Where Winds Meet PS5 Review. NetEase is one of the biggest Chinese developers around. Riding on the back of its latest major success with Marvel Rivals, the studio find itself in a strong position where one wonders if it’s simply unable to fail. This brings us to Where Winds Meet, its next published title that brings Wuxia to a massive open-world that has so much content to dive into that it ends up being a shock to the system.
Where Winds Meet PS5 Review
A Surprisingly Strong Story For A Free-To-Play Title
The game’s story takes place during China’s 10th-century Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms era. You’re a young student learning martial arts when you’re attacked, and a precious pendant of yours is stolen. You set off on an adventure to recover this pendant while influencing the world’s various factions and learning all you can about the Wuxia way.
The game’s story is actually pretty solid, but like many games that tend to have many updates in the future, it doesn’t really end, leaving it open to more updates and more locations to explore and discover.
Where Winds Meet’s narrative is presented with some great cutscenes and epic encounters, though some of them are pretty funny as well. One encounter saw me fighting off a giant horse that its master possessed.
The production values here are better than I expected for a free-to-play game. Though it has some technical issues with pop-in and voice lines not playing with any sound, it’s solid work, especially with the various martial arts combat cutscenes, which steal the show.
Too Much Content Available At The Start Can Be Overwhelming
The first thing you should be aware of is the sheer amount of content that’s thrown at you right at the start of the game. There is so much to do and no explanation of how to do most of it. You can start swimming, but how when you don’t have a fishing rod? You can try to heal people, but you don’t have the tools or the knowledge to do it.
You can go and explore the world to your heart’s content, but it’s highly encouraged to at least get through the Prologue and the first game’s chapter before you really go out on your own. These two chapters will at least teach you how to do some of the game’s more important tasks.
As I mentioned, the amount of information that comes at you can be a shock to the system and leave you debilitated on what you should be doing. New menus with new mechanics and new challenges to complete pop up every time I encounter something I haven’t seen before.
It gets so bad that I completely forget how to access some of these menus or what they even mean to track my progress in these various challenges.
Incredible Freedom Of Choice
When things do start to click and make sense, it becomes a blast. You can choose to be almost whatever you want, and the sense of adventure is there. You can stand and watch someone practicing martial arts and learn a new skill or ability. You can become a healer through a mini-game of selecting specific mental prowess and chi in a battle of wits to heal a patient while they drain your stamina and see who comes out on top.
Furthermore, if you become good at something like healing, your reputation improves, and other players can request your help to heal them. The game has a significant injury mechanic that you can’t heal yourself from.
Broken bones, poison, or even foot poisoning must all be healed by a healer, either at a medicinal clinic or by a player who has chosen the Healing path to follow.
Creating Your Own Conversations And Stories
The world is brimming with possibilities, and the world and its citizens act in ways I’ve never really seen in other online games. NPCs can falsely accuse you of a crime, in which you have to either pay a fine or prove your innocence.
You can attack townspeople if you choose, and people around you will gather together to defend their fellow man, gaining on you until the authorities arrive to arrest you. It’s an incredible system that brings the world to life, but it also feels like a hindrance slowing you down in your progression, as you have to deal with issues you could always ignore in other games.
Another incredible aspect is the game’s friendship system. Specific NPCs can be befriended, but instead of pre-scripted lines, the game uses AI for their communication.
You can strike up a conversation with an NPC and have a full-on conversation with them by typing out whatever you want to say. The NPCs will also have questions for you, and you can become friends this way.
Painful Free-To-Play Grinding
Not everyone will be good, though, as you’ll be informed that one of your friends was arrested for theft, for example, and you can visit them in jail, bail them out, or simply laugh at them and tell them what they did was stupid. It’s an impressive feature and a use of AI in a game that I can actually get behind.
The world also has plenty for you to do, from gathering materials to level up your weapons and armor, to simply collecting scrolls or learning new skills and abilities to use.
Unfortunately, this is where the downside of Free-To-Play comes into play. It’s not a problem at first, but as you progress, the materials required to level up your gear or craft new weapons or armor become harder and harder to acquire, and the grinding becomes real. It becomes almost unbearable as you reach the endgame and even worse once you’re there.
Great Combat With Fantastic Animations
Combat is where the game truly shines, with fantastic animations and plenty of variety in the skills you can use. There are five variations of weapons you can use right now: Sword, Spear, Dual Sword, Fan, Umbrella, and a Knife with Rope combination.
Each weapon is unique and plays to a specific playstyle. Spears are mostly for Tank builds, while Swords and Dual Swords are reserved for DPS builds.
Combat is Where Winds Meet bread and butter, and provides the most satisfying combat in this type of game I’ve experienced. What makes it so fun is that it actually doesn’t have many technical issues. It’s fast and fluid throughout, and I never ran into any frame drops or stuttering issues.
Strategy and Timing Are Key To Your Success
Where Winds Meet is very parry-heavy, and if you aren’t the best at parrying, you may have a hard time with the game’s combat. Thankfully, you can turn on an option that slows the combat down and has a parry prompt appear to help you out, but this can only be used when playing the game in Offline mode and playing Solo.
As mentioned, the combat animations look amazing, and the various skills you get to use look great. Furthermore, your actions in battle also have considerable weight behind them, with each strike looking and feeling like it’s having a substantial impact.
The goal in combat is to drain your opponents’ stagger gauge, which you can do with attacks and parrying opponents. Once the enemy is staggered, you can unleash a barrage of attacks and then finish it off with a special attack by pressing the button prompts that appear. Still, you can only parry as long as you have enough endurance, which drains every time you parry an attack.
Lots Of Skills With A Variety Of Uses To Master
As you level up, you’ll unlock talent points that allow you to unlock passive bonuses for your characters, but also more slots for skills and unlocking abilities for your weapons. Abilities are specific to weapons, and skills can be used with any weapon you have equipped. These range from very useful to just practical.
Some of these skills can be used in both combat and exploration. One of these skills allows you to make someone feel differently. You can make them confused, or you can give them courage.
This helps by making them fear something or someone, or by helping them conquer their fear of something. In combat, this same skill is used to take an enemy’s weapon and use it against them. At the same time, another skill uses fireflies to light up the area around you.
You Never Feel Like You’re Getting Stronger
Progression in the game is also hit-or-miss. As you level up, you’ll reach a level cap. To continue to progress, you have to complete a challenge to level up the world. This moves you past your limit and continues to allow you to level up. This, unfortunately, also increases the level of all the enemies in the world as well.
Until you reach the endgame and begin to unlock the most powerful gear, you never really feel like you’re getting any stronger. Enemies you used to defeat with a few strikes can now defeat you in a few strikes.
Upgrading your weapons and armor uses a lot of materials, and halfway through the game, those materials become much harder to find, and the game becomes incredibly grindy. The benefits of leveling up your gear are also minuscule. You also can’t level up anything higher than your character level, making you unable to overpower yourself against some unfairly powerful opponents.
Gorgeous To A Fault
The world of Where Winds Meet is gorgeous as long as you aren’t looking too closely. The vistas and lighting really shine here, and it looks like an actual next-gen achievement. What’s even more impressive is that I never experienced any slowdown or stuttering in the game.
Unfortunately, many of the game’s textures look atrocious when viewed up close. It’s no exaggeration to say that the textures on doors and floor tiles look like they were rendered on the PlayStation 2, and that’s giving it credit. Even some character clothing looks terribly textured and is constantly an eye sore to look at.
The voice work and music are also hit-or-miss. Voiceovers range from excellent, professional-grade to comedically bad in some cases. For the most part, the main cast is excellent, but the cast of NPCs and some side quests sound like anime dubs from the ’70s and ’80s.
Feels Like A Full Package
Where Winds Meet features traditional Chinese music, also known as Guoyue. It actually sounds really good, and there are some really great tracks in the game. On the flip side, if you’re not into it after a few hours, it may not be for you, as it can get repetitive at times due to the small amount of instruments used; as such, a lot of the songs start to sound the same.
Where Winds Meet is a great Free-To-Play game with a lot of content; in fact, there may be too much content thrown your way right off the bat. There is a lot to experience and do, and those looking to invest the time and energy will find much to enjoy.
As a Free-To-Play game, though, it falls into the same pitfalls so many of them do. Difficulty spikes that hold you back just for the sake of holding you back, and a grindfest that will test your patience.
Where Winds Meet is now available on PlayStation 5 and PC.
