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As developer Leenzee has worked to unclip Wuchang Fallen Feathers‘ wings in the performance department, it’s managed to get itself wrapped up in controversy over alleged censorship. After pushing a patch that made certain bosses based on historical figures unkillable, ostensibly due to complaints of cultural impropriety in China, players quickly took to the internet to voice their discontent. Now, a mod has appeared that will return your copy of Wuchang to its original form, though there’s a small price to pay.
It’s been a weird few weeks for Wuchang Fallen Feathers. The fledgling soulslike nailed it for the most part. Its gorgeous semi-open world, drenched in Chinese history, is a wonder to explore. Its combat, steered away from the conventions set by the FromSoftware, provides a tonic for the ills prevalent within the genre. It was a shoe-in for a spot on our best soulslike games list; Nat’s 8/10 Wuchang Fallen Feathers review can attest. However, horrific performance issues rendered it almost unplayable for many, myself included, undoing much of developer Leenzee’s hard work despite attempts to remedy them.
Last week, Leenzee pushed Wuchang Patch 1.5, which was innocuous enough at surface level. The patch notes include various bug and crash fixes, alongside optimizations in preparation for future content. Shortly after the patch went live, players began to report that certain enemies and Wuchang bosses were no longer dying. Rather, they would simply get exhausted, drop a line of dialog, then vamoose into the ether. This, purportedly, was clumsily implemented, disrupting the narrative flow to the extent that parts of the game’s story are now completely nonsensical.
Over on Steam, reviewers are lambasting the change. “[The] new patch added censorship to the game, and I didn’t pay money for a developer to retroactively censor my games,” writes one player.
“[Leenzee] single-handed butchered the whole theme of the story by changing plotlines and catering to the idiotic nationalist,” writes another.
The good news, if you’re bothered by this change, is that there’s a new addition to the best Wuchang Fallen Feathers mods, ‘Rollback censorship patch.’ This will downgrade your version of Wuchang back to the previous one, 1.4, though the kicker is that you’ll lose all of the lovely quality-of-life improvements 1.5 brought with it. Saying that, it probably won’t take long for another mod to come along and remedy that…
If you’ve been enjoying your time with Wuchang so far, check out the best Wuchang Fallen Feathers builds to assist you on your journey. You’ll also need to get to grips with how madness works in Wuchang; let us help you with that, too.
If you’ve tried Wuchang and have some thoughts on its recent update, we’d love to hear your take over in our community Discord server.
