Where Winds Meet Review

Where winds meet is an ambitious exercise in [music] maximalism. Its

sprawling world is a vibrant woosha love letter filled with over-the-top characters who can practically fly through the air. Grand ods to the beauty of the natural world and the dark political sorcery that threatens all of

that on a daily basis.

>> And we'll do it this way.

>> Yeah, I see. Good idea. Combat is a steady, enjoyable eb and flow that is full of style and substance, but at a slower pace than you might think from just watching it.

The collage of the stories it tells, both the main saga in the innumerable side fables, are a turbulent gust of ups and downs both thematically and in quality. But unfortunately, the journey

quality. But unfortunately, the journey to experience it all is pocked by the steep cliffs of jarring late game progression pacing [music] and rocky valleys jagged with dizzying amounts of micromanagement that turns the very idea

of interacting with its [music] RPG systems into stone.

The fictional version of 10th century China where winds meet is set in is a politically broken place where powerful clans fight to divvy up the region both with open warfare and subtrifuge. It's

the perfect backdrop for you, an orphan raised by a workingclass wine maker that's just itching to leave the humble life behind in search of adventure and purpose. The tale that sends you to

purpose. The tale that sends you to lavish palaces, haunted caves, and dank dungeons is run-of-the-mill with a handful of memorable moments that would be moving,

but they are often undone by some pretty awful English localization that makes exchanges between characters dense with redundant sentences and turns of phrase that don't really make any sense.

>> All change daily and never a one missing. It's also plagued by weird

missing. It's also plagued by weird technical issues like voice lines running over one another, subtitles not matching the words coming from characters mouths, or voices going missing entirely.

>> Uncle Kong said he's bringing me a new story.

>> Can you wait for me just a little? I

need to go inside and check something.

>> With some diversions into side quests and miniame dabbling, the main campaign's two chapters took me roughly 30 to 40 hours to complete. And while

they each button up their own isolated stories, well, it leaves the journey of your wanderer on a rather unsatisfying cliffhanger.

>> Come on, let's go.

>> The various side stories have the same uneven quality. On the whole, the best

uneven quality. On the whole, the best of them are better written and far more interesting than the main campaign. One

story had me leading ghosts to the afterlife after the violent fall of their Buddhist [music] commune.

>> Should father be home by now?

>> Another starts with me sneaking a nobleman out of his mansion because he doesn't want to commit to an arranged marriage. There's a spontaneity to these

marriage. There's a spontaneity to these stories that you don't really see in RPGs like this, but they are also sullied with way more of the technical blemishes.

True to its inspiration, the combat and where winds meet is flashy and energetic.

Each of the seven weapons feels distinct and dangerous, and some have different styles to discover that change the patterns of your attacks, as well as the weapon skills you can unleash on your enemies.

You can equip two at a time, but I spent almost all of my playthrough as a tank with a spear and a glaive that would buff each other when I use specific abilities and certain combinations.

Though that's partially because it's often a real pain in the ass to find alternatives worth using.

All of the ability chaining and buff management makes Whereins Meet feel much more like an MMO than an action game.

It's faster paced than the genre might typically be known for, but this combat doesn't share any of the sensibilities of a Ninja Gaiden or Devil May Cry.

There's no bouncing enemies or air juggles, narrowing an air combo or wall splat, just a lot of stun meter management, and weaving attacks and abilities into specific sequence.

The tank was right at home to me as a lapse MMO guy. Managing when to defend and when to go all out felt almost identical to a Dark Knight in Final Fantasy 14, except with an active block,

parry, and dodge.

These tools do help break up the sort of autopilot syndrome of many MMO battles, especially the parry, which becomes so important that there is even an auto parry system you can toggle on and off

that gives you regenerating resources called insight points to spend as get out of jail free cards when an incoming attack is about to land.

This was a great system for me to play around with early on, and I still appreciate it as a clever way to blunt some of the difficulty spikes for people who need it.

The MMO but rowdier combat shine the most against groups of regular enemies.

I'd still get to apply my beat him up flowchart of finding and eliminating the scariest enemy of the group while navigating the threats of all the other lower tier henchmen, but keeping my attack loop going and buffs topped off

while doing so added an extra layer of tactics that really created a flow state I don't usually get from games like this.

Of course, these enemies aren't very diverse. It's largely the same types of

diverse. It's largely the same types of guys and different faction garb with a special gang specific unit to spice it up.

Ironically, I think the flaws of this amalgam is most evident against bosses where things really just get reduced down to a rinse repeat cycle of parrying and dodging attacks, counterattacking,

avoiding big telegraph blows, and so on.

Most bosses are just super thugs with greater health and damage than the guys like them that you've encountered in the field. The occasional big spectacle boss

field. The occasional big spectacle boss can shake things up, but even that tier of baddies is hit or miss. Chinese lion

dancers and a full connected costume that hops on beams and shoots fireworks at you. Hit a late chapter one boss that

at you. Hit a late chapter one boss that seems to be attempting to recall Securo's Lady Butterfly fight from memory. Miss

memory. Miss the vast open world is overflowing with things to find and do when your adventure begins. Especially early on, I

adventure begins. Especially early on, I was pretty regularly surprised by some of the mostly silly things I stumbled across, like a bear practicing Tai Chi.

But that's not simply there for a chuckle. You can actually spy on it and

chuckle. You can actually spy on it and through careful study learn Tai Chi, too. With it, I could then channel the

too. With it, I could then channel the power of the wind to yeet this very bear into some nearby rocks.

>> I finish. I need to get to General Shrine.

>> When time permitted, I always stepped aside to try to use my mystic arts to solve puzzles in the wild. Where winds

meets big problem, though, is that it's filled wallto-wall with other activities that come nowhere close to this sort of ingenuity. There are some jobs you can

ingenuity. There are some jobs you can pick up that make a good first impression, like a healing miniame that turns curing diseases or setting broken bones into a card battler,

but that doesn't evolve much and doesn't really reward you meaningfully as you progress up the ranks. Most everything

else are versions of the sorts of things you'll see in any open world RPG like this. None of which change the

this. None of which change the well-warmed formula of these distractions in a way that make checking each one out more than a couple of times feel worth the trip.

And that's despite the fact that they all dump a bunch of loot on you every time you succeed. Just about everything you do in this game does, but very little of what you're given [music] is even worth opening your inventory to

take a second look at. It's not that it's all worthless. Chances are it's going to include potions or food items that are going to be autoused when necessary, or the various crafting and upgrade materials that will wait

patiently deep in your pockets for when you occasionally need them. But my only relationship to any of this stuff is hoping I have enough of it when it's time to level up. Same with gear, which I just slot in whenever it's time to

make my overall power level rise.

Weapons, armor, and accessories all have little nuances to increase things like crit rate and damage by small percentages, including set bonuses if you match pairs of items with similar

set symbols. But this wall of text

set symbols. But this wall of text approach to equipment with tons of micromanagement is off-putting and not even very impactful until the endame. I

often just click the super handy quick advance button in the bottom corner that spends all of your resources to upgrade everything in a manner it deems fit. An

option whose mere existence sort of makes a more damning argument against these over stuffed systems than I ever could.

There are milestones that freeze your ability to continue leveling up at [music] certain points until you pass what's called a breakthrough test, pitting you against waves of enemies that you must slay at a certain time

frame in order to move on. These tests

can eventually get tough, and passing raises your max level, but it then undermines that progress by also raising the collective strength of all of your enemies. Annoyingly, main story quests

enemies. Annoyingly, main story quests start to become level gated as you approach the end, meaning you have no option but to grind experience in order to eventually pass these literal DPS [music] checks. And even when you do, a

[music] checks. And even when you do, a breakthrough test might require you to wait real life hours before you can move on to the next tier, as it did for me on two occasions. By gating my progress

two occasions. By gating my progress behind daily server updates, making me jump through a bunch of hoops to progress only to tell me that I'm actually moving faster than intended is

ridiculous. Don't tell me how to waste

ridiculous. Don't tell me how to waste my life.

Gliding across the windy shores, rolling hills, craggy mountains, and bustling towns of the Jangghu is a breezy experience thanks to your generous triple jump and wall running abilities.

When they actually work, that is. During

every play session and inexplicable intervals of time, these features will just inevitably stop working entirely, only to just be fixed when I log out and log back in. This doesn't make [music]

navigating all the mixed terrain a problem, but some hidden chests or activities that require these extra movement options [music] are temporarily taken off the table for reasons that

never feel good. Navigating laggy menus to sort out your gear, check the map, or level up your abilities can be a chore as well. Fumbling through sub menus to

as well. Fumbling through sub menus to click a tool tip so that I could read a further item description or find out where something was on the map was always a draining experience. [music]

The world of Where Winds Meat could have done with a couple dozen fewer of its random 5-minute mini quests if it meant spending [music] more time making the process of flipping through all of these

spreadsheets less painful.

You can play a lot of Where Wins Meet co-op, but servers were pretty scarce pre-launch and finding people [music] to run multiplayer focused events wasn't possible. I did at least get to take on

possible. I did at least get to take on [music] the big raid style bosses thanks to a full CPU party option. These

automated party members were competent enough to do the Simon says required to minimize damage when necessary. But if

they weren't basically immortal, I'm not sure they would have had the chops to kill any of these scary enemies. I'm

sure my experience here is not representative of the design intention of these big co-op romps. But I'm still glad I could get access to the novel items they drop without having to find

five [music] of my own friends to do so.

>> Greetings. Look, we really don't have a Perhaps there's a version of where winds meet that isn't throttled by the storm of its own wealthy aspirations. It has a

great understanding of what makes Wooa such a compelling subgenre of fantasy fiction, bleeding into a vibrancy of its characters and the flare of its combat.

But it becomes clear very quickly that the attempt to shove as many kinds of experiences into one game, open world adventure, action heavy MMO, musical rhythm game, card battler, etc. only

ensures that none of these elements reach their full potential. Instead,

where winds meet is an amusement park where every ride is being run at half speed, and the sugary treats at the concession stands come with piles of paperwork to complete before you can chow down. For more action, check out

chow down. For more action, check out our reviews of Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment or Ninja Gaiden 4. And for

everything else, stick with IGN.