Where Winds Meet Review – Massive and Messy Open World Action

Review of “Where the Winds Meet”

Where the winds meet is Wuxia's incredibly ambitious free-to-play, open-world RPG. It's also broken in places and incoherent in others. Where Winds Meet desperately tries to make the player feel rewarded and constantly occupied. Unlike the world we live in, there is so much going on here that it's hard to know what's important. Where Winds Meet isn't necessarily a complex game, but it can be challenging to figure out.

After spending decades in the medieval fantasy dungeons of Europe, open-world role-playing games have recently turned to Chinese and Japanese history and settings. Ancient China, with a rich culture full of drama, conflict, philosophy, mythology and folklore, is the perfect backdrop for a game like Where the Winds Meet. More than most games in its genre, Where Winds Meets is about character building through the many influences, characters, and opportunities found naturally in the environment.

Tabula Rasa

The player starts with the relatively blank slate so beloved of game designers, with a dark past and only a vague, amnesiac sense of direction. The action takes place at the end of the 10th century, during the period of the Ten Kingdoms and Five Dynasties. You play as an inexperienced sword master trying to recover a stolen jade pendant. The narrative route begins in the sleepy province of Qinghe and covers a large area, finally landing in the central city of Kaifeng, where the narrative takes a higher turn.

The main story eventually develops into much larger conspiracies and conflicts between various centers of power and even spiritual traditions. Where the Winds Meet obviously fantasizes about historical events and introduces supernatural elements and magic. However, the dizzying number of references to Chinese history and culture are as detailed as possible.

Lost and Found

According to PR, Where Winds Meet includes hundreds of side quests and thousands of NPCs—10,000 in Kaifeng City alone. It's incredibly easy to get lost in the supporting content and abandon the main story entirely. Moreover, the game encourages this. You can minimize the role of combat and instead focus on a profession such as doctor, merchant or architect. Soon the already vague main narrative becomes a needle lost in a larger haystack of other stories and actions.

With so much narrative content and tons of side quests, chances are not all of them are good. And that's not true. Some of the voice acting – at least in English – is pretty bad. The subtitles often don't match the dialogue, and the writing itself can be sketchy. But at the same time, there is a chance to stumble upon an exciting and even spiritually gripping drama, for example, in a city whose inhabitants died in a fire, leaving their restless souls in search of a cleansing Buddhist ritual.

Systemic shock

Where the winds meet there is many systems Improvements to character skills, special attacks, weapon skills and weapon upgrades, crafting, professions and, of course, inventory management. And there are purely cosmetic products available only at the checkout. There are several different currencies, different forms of XP, and more. Moreover, almost every system has a special page accessible from the HUD and/or menu. It's good that there's a codex, because many of Where Wind Meet's mechanics are presented haphazardly or poorly explained. Understanding the relationships between systems takes a lot of time.

Like much of Where the Winds Meet, the combination of systems and mechanics reflects a more-is-more philosophy. The game constantly bombards the player with things: money, items, crafting materials, tidbits of lore, equipment. It's everywhere. Every little exploration, every moment of combat brings reward. Dopamine receptors are triggered, but unfortunately much of it is more of a trinket than a treasure.

It's honestly quite impressive how much content – both activities and rewards – the developers have put into the world. It's literally impossible to get bored. But this is It’s easy to get lost, confused, miss important landmarks and make mistakes.

Clash of Swords

When it comes to Wuxia inspired combat and movements, Where the Winds Meet is perhaps the most clear and confident. There's a decent selection of weapons – swords, dual blades, fans, spears, whips, bows, etc. – and each has special move sets and special attacks that can be unlocked. You don't upgrade specific weapons, but rather weapon classes, which encourages experimentation. There is a full system of martial arts-inspired moves that can be learned and added to combat, such as a tai chi gesture that knocks enemies up or a ground slam.

Overall, the combat and movement is fluid and quite impressive. Success requires mastery of conventional mechanics such as perfect parries, heavy attacks, or special attacks. Where Winds Meet does a good job is providing difficulty options, allowing players to get the experience they want. At higher difficulty levels, combat can be extremely challenging and rewarding. It's a shame then that all those cluttered combat systems and the user interface itself get in the way of a good time.

Look, look, listen

With effective lighting and luxurious attention to historical, architectural and environmental detail, Where Winds Meet often looks like the visually stunning game it strives to be. Of course, there is some repetition that isn't unexpected in the vast open world, and a few textures that don't deserve close attention. Unlike the world they live in, human characters are often drawn less effectively, especially in panels with minor NPCs. Even pre-rendered videos lack realism and believable expression.

The sound design and music in the game are almost completely successful. As noted, English voice acting is present throughout the quality map, but the music is a rich synthesis of traditional Chinese instrumentation and orchestral textures. This is especially effective during quiet moments of exploration.

When it comes to performance, there's some bad news. I spent most of my time playing the game on the standard PS5. There were regular crashes—sometimes every few minutes—and abrupt server shutdowns, as well as issues with unresponsive controls, textures popping in, and audio cutting out. I also had the opportunity to play on PC, where the experience was a little more solid. Since Winds Meet is such a large, ambitious and complex game, it's probably not surprising that some problems might arise. However, they degrade or even terminate the experience.

So close

Where the Winds Meet is overly ambitious, messy, opaque, and inconsistent. It has too many unrelated cogs, a lot of it is poorly explained, and it doesn't give the player a single minute of unproductive time, even at the expense of coherence and clarity. Despite all this, Where the Winds Meet is a lot of fun. It often looks incredible, and the world is definitely filled with content, both for single player and for groups. Without even touching the cash register, Where Winds Meet offers a huge number of free games. At this point, Where the Winds Meet is a little short of greatness, but with some technical improvements and time, it could get there.

***PS5 and PC codes provided by publisher for review***