Hey all, I’m back with a look at a free-to-play game that is making the rounds for the PC and consoles. It’s my Where Winds Meet review.
Plot: The plot of Where Winds Meet takes place in China during the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period, roughly 900 to 980 AD, and it’s very much a Wuxia game. For those unfamiliar with the concept, Wuxia is probably best known to many due to the movie Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. But this popular genre goes back centuries and has been included even in some of the classic novels of China, including the Water Margin (which was one big influence on the Suikoden series). It involves martial artists performing superhuman feats like dancing on rain drops or cleaving a mountain in two with a swing of a blade.
Wuxia titles don’t involve the pursuit of immortality like Xianxia does (which I’ve covered more of those stories in my Translation Necessary Thursday columns), but it’s still very much a fantastical setting. Another good example would be Wandering Sword, which I reviewed a couple years ago.
In Where Winds Meet, your character is an orphan raised by two people, one a renegade disciple of a fallen sect of martial artists on the run for reasons unknown who teaches martial arts, and a retired wanderer of the Jianghu (more on that in a bit) who takes over pretty much everything else when raising them for the most part. Stuff happens, things are stolen, people are attacked, and you as the player set out into the Jianghu in search of lost property and your missing “Uncle.”
The Jianghu (sometimes called Murim in Korean works) is a rather odd concept that doesn’t really have a good equivalent in western culture. It literally means rivers and lakes, but it really revolves around the world of martial arts and the attached society as a whole that isn’t really ruled by the government. To be a part of the Jianghu doesn’t necessarily mean you yourself must be a martial artist, but generally you are involved with them in some fashion even if it’s indirectly. A renowned blacksmith of blades would be a part of the Jianghu but so would bandits and outlaws.
Where Winds Meet is a pretty good introduction to the idea of the Jianghu. The main story is excellent if sadly not complete at this time as the global servers have only gotten two chapters (not counting the very short prologue) of the story thus far. I enjoyed the various stories you encounter across Where Winds Meet, although there were issues that I’ll cover later I wish weren’t a problem.
Gameplay: Where Winds Meet is a third person open world action RPG that plays a lot like any other open world action RPG, although it’s heavily focused on combat. It’s pretty good, and for the most part the gameplay itself is solid if very unforgiving. Even on the lower difficulties, players will die to optional bosses and areas frequently as they are not easy to beat.
This stems from the fact that this is both a single player game and a multiplayer MMO at the same time. There are two modes in Where Winds Meet: the single player side, which you first start out with, and the multiplayer part which you unlock about an hour and a half into it. For the most part, Where Winds Meet is playable by yourself, but that does mean you have to either be very good at timing enemy attacks and the like to parry or dodge them, or have a healing weapon/martial art equipped at all times because your access to healing items is extremely limited. It can be expanded on, but frankly you’d be better off selecting the healing weapon reward from one of the title’s very first side quests.
And that brings us to the big issue with Where Winds Meet outside of its pretty lackluster voice acting in English and occasionally erroneous localization. The user interface is complex. It’s a giant mess and if you skip the tutorials, you will have issues re-reading them or even finding them again as moving through the various menus is not easy. Honestly, the UI is confusing and not easy to muddle through. If you take your time, you can get used to it, but it’s not user-friendly in the slightest. It’s kind of understandable because the title has many complex systems for upgrading character stats and abilities, but it could definitely use some serious consolidation in my opinion.
Part of the issue is that you are free to do whatever you want in this game. You want to steal items from every NPC you meet? You can do that, and if you’re caught you will be thrown in jail for a lengthy sentence of real-world time. And you’ll be mocked and pelted with eggs and rotten veggies by other players as you’re forced into Multiplayer mode when jailed. I actually delved into the complex UI to really understand the point of someone getting hit by other players, and every time a person is hit by an egg or vegetable, their sentence is reduced.
If you continue to murder Where Winds Meet’s civilian NPCs consistently, you can find your character locked away for hours. I haven’t gotten thrown in jail myself, so I haven’t experienced it personally. Apparently, you can bribe your way out of jail time earlier with some currency, but given that the game has multiple currencies, some of which are very limited when you first start playing, I would suggest playing lawfully and not being a lawbreaker.
But there are other options as well, and you can fish, wrestle, and debate against NPCs and even play a version of what is essentially beer pong. Heck, the first online hub has an area where you can compete to see who can answer quiz questions the fastest. There’s even a daily quest to mislead other players in answering incorrectly the fastest for this specific activity. There are tons of things to do in Where Winds Meet. Even though only two areas have been unlocked globally and 4 in China, you’ll find yourself with hundreds of hours’ worth of gameplay to work through.
Finally, Where Winds Meet is free to play, and although there is a gacha mechanic, it is purely limited to cosmetics. No gameplay buffs or the like can be gained through purchasing the gacha currency of pearls. There are ways to earn free pulls of the gacha, and I just recently was able to perform my first 10 pulls of it myself, but honestly you can ignore that part of the game for the most part.
Art: The art is pretty great in Where Winds Meet, but it’s not perfect nor is it up to the standards of something like Assassin’s Creed or Final Fantasy. But for a free to play game, it’s pretty darn good. The various effects, particularly when it comes to the “lightness” traversal skills, are pretty amazing, though it can be hard to actually direct where your character goes sometimes.
Music: The music is also very good, and I enjoyed it quite a bit. Unfortunately, like I mentioned earlier, Where Winds Meet’s localization and the voice acting in English is pretty lackluster. Some characters sound wrong, like one major character early in the adventure whose voice sounds much older than the character is physically portrayed, and emotions aren’t conveyed very well either. I do wish there were more dubbing options like Infinity Nikki’s ability to use a Japanese dub, but the Chinese one isn’t bad. I just don’t understand it like I do Japanese, which is a shame after I got to really enjoy Assassin’s Creed Shadows immersive mode, which has Japanese and Portuguese as the main spoken languages.
Overall: Where Winds Meet is pretty great and might just be one of the biggest hits of the year, but it does have its issues. If you can get past them, you may find that this free-to-play title could be a really long-term playing option.
For those who like: Action RPGs, Wuxia, fantasy, action, adventure, martial arts, solid gameplay, great stories, free-to-play games, and excellent artwork.
Not for those who don’t like: Any of the above, convoluted UIs, and lackluster localization.