Where Winds Meet review — Living out a wuxia fantasy

Western audiences have enjoyed the cultural offerings of Japan’s gaming industry for decades. It’s only been in the last few years that Chinese games have started to make their way into the hands of Western gamers, though. Titles like PUBG: Battlegrounds, Genshin Impact, and Black Myth: Wukong have shown that Chinese developers are both eager and capable of bringing brilliant, gorgeous games steeped in culture to the rest of the world. This has given the wuxia genre fertile ground to flourish, with long-running franchises like Sword and Fairy and Xuan-Yuan Sword finding new audiences. Enter Where Winds Meet, a massive, free-to-play action RPG that seeks to tell an epic wuxia story. While the game isn’t perfect, it’s definitely something everyone should check out.

First, I should note that I’ve come nowhere close to finishing the narrative. Even if I avoided side content (of which there is plenty), it would take me weeks to get through the reported 150+ hours of story. Where Winds Meet is massive. 

When the game opens, we’re given control of Jiang, a hero who rests as he cradles an infant and, apparently, an important jade artifact. One of his allies shows up, gives him a drink, and sets the stage for the amount of trouble he’s in. Before you know it, we’re in an intense, cinematic martial arts sequence that involves a horseback chase and fight with a big, angry man. It’s full of beautiful cinematography and sets the stage for what promises to be an exciting journey ahead.

Next, we’re taken to character creation. Whether male or female, our character sports a scar under their left eye - a gift they earned in that epic opening sequence as a flying dagger grazed their cheek. Where Winds Meet has an impressive character creation tool. To my amusement, you can choose whether you prefer more realistic traits or cleaner, glamorous features. I have to give some credit here, too. While it didn’t work for me in the early access build, Where Winds Meet has a couple of unique tools to help with the process. You can have the game process your voice reading a couple of sentences, or upload a photo, and it’ll create your character with that information. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get either of these features to work, but the idea of them as options is fascinating, and I hope they work for the final release.

From a gameplay perspective, Where Winds Meet has a lot going on. For the most streamlined experience, you can just follow the main story missions. These will tell the large, winding story you’re embroiled in, complete with voiced dialog. If you enjoy martial arts movies like House of Flying Daggers or Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, you’ll have a good idea of what you’re in for here - and it’s well done. Most often, you’ll go to a place, explore, fight some enemies, and ultimately take on a boss before continuing the tale.

Along your journey, you’ll get the opportunity to pick up new skills that can be useful both in and out of combat. The “Cloud Steps” ability, for example, allows you to leap huge distances directly to a targeted enemy in combat or to reach particular platforms during exploration. You can learn and use tai chi and acupressure points to solve puzzles and defeat foes, too.

In the default solo mode, Where Winds Meet feels like a fairly standard action RPG. This belies the fact that the game is actually a completely well-realized multiplayer game, too, and you can set the game to cater to your wants with that in mind. Want to participate in PVP arenas? That’s here. In the mood to take on a dungeon with friends? You can all gear up for classic MMO archetypes (DPS, Tank, and Healer) and tackle some epic encounters together. The archetypes lead to a variety of weaponry options, too.

While you probably think of the traditional sword or spear for a martial arts game, Where Winds Meet gives you quite a few more options. Depending on the sect you join (essentially dictating which gear/skills you can use), you can also pick up rope darts, umbrellas, fans, dual blades, greatswords (called “mo blades” here), and more, plus the team has already said they’re actively working on new weapons for future updates. It feels really freaking cool to pick up an umbrella or a fan and kick butt like heroes from Dynasty Warriors or The Forbidden Kingdom.

Outside of combat, there’s still plenty to occupy your time. You can collect materials and craft items, go fishing, pick up an instrument, play chess or a drunken game of pitch-pot, or build relationships with people in the world. That brings up one aspect of the game that feels a bit clunky to me - NPC interaction. Many of the characters you interact with, you can have a conversation with to grow their bond. While that sounds rudimentary, Where Winds Meet does away with the classic menu-driven approach and has opted for AI bot interaction instead. It sounded intriguing to me at first, but like the specialized character creation tools, I wasn’t able to get much from these AI interactions. I would ask a simple question like, “What is your name?” and get the same boilerplate response ad nauseam. Why try to hand that off to an AI bot? Why not just build the menus for the classic approach? I hope this is improved in the final release, as it could make for some unique interactions.

Where Winds Meet is a massive, gorgeous wuxia adventure that offers a ton for players to do. Given the game’s breadth, I’m surprised it’s free-to-play. While some aspects of the game felt a little undercooked (AI bot conversations, specialized character creation tools, etc), there’s still a TON here to keep players engaged and living out their high-flying wuxia dreams. With a 150+ hour story, multiplayer arenas and dungeons, and the promise of more content to come, there will be no shortage of content to keep players happy. If you’ve ever found yourself drawn to martial arts or are looking for something beautiful to occupy your time, I recommend giving Where Winds Meet a try.