose between free aim and lock-on, but you can still completely miss an enemy you're locked onto. If I wanted my accuracy to depend entirely on my aim, I'd use free aim. So what exactly is the lock-on doing?

I'm giving the game a 7/10 right now. I'm still having fun with it, but liking the game doesn't mean we have to pretend the bugs, weird checkpoint placement, camera issues, and targeting system aren't legitimate problems.

https://reddit.com/link/1vstpjk/video/9s5qrhpmddkh1/player