The launch of Wuchang: Fallen Feathers has been a bit of a strange one, at least when it comes to the PC version. The Soulslike game from developer Leenzee has seen a fairly positive critical reception, and the numbers certainly bear that out.
Wuchang is a hit on Steam, so long as you ignore player reviews.
Wuchang: Fallen Feathers peaked at 114,132 concurrent players (via SteamDB) when it launched around eight hours away. This is an incredibly healthy first batch, especially for a new IP from an unknown studio.
While it’s always possible that numbers will grow over the weekend, in this case at least, this may be hard to do. That’s because the game currently has an Overwhelmingly Negative user rating on Steam.
Only 19% of the game’s over 5,100 reviews are positive, which is why it has that rating. That split of popularity vs sentiment is typically reserved for live service and online games, who, because they attract a lot of players at launch, tend to have server woes that sometimes last for days.
It is unusual to see such a dichotomy in a single-player player action RPG. As you might’ve already guessed, though, it all has to do with the game’s performance on PC.
When Wuchang’s PC requirements were published just a couple of days prior to the game’s launch, eagle-eyed players noticed that both sets rely on DLSS/FSR upscaling, which is typically an indication that the game requires said tech to achieve acceptable performance.
Now that the game’s been released, early adopters have sadly had those worries confirmed, as the game does start with upscaling tech enabled by default. Disabling upscaling, even on top-of-the-line hardware, is clearly not a good idea.
Many blame Unreal Engine 5, the engine the game runs on, for its performance troubles. Unreal Engine 5 games have earned a reputation of constant stuttering, and massive performance drops, over the course of this console generation, and that’s especially true on PC.
Leenzee has yet to issue any comments on the game’s performance issues, but the studio will likely address them over the coming months, as we’ve seen with many other recent Unreal Engine 5 projects.
If you’re brave enough to jump in now on PC – or you’re simply playing on consoles – our Wuchang: Fallen Feathers guide is an invaluable resource. If you’re not interested in a walkthrough or some general gameplay tips, you might find more specialised pages that explain game mechanics like Feathering, and Madness more your speed.