TVTropes Now available in the app store!
Open

Follow TV Tropes

Wuchang: Fallen Feathers

Go To

  • Aluminium Christmas Trees: Honglan's role as a female senior commander in the Ming army might strike players as a simple case of Artistic License – History. The historical Southern Ming remnant state, however, did count a noblewoman named Qin Liangyu as one of its top military leaders, one personally decorated by the Chongzhen Emperor for her work in putting down rebels in the region.note 
  • Anti-Climax Boss: The Final Boss has been noted to be significantly easier than the previous two chapter bosses before it, having all of one health bar and highly telegraphed physical attacks. While its spells are dangerous, they are used infrequently.
  • Audience-Alienating Ending: The default ending that happens if the player did not qualify for any of the other endings (usually by missing steps in important sidequests that break them) is the "Jar of Medicine" ending that sees Wuchang betrayed by Xuanyangzi at the very end. While it establishes Wuchang's cycle of reincarnation and the New Game Plus mechanic, some feel that this is negates all the accomplishments during the journey, sours the satisfaction of completing a blind run, and compels them to follow a guide for a better outcome, discouraging them from doing a New Game Plus run.
  • Awesome Art: One of the universally praised parts of this game is its amazing environmental design.
  • Breather Boss:
    • The Soulwood is the easiest boss in the game by a very wide margin. It's a Stationary Boss with highly telegraphed attacks, most of which don't track you and can therefore be easily avoided by standing out of the way before moving in to exploit its generous punish windows. While it does summon minions, they're weak, slow, and not Friendly Fireproof, meaning that you can either quickly eliminate them or outright ignore them, and while the pool surrounding its base does cause buildup of the deadly Despair status effect, it's slow enough that you don't really have to worry too much about it if you get dragged in by its vacuum attack or choose to go in for a hit between vulnerability phases. To add insult to injury, there are Skyborn Might-generating plants around the boss arena that let you throw a lot more spells at the poor thing than you might otherwise, and despite using flame attacks, it's very weak to fire.
    • While Liu Wenxiu is actually a proper boss unlike the joke that is the Soulwood, he's definitely a step down in difficulty from the fearsome adversaries surrounding him (Fang Ling, the Bo Sorcerer, and Zhang Xianzhong). His health-pool and status resistances aren't much to write home about, and both parries and backstabs are relatively easy and effective against him. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the Red Mercury rewards for beating him are a bit lower than average as well.
  • Broken Base: Update 1.5 also spawned a rift between players over the improved healing and recovery animations. One camp praises the changes as Wuchang will be able to keep pace with faster and more aggressive bosses. The other camp derides the former as "casuals" who couldn't adjust to the game's pace and ridicules the devs for catering to them.
  • Complacent Gaming Syndrome:
    • Most guides available online encourage new players to rush for Bone Needle — Leech as soon as possible. The needle grants you a burst of Life Steal for every hit you land on an enemy as long as it's active, with further options to increase the number of charges (up to 3 per spawn) and the active duration. In a game where healing is limited and slow, the needle offers a big boost to your survivability and relieves you from having to constantly look out for safe openings between the bosses' fast, hard-hitting assaults.
    • Ask a player which of the longswords they use and most will reply with the Lashing Whip, largely due to its extended reach by virtue of being a Whip Sword.
    • A very popular Benediction loadout is the Mastery set, granting a passive damage bonus should the player know twelve Discipline skills. Each of its components also grants a 15% damage bonus for knowing three, six, and nine Discipline skills respectively. You already begin the game with five (one for each weapon class) so Tri-Disciplinary Force is always active, Six-Disciplinary Force just needs one additional skill to enable, and by the time you've assembled the full set you should have enough Red Mercury Essence to meet all its requirements. All of this combines into a pretty big damage boost (total of 55%) with no downsides that can see players through to the end of the game and even across one or two New Game Plus cycles.
    • High madness is advertised as increasing damage received and inflicted each, but in practice Wuchang takes a manageable amount of extra damage if she does get hit, but hits much harder in turn. Having higher madness is also necessary for a number of perks to be active, including perks that reduce Wuchang's Might cost of boss spells, speed up her Tempering, let her Discipline skills inflict ailment buildup, or let her Swift Draw skills heal her. It's not uncommon to see players deliberately push up Wuchang's Madness before engaging a boss fight.
  • Demonic Spiders:
    • Senior Palace Maids in Cloudspire City and Snowfall Palace are Elite Mooks that are nimble enough to dodge your attacks and can strike back with a relentless mixture of blades, punches and kicks to bypass Clashes and Deflects. They're rarely alone, too, and focusing your attention on them leaves their companion free to take potshots at you.
    • One variant of the Lotus Sorcerer enemy (distinguished by their pink glow) emits an aura that builds up your Despair status, causing Wuchang to instantly die once the meter is filled. Closing in with them all but requires you to put on armour pieces with high Despair resistance and stock up on Mind Lotus Seeds to counteract the buildup.
    • Of all the Bo enemies introduced in the late game, the Avian Hunter is the most dangerous, bordering on Boss in Mook Clothing. They're dangerous enough with their glaive in melee, but what makes them truly lethal is the hard-hitting Automatic Crossbow they can pull out the moment you try to gain some distance on them. To make matters worse, they're often encountered in tight corridors, or in groups with other powerful enemies.
  • It's Easy, So It Sucks!: In addition to speeding up Wuchang's recovery and healing animations, v1.5 also reduces the number and strength of traps (particularly the mines in the Cloudspire rebel camp) and lowered enemy hit-stun resistance, allowing a player to stun-lock even large enemies with lighter weapons. The Ming soldiers in chapter 4 no longer being able to harm Wuchang (and vice-versa) effectively removed half the threats she fights through in the region. While the faster animations were appreciated (by most), the rest of these gameplay changes were not as warmly received, as they detracted from the overall challenge of the game.
  • Scrappy Mechanic:
    • There has been displeasure from players regarding the slowness of Wuchang's healing and recovery animations. The healing animation is often witnessed to be longer than the pauses between most aggressive bosses' attack patterns, leading to Wuchang taking damage that negates what she recovered or interrupts the healing process entirely. Wuchang taking a long time to get back on her feet means that getting knocked down is a death sentence as she'll get back up just in time to take a lethal hit. The animations have since been sped up as of the v1.5 patch.
    • The ease at which sidequests break just by traveling too far or doing things out of order turns players off from doing a repeat run. Going through the game blind, even with the quick travel menu pointing out who's available, often ends in broken sidequests unless the player is diligent in combing the area for important items. Even talking to a pair of NPCs in the wrong order can break a sidequest that's crucial to the ending you get, which was a bug addressed in the v1.5 update.
  • That One Boss:
    • Commander Honglan is a fairly steep Difficulty Spike and an infamous Wake-Up Call Boss. Fought at the end of chapter 1, she is more elusive and aggressive than other bosses before her, as she can evade your attacks if attacked while idle and has attacks that clear a lot of ground to catch you if you try to get some breathing room to heal. While the game offers a handy tip before fighting her to consider Clash and Deflect abilities, things become a lot more hectic when Honglan Turns Red and throws out projectiles that bypass them. Overcoming Commander Honglan is a rite of passage for most players as they are expected to master dodge timings, position for backstabs, and pay attention to their skill tree and abilities, which will serve them extremely well for the rest of the game.
    • The Bo Sorcerer is one of the meanest midgame bosses, mainly because she's much sturdier than you'd expect a delicately beautiful Lady of Black Magic to be. Despite being a medium-sized humanoid boss (with the typical speed and aggression of her type), she's got the stagger resistance of a large boss, making parries and heavy attacks much less useful than they usually are, plus a solid health-pool and impressive status resistances. The best way to deal with her is with backstabs, but she's agile and relentless enough that landing those can be a challenge, especially with slower weapons if you've chosen to build around those. You can summon the White-Robed Elder against her if you've kept up with his sidequest, but the summoning whistle animation is slow enough that it can be hard to find an opening, and her damage output is high enough (especially during her half-health phase transition) that it can be difficult to keep him alive long enough for him to be truly useful.
    • Vermilion Feathers Honglan is another major stumbling block found in an optional path in chapter 4. Take Honglan's aggression, add more projectiles, a Counter-Attack, and big sweeping moves that reach a little further than they seem, and you get this boss.
  • That One Level:
    • The Cloudspire Rebel camp is complex and mazelike, and as you're traversing it you get bombarded by archers from sniping towers, cannons from afar, or by mines that can catch you unawares. This can be very draining on your sparse healing resources for an early level.
    • Zhenwu Temple is a Marathon Level where its route involves long winding paths up and down through the temple buildings while fighting enemies in tight spaces or near deadly drops that are less conducive to the game's dodge-focused combat style, and it can feel like a long time before you get to open the next Door to Before.

Top