Wuchang: Fallen Feathers Steam Deck Impressions, ROG Ally Performance, PC Features, and More
Wuchang: Fallen Feathers launches this week for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC (Steam). Ahead of its launch, I've been playing the Steam version to cover the PC features, graphics options, ROG Ally performance, Steam Deck impressions, potentially Wuchang: Fallen Feathers Steam Deck recommended settings, and more. While I had access to the game for a few weeks, I decided to replay the opening and test it again with the day one patch going live earlier this week. It isn't too surprising that a day one patch is available closer to a game's launch, but with Wuchang: Fallen Feathers, the patch was a big improvement for my devices. I will be updating this article if any major patch releases to address any of the issues for PC handhelds in the future.
Wuchang: Fallen Feathers PC graphics options
Wuchang: Fallen Feathers has quite a few graphics and display options. These are split up into the Graphics Settings and Advanced Graphics Settings menus in the settings menu. The former lets you adjust brightness, enable HDR, adjust HDR-specific settings, change display mode (borderless and windowed), adjust resolution (720p to 1080p on ROG Ally with 800p support on Steam Deck), adjust the frame rate cap (30, 60, 90, unlimited), toggle v-sync, enable a low latency mode (only when v-sync is enabled), adjust quality across a few presets (custom, low, mid, high, ultra, extreme), toggle motion blur, toggle depth of field, and reset to default settings.
The Advanced Graphics Settings let you adjust oversampling resolution (25 to 100), super-resolution oversampling (TSR, FSR, and DLSS), enable frame generation, adjust sharpening level (0 to 10), adjust post-processing effects (this affects lighting, reflections, depth of field, and ambient occlusion over low, mid, and high options), shadow quality (low, mid, high, ultra, extreme), effects quality (clouds and lighting across low, mid, high), viewing distance (low, mid, high), texture quality (low, mid, high), vegetation quality (low, mid, high), volumetric fog detail level (low, mid, high), toggle global illumination (off, low, mid, high), ambient occlusion (low, high), and reflection quality (low, mid, high). Frame Generation is only available when using FSR on Steam Deck and ROG Ally. I don't have DLSS to test, but it does support DLSS 4 with Multi Frame Generation as confirmed here.
Wuchang: Fallen Feathers PC control options
Wuchang: Fallen Feathers has full controller and also keyboard & mouse support. Both of these input options allow you to rebind controls as you can see in the gallery. If you play with a DualSense controller, it even displays PlayStation button prompts correctly with the controller guide using a DualSense controller in the settings. If you don't see this when using your PlayStation controller and the game shows Xbox button prompts, disable Steam Input and it will work as it should. Beyond rebinding, Wuchang: Fallen Feathers has mouse sensitivity options alongside invert camera options (for the mouse) in a dedicated Input Settings menu. The actual camera speed options, field of view (FOV), and invert options for using a controller are under the dedicated Camera Options menu. Wuchang: Fallen Feathers also changes button prompts on the fly based on input so you aren't locked into either once you load into the game.
Wuchang: Fallen Feathers Steam Deck impressions
While the game would not boot up at all on Steam Deck before the day one patch, I was able to play it for a few hours and test it on my Steam Deck OLED. Wuchang made a good first impression on Steam Deck with full 16:10 support (you might have to enable this in the settings), HDR working on Steam Deck OLED, proper sync and resume Steam Cloud support, and even compiling shaders on first launch. It unfortunately is not remotely a good experience on Steam Deck to play. Having spent a few hours with Wuchang: Fallen Feathers on my Steam Deck OLED running stable and up to date SteamOS following day one patch on a new save file, it isn't possible to get a stable 30fps. While it is technically playable in the sense that the game boots up, you will not be able to get even close to a stable 30fps at the absolute lowest settings.
I tested this using Proton Experimental Bleeding Edge, the default and public stable Proton, GE Proton 10-10, Proton Hotfix and even Proton 10.0-1 (beta) that I had installed. Performance was sadly not much different so I cannot recommend using a specific Proton for improved performance right now. I generally stick to Proton Experimental for any untested games by Valve or the newest GE Proton version if I noticed an improvement.
Even when setting the oversampling resolution to 25 and every option set to low or off, Wuchang: Fallen Feathers barely goes above 20fps during actual combat and early areas during exploration. It usually hovers around 25fps even indoors. I imagine the memory requirements are the main issue here since the Steam Deck has 16GB of memory in total while Wuchang: Fallen Feathers has its minimum requirements detailing 16GB of memory and 6GB to 8GB of VRAM. Note that the screenshots in the gallery below look washed out or too dark because they were taken with HDR enabled and with the game's global illumination turned off for improved performance. I've included a comparison above for how the game looks with global illumination turned off and on on Steam Deck and how it affects the visuals and performance.
Wuchang: Fallen Feathers Steam Deck recommended settings
At this point, my recommendation is to not play Wuchang: Fallen Feathers on Steam Deck so there are no recommended settings here. It is not even close to being playable on Valve's handheld right now. In fact, even using the absolute lowest possible settings and uncapping the frame rate just to see how high it can go results in around 34 or 35fps when pointing the camera at the sky or looking at the ground. This involves turning the global illumination off which results in worse visuals. The game can look fantastic on higher-end systems and even if it did run at 30fps with these low settings on Steam Deck, I wouldn't recommend it because the upscaling simply does not look good in motion from such a low input resolution. You will have trouble spotting enemies and other points of interest in the distance right now.
Wuchang: Fallen Feathers ROG Ally impressions
On ROG Ally, Wuchang: Fallen Feathers is definitely more playable than on Steam Deck, but it still isn't an experience I recommend without caveats. The regular hitching during exploration and combat that eventually settle down to some degree don't help. I also found TSR resulted in a better visual experience than FSR so I stuck to that throughout just like I did on Steam Deck. When using the 25W Turbo Mode while unplugged with my ROG Ally set to 5GB VRAM , Wuchang: Fallen Feathers runs at between 15 and 25fps on the default graphics settings the game ships with at 1080p. The default preset is too heavy for the ROG Ally and I hope the developers tweak this in a future update.
I initially tried leaving the game resolution to its 1080p default since that's the device's native resolution. This default preset uses mostly medium (mid) settings with shadows at high and ambient occlusion at low. It also uses oversampling resolution set to 60 and TSR upscaling. When using the default settings and playing at 30W Turbo Mode with the ROG Ally plugged in, performance was a bit better, but still not great.
I wanted to see if I could even attempt to get a stable 30fps in Wuchang: Fallen Feathers on ROG Ally at 1080p. For this, I set everything to the lowest possible settings with oversampling set to 25 and global illumination turned off. When playing at 25W, this resulted in around 30fps in the first open area of the game with regular hitching. Using the 30W Turbo Mode when plugged in resulted in around 5fps more in parts, but it wasn't a stable 30fps even here.
When running at 720p with the absolute lowest settings and with the 25W Turbo Mode, I was able to hold a mostly stable 30fps (with it going into the high 30s and low 40s if you leave it uncapped), there was still quite a bit of hitching during exploration though. Even when capping the frame rate to 30fps, I still had some random freezing during traversal. I then tested this out in the 30W Turbo Mode and saw frame rates hit the low 50s (at most) while moving around, but there is still a bit too much hitching during movement for my liking. Even if you play at 30W Turbo Mode plugged in with the lowest possible settings and see frame rates never dip below 30fps during the early hours, the hitching issues hold it back from an easy recommendation. I could not find any way to fix them right now. I'm not sure if this is an issue when playing on handhelds like the ROG Ally or with the PC version in general, but it isn't a great experience at all.
Since the game requires 16GB of memory and 6GB to 8GB of VRAM for its minimum specifications, it is possible the ROG Ally X delivers a playable experience, but I don't consider the current performance on ROG Ally Z1 Extreme as great given the hitching. If the developers can address that, it will at least be playable with it holding 30fps well based on the opening hours I retested with the day one patch installed.
Performance issues aside, the problem with using such heavy upscaling on ROG Ally and the Steam Deck is that while the environment and main character might look fine on the smaller screen, the enemies and other objects in the distance sometimes will not load until you move closer. This is a problem for a game like this. Hopefully we see some improvement through patches, but right now I would not recommend playing Wuchang: Fallen Feathers on Steam Deck at all. It is playable on ROG Ally, but there is a big caveat about the hitching during movement.
Before concluding this article, there are a few things I hope the developers address in patches for the PC version itself. The first is how it checks configuration on every boot. This can get over in 10-20 seconds, but it sometimes took almost a minute on ROG Ally. I'm not sure if this is slower just on handhelds or not though, but it isn't great having to skip through many splash screens and then wait for this to finish before getting to the title screen. The second thing is how Steam Cloud seems to sync some of the graphics settings as well across devices. I noticed this when the game set to 800p on my Steam Deck launched at 720p instead of 800p after playing a bit on the ROG Ally. This will be annoying for those who play on their main PC and also a handheld like the ROG Ally X because settings seem to sync across as well. The final issue is that the game does not quit properly sometimes. Even after exiting, Steam shows it as running for a little while before it actually shuts the game down.
I've enjoyed what I've played of Wuchang: Fallen Feathers so far across its aesthetic, challenge, combat, and music, but this is one to play on your main gaming PC and potentially on PlayStation 5 or Xbox Series X if those versions are fine.