Chinese action-RPG Wuchang: Fallen Feathers is out in a week, and it’s high time we heard about the system requirements, which don’t seem that high for a game in which you can lob lightning at supersized peacocks and leave a delicate furrow through new-fallen snow.
An Intel Core i5-8400, an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060, 16GB of RAM and 60GB’s worth of SSD are all they’re asking for the chance to become an amnesiac pirate swordswoman during the age of the Ming dynasty, tasked with murdering a whole lot of bird people before she becomes a bird person herself.
We have not covered Wuchang since 2021, when Alice0 (RPS in peace) pronounced it a Chinese Bloodborne, with the requisite lamentation that Bloodborne still isn’t on PC. Little birds tell me that developers Leenzee have tweaked the visuals since then to make the game’s setting, Shu, less redolent of Yharnam. Still, parallels abound. As in From Software’s game, Shu is subject to a monstrous plague: in this case, it gives everybody feathers. The result is not a realm of jovial bluetit shopkeepers plus the occasional sobbing mutant Natalie Portman, but a place of bossfights and upgrades. Here’s a trailer to catch you up.
Playing as Wuchang, the titular pirate lady, you must rediscover your own past while trying to stave off the Feathering disease. You can use “Red Mercury” to unlock new techniques – guessing it comes from bodies, not pharmacies – and enchant a variety of weapons to inflict escalating grades of buttkick. “As you piece together Wuchang’s lost memories, your choices will lead you to one of several endings – each determined by the choices made, secrets unearthed and the allies you choose to trust,” the Steam page comments.
Now, those system requirements. Open wide:
Minimum
– Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
– OS: Windows 10 64-bit
– Processor: Intel Core i5-8400/AMD Ryzen 5 1600
– Memory: 16GB RAM (dual channel recommended)
– Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 6GB/AMD Radeon RX 580 8GB
– DirectX: Version 12
– Storage: 60 GB available space
– Additional Notes: HDD Supported, SSD Recommended.
Recommended
– Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
– OS: Windows 10/11 64-bit
– Processor: Intel Core i7-9700/AMD Ryzen 5 5500
– Memory: 16GB RAM (dual channel recommended)
– Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070/AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT/Intel Arc A750
– DirectX: Version 12
– Storage: 60 GB available space
– Additional Notes: SSD Required.
Chaser: the Nvidia hardware above makes use of DLSS 4. If you’re not hip to such jargon, don’t panic, because I know somebody who is. Here’s our hardware editor James Archer’s Nvidia DLSS 4 explainer.
Chaser 2: If you had to turn into a bird monster, what kind would you prefer? I used to have a thing for albatrosses, with their ginormous wings. They can stay aloft for weeks, allegedly, sleeping in mid-air. No idea whether they’re good at parrying, but they should have decent reach.
Also, while we’re talking boids, what’s the best collective noun for a group of soulslikes? A host? A covert? A murder? OK, I’ll shut up now. Wuchang launches on 24th July.
