Wuchang: Fallen Feather is the latest title in what seems to be a strong gaming surge from China, and is looking to follow in the highly successful Black Myth: Wukong, even referencing the game as a major inspiration. The good news: the initial Steam numbers are very promising! The bad news: the player reviews aren’t great.
On SteamDB, which tracks all sorts of Steam data, Wuchang: Fallen Feathers has managed an impressive peak concurrent player count of 131,518 players, making it one of the most successful launches for a non-FromSoftware soulslike to date.
Now, admittedly that’s quite a bit less than Black Myth: Wukong’s 2.4 million Steam players, but Black Myth was also one of those complete unique cases where everything came together, including a hungry Chinese market which propelled its sales into the stratosphere. And then into space. And then into some other planet’s stratosphere. And then through the planet, too.
Point is, Wuchang: Fallen Feather is doing exceptionally well on Steam, especially since this is the developer’s first published game. We also need to keep in mind that the game is available on PlayStation, Game Pass, and Xbox, so its sales and players numbers are likely vastly higher.
However, despite the huge success on Steam, those very same players aren’t too happy. Based on over 8,000 user reviews (and just under 20,000 in total), Fallen Feathers currently holds a “Mostly Negative” status. The problem? Performance. While plenty of people are enjoying the gameplay, the setting, the story and just about everything else, many of them are struggling to get the game running well. Of those negative reviews, a great number are pinning the blame on Unreal Engine 5.
It’s not like it’s even a demanding game as the system requirements are fairly middling. Even people with overpowered systems are reporting issues with framerates, resulting in the game being unplayable.
Developer Leenzee has issued a statement on Steam addressing the problem and promising patches: “We are confident in the game’s performance within our recommended spec but we’re working on optimization. We are looking to issue a patch as soon as we can.”
Thankfully most games that launch with performance issues do usually see them resolved in the first few weeks, or at least improved. Of course, that doesn’t mean much for the excited fans who paid full-price to play, only to find out it runs like a drunk dude on a treadmill.