What you need to know
- Wuchang: Fallen Feathers is a new Chinese Soulslike from developer Leenzee and publisher 505 Games that's coming to Xbox Series X|S, Windows PC, and PlayStation 5.
- First announced earlier this year during the Xbox Games Showcase 2024 with a short teaser, Wuchang made a second appearance during Microsoft's October Xbox Partner Preview event.
- Specifically, a gameplay trailer that featured boss fights and plenty of action-packed combat was shown.
- Wuchang: Fallen Feathers is scheduled to launch in 2025, though we don't have a more specific release date right now. Notably, it will be available through Xbox Game Pass on day one, giving Xbox and PC players the option to play it through the subscription service.
Microsoft's Xbox Partner Preview event has given fans a closer look at several of the most exciting new games coming to its consoles and Xbox Game Pass, and one that's particularly noteworthy is Wuchang: Fallen Feathers. First announced earlier this year at the Xbox Games Showcase by developer Leenzee and publisher 505 Games, the title made a second appearance during Microsoft's October presentation.
While the Chinese action RPG's debut was a short cinematic teaser with minimal combat, this latest showing is a longer gameplay trailer that displays its flashy battle mechanics in significantly more detail and reaffirms its 2025 release window. Specifically, it features intense fights with various enemies and what I presume to be some of the game's earlier bosses, complete with tons of stylish melee combat. You can watch it with this link, or by viewing the embedded video below.
Wuchang: Fallen Feathers is a Soulslike set in the Chinese land of Shu during the chaos of the late Ming Dynasty, and puts you in the shoes of Wuchang — a fearsome pirate warrior afflicted with amnesia as well as a mysterious disease called Feathering. Feathering (also referred to as Ornithropy) grants Wuchang strange and unique powers, giving her an edge over many of the combatants she faces.
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Few specifics of the game's story are known, but its Steam page notes that it will explore Wuchang's forgotten past and the origins of Feathering amidst the battles between Shu's warring factions and the monsters spawned throughout the land by the illness. During the adventure, players will make use of Wuchang's masterful swordsmanship, skills learned from defeated adversaries, elemental magic, and special enchantment-based weapon augmentations to overcome their opponents. It's also been confirmed that there will be multiple endings, with the one you get determined by certain choices you make as the story unfolds.
The gameplay shown in the new trailer looks both incredibly fluid and fairly challenging, with stylish and clean animation work that matches the excellence of something like FromSoftware's Game of the Year-winning Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice. In many ways, Wuchang's combat, art direction, and Game Pass availability all make it seem like something of an answer to Black Myth: Wukong for Microsoft — officially, it hasn't come to Xbox yet for optimization reasons, though reports indicate there may actually be a PlayStation exclusivity deal in place — though it's clear from the footage that it draws inspiration from other Soulslike-style games like Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty.
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All in all, everything we've seen of Wuchang: Fallen Feathers looks fantastic so far, and it might just end up being one of 2025's best Xbox games and best PC games. I was hoping we'd get more of a concrete and specific release date since we already knew it was coming out at some point next year, but I'll happily take all the cool new gameplay and wait patiently.
In general, it's been a good few years for Soulslike fans on Xbox and Xbox Game Pass. From highly polished big-name titles like Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty, Lies of P, and Lords of the Fallen to creative indies like Another Crab's Treasure, there's no shortage of things to play if you're craving that classic Souls-style gameplay design FromSoftware pioneered many years ago.
