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I went into Where Winds Meet almost entirely blind, save for a few pre-prepared notes handed to me minutes before a hands-on session in NetEase’s offices in Hangzhou, China. I knew vaguely that it was an action RPG game, and that it would likely be free-to-play when it launched globally, but beyond that, I knew very little. Six hours later, I walked out of the NetEase campus itching to play more.
Where Winds Meet is set in tenth-century China, during an era known as the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period. It was a period of great political upset, with near constant wars, rapid governmental changes, and lots of drama. It’s also a period that’s not particularly well-explored in popular culture, both within and outside of China, which makes it perfect for a game like this.
At first glance, Where Winds Meet seems to take a lot of influences from other games. There’s a little bit of Assassin’s Creed DNA in there, a little bit of Genshin Impact, and a little bit of a dozen other games from the last ten years or so. Digging deeper, though, reveals that while those elements are present, the way they all fit together is entirely unique.
This is a game that fits squarely within the “wuxia” genre. Wuxia is a sort of culture-wide genre within China that focuses on martial arts and spirituality, usually manifesting in historical fantasy featuring martial artists with supernatural abilities. The genre is massive in China but rarely makes it out of the country in most media — although it’s seen some representation in films like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, and to a lesser extent films like The Matrix and Kill Bill, which use elements of wuxia courtesy of Chinese-born martial arts choreographer Yuen Woo-ping.
Where Winds Meet doesn’t shy away from its wuxia origins. Combat is a big focus, with a host of available weapons – ranging from a simple sword to a machine gun-like magical parasol – and a wide variety of hand-to-hand mystical martial arts. The latter ties the whole combat system together, letting you hone in on a consistent style of combat no matter which weapon you choose, but it also has a ridiculous amount of depth.
A drunken-style combat move, for example, has you lithely dancing around the battlefield, bottle of booze in hand — but combine it with the fireball move, and your strikes and blows leave flaming trails behind them, setting your target (and the environment) alight. These little interactions are built into every part of the combat system, and between the different weapon types and martial arts on offer, I’m sure players will be discovering interactions and new combat styles for years on end. It makes the combat feel very dynamic and equally satisfying, and I’m excited to try out all the different options when the game eventually launches.
If combat isn’t to your liking, though, there’s still plenty for you to do. There’s a pretty decent implementation of stealth, if you prefer to do your dealings in the shadows, but also parkour challenges, lots of exploration with secrets to find everywhere, and an absolutely massive amount of side story content. Where Winds Meet lead designer Chris Lyu tells me that this variety is very much by design — the team wanted this game to be something that everyone can enjoy, so players rarely have to engage with anything they’re not enjoying. We’ll have to see how that plays out in the final release, because I’m doubtful you can get through major parts of the game without engaging in combat, for example, but Lyu insists there’s something there for everyone.
It was in these non-combat side stories that I found some of my favorite parts of the game. After knocking out a few parkour challenges, I stumbled upon a storytelling event that focused on a small group of characters who were reckoning with an overbearing government official that was cracking down on currency from a prior ruler. At first it seemed very basic – a woman needed money to pay for her child’s medicine, but she only had old money and nobody wanted to accept it – but it didn’t take long for it to expand into something truly touching.
I won’t spoil what happens, but it took previously introduced comic relief characters and gave them a serious, soul-filled story to tell, twisted and turned beyond its simple premise, and ended in a heart-wrenching moment that still plays in my head on repeat, more than a week after I experienced it. It wove itself in and out of the game’s main story narrative without feeling overwrought or forced, gave characters purpose and depth, and was easily some of the best storytelling I’ve seen in a game in a long while.
It helps, too, that the game is unbelievably good looking. I’ll grant that I was viewing it in ideal conditions, on super-powerful gaming PCs with hardware I absolutely could never afford, but having seen the game running on PS5, too, it’s not far off from the ideal experience. It’s a very good-looking game with gorgeous architecture, obscenely high-quality character models, and spectacular lighting and effects.
No release date has been set for the global release of Where Winds Meet just yet, but its release in China shows that the team behind it is onto something special. It’s had an overwhelmingly positive response from players so far, and early reactions from global players after various betas have been good, too. It’s hard to tell if it’s going to take off in the same way it has in China, but what I do know is that I’ll be there on day one.
Disclosure: NetEase Games paid for travel and accommodation to Hangzhou, China for the purposes of this preview.
