{"id":259939,"date":"2025-11-13T06:20:10","date_gmt":"2025-11-13T06:20:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/259939\/"},"modified":"2025-11-13T06:20:10","modified_gmt":"2025-11-13T06:20:10","slug":"where-winds-meet-ps5-is-vast-visionary-and-on-the-verge-of-collapse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/259939\/","title":{"rendered":"Where Winds Meet PS5 Is Vast, Visionary, and on the Verge of Collapse"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Hands<\/a><\/p>\n

After approximately 20 hours of play, we\u2019ve barely scratched the surface of Where Winds Meet<\/a>.<\/p>\n

We\u2019d considered publishing a Review in Progress, but it quickly became evident that the scale of this game far exceeds the playtime we had available prior to release.<\/p>\n

Furthermore, we have questions about the state of the build we were provided access to, and how it will be improved upon the game\u2019s 14th November release. (But more on that later.)<\/p>\n

If there\u2019s one thing you need to know immediately about this free-to-play effort from Chinese juggernaut NetEase, however, it\u2019s that its scale beggars belief. This is a 150-hour historical epic with both single player and MMO-style multiplayer features. And it doesn\u2019t cost a dime.<\/p>\n

\"Hands<\/a> Image: Push Square<\/p>\n

While we\u2019re still somewhat unclear about the monetisation here \u2013 the functionality was mostly disabled for our pre-release build \u2013 our understanding is that it\u2019s largely related to cosmetics, Battle Passes, and content of that ilk.<\/p>\n

There is gacha, we believe, but only for clothing and other personalisation content.<\/p>\n

If we appear a bit wishy-washy, it\u2019s because this game is so remarkably dense we\u2019re truthfully yet to wrestle with all of it. And in the game\u2019s pre-release environment, we\u2019re still not 100% clear what will change when you download it and play it yourself.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s a crucial point because if any other outlets do decide to review the game today, you\u2019re likely to see some scathing commentary about its technical shortcomings.<\/p>\n

We encountered dozens of bugs during our time with the game, from incorrect button prompts to chunks of missing dialogue to mislabelled subtitles to unresponsive UIs to crashes.<\/p>\n

\"Hands<\/a> Image: Push Square<\/p>\n

We reported our findings to NetEase and were informed much of this will be fixed, while others remain a priority for the team. At the time of writing, we simply can\u2019t comment on how much of it will be resolved when you download the game yourself.<\/p>\n

But despite all of this, we can tell you there\u2019s something potentially remarkable here, if creator Everstone Studios can overcome its ambition and pull everything together into a cohesive, polished whole.<\/p>\n

So, what are some points of comparison? The game feels a bit like Ghost of Tsushima<\/a> to us, with the sprawling plains of opening area Qinghe capturing the same sense of freedom as Sucker Punch\u2019s epic.<\/p>\n

But it also has the density of a modern Assassin\u2019s Creed<\/a> or even a Bethesda RPG, with an apparent 10,000 NPCs going about their business on the map, adding life to every settlement and camp that you stumble upon.<\/p>\n

\"Hands<\/a> Image: Push Square<\/p>\n

A later area, Kaifeng, makes way to a sprawling 10th century city \u2013 a thriving metropolis alive with sights, sounds, and stories.<\/p>\n

You can choose to prioritise how you want to play Where Winds Meet: do you want the focus to be on single player or multiplayer? Do you want the game to guide you to points of interest or would you like to discover them for yourself? And how much help do you want in combat?<\/p>\n

All of these options can be enabled\/disabled at the start of your game, and toggled to taste later on. In the interest of time, we turned up the guidance and focused on single player, but we think it might be nice to enjoy this with as little guidance as possible.<\/p>\n

The stakes in the story start out relatively light, with a Jade pendant you wore since childhood stolen away.<\/p>\n

\"Hands<\/a> Image: Push Square<\/p>\n

This opens up the plot to a steadily unravelling sequence of secrets, which pull deep from China\u2019s Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms. If you\u2019re a fan of Wuxia-style stories or television shows, then you\u2019ll be in your element here.<\/p>\n

As we\u2019ve alluded to already: this game is dense. Certain objects in the world can be scanned and added to your compendium for historical context; the UI is a dizzying network of modes, skill trees, unlockables, currencies, and gear.<\/p>\n

The game does try to dole it out slowly, but even we found ourselves utterly overwhelmed by everything at our fingertips, and can confidently say we\u2019d need at least another 30 to 50 hours play to understand everything.<\/p>\n

Story quests are split between the main campaign and Fractured Tales, which are effectively side-quests that flesh out the world. Keeping track of everything can feel overwhelming, but again it all feeds into the idea you exist within a real place.<\/p>\n

\"Hands<\/a> Image: Push Square<\/p>\n

Combat, meanwhile, spans a multitude of different weapons \u2013 from swords and spears to more imaginative armaments like parasols and rope darts.<\/p>\n

With award-winning Hong Kong film director Stephen Tung Wai signed up to help choreograph the combat, you can be certain it looks as stylish as a film.<\/p>\n

The format subscribes more closely to something like Stellar Blade<\/a> than Dark Souls<\/a>, although you do have a stamina meter and can get staggered if you exhaust it.<\/p>\n

Again, in the interests of time, we played on the easiest difficulty and so didn\u2019t find things too challenging. But armed with weapons like the aforementioned parasol, we enjoyed how responsive it all felt, even if there\u2019s admittedly a buggy underbelly to it all.<\/p>\n

Skills can also be mapped to hot keys, so you can launch some devastating special moves every few seconds or so. We suspect these cooldowns may become a point of criticism for more action-focused players, as you can feel the shadow of an MMO here.<\/p>\n

\"Hands<\/a> Image: Push Square<\/p>\n

We didn\u2019t get to test out the online multiplayer, largely because we concentrated our efforts on the single player quests we were more interested in. But FromSoftware\u2019s influence looms as you will occasionally encounter notes from other players on the ground, hinting at secrets or giving you clues. (Or just outright trolling you in some cases.)<\/p>\n

The cutscenes, while unlikely to ever win any cinematography awards, are remarkable and frequent for a free-to-play effort \u2013 although the English voice acting leaves a lot to be desired, and as mentioned previously, the subtitles don\u2019t match in the version of the game we played. We\u2019d recommend playing in Chinese, but you may lose context if the script isn\u2019t fixed.<\/p>\n

But the quests do a great job of showing the mundanity of 10th century Chinese life, and then mixing that with the spectacle of a wuxia action movie. It\u2019s a quite intriguing contrast.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s just difficult to know, at this stage, how long it\u2019s going to take to reach its full potential. The build we played just didn\u2019t feel finished, with the bow-and-arrow trying to take advantage of the DualSense\u2019s adaptive triggers, but barely working.<\/p>\n

\"Hands<\/a> Image: Push Square<\/p>\n

We\u2019re cautious that there\u2019s too much wrong here for it all to be fixed come 14th November, and that\u2019s why we\u2019re shying away from even a Review in Progress at this point<\/p>\n

There\u2019s so much to see and, indeed, so much that could theoretically go wrong we find ourselves in uncharted waters here.<\/p>\n

But if we were to surmise what we\u2019ve played so far: it\u2019s bold, wildly ambitious, compelling beyond belief, and, well, just about functional.<\/p>\n

For every glimpse of something remarkable here, there\u2019s a crack. Can Everstone polish this up to where it needs to be? All we can say is we\u2019re sure it\u2019ll try\u2026<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Are you interested in trying Where Winds Meet yourself when it releases this week? Wrestle with the abundance of systems like you\u2019re in the middle of Wuxia fantasy in the comments section below.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After approximately 20 hours of play, we\u2019ve barely scratched the surface of Where Winds Meet. We\u2019d considered publishing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":259940,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[242,59,840,12421,838,112,86,56,54,55,107613],"class_list":["post-259939","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-technology","tag-features","tag-gb","tag-hands-on","tag-netease","tag-previews","tag-ps5","tag-technology","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom","tag-where-winds-meet"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259939","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=259939"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259939\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/259940"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=259939"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=259939"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=259939"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}