Where Winds Meet

Bumping the only thread on this I could find with search. The game is set to release in about 8 weeks on steam on Nov 14th. For many it seems to have come out of nowhere, early beta access reviews show it's looking visually stunning with fluid action combat and tones of different content, both solo and group pve/pvp.

Some fancy new ideas like NPCs use AI so you converse with them naturally through text to open up objectives and quests. Players can get more serious injuries like broken bones from falls which require you to summon other players (healers). Relax in saunas and pools and massage each other for buffs :eek:. You can also go on a rampage in the city and kill NPC civilians and get into chases with guards, relationships systems including marriage, guild housing. Loads more stuff.

I'm not typically a fan of more eastern/oriental styles but I'm willing to give this a go. I've been painfully looking for new upcoming games that aren't too far away from release that could be good time sink, this looks great so far. ThelazyPeon who has an MMO focused youtube review channel gave it fairly high praise.


Bonus, it'll free to play with cash cosmetics only.
 
Mr_Sukebe said:
Any early views?
My son and I both installed it yesterday. Haven’t had the chance to check it out yet.
Click to expand...

I only had a short while with it. It looks good and runs well. It's stylized very well to the eastern theme which is somewhat not what I'm used to but really kinda dig to be honest. It's nice to get my teeth into something new. The character creator is nuts for what you can edit and control. It's F2P but crammed with stuff to buy which is expected, the store looks very much like just cosmetics as promised.

The combat is really sharp and responsive and feels/looks very good, very smooth. You can play with either a more classic MMO control or an ARPG control, you have a dark souls kind of lock on. It has parry, dodge etc, it's very action orientated rather than MMO orientated.

The online play is weird I've still not completely got to grips with it. I picked multiplayer mode, I got to see notes left in the world by people which helped work some stuff out. There's tons of events and things to do, I haven't dived into that yet, but essentially it looks like you can form groups of 5 players to do a dungeon or a puzzle or whatever.

The voice dubs are about what you'd expect, it's kind of americanised to get English voice overs, they did an OK job, it's serviceable IMO but you can't shake that jarring feel.

There's a lot of difficulty options for combat, and there's a lot of parry/dodge assists if you want them, which makes the game easier to get used to if you're new to that kinda genre, I appreciated that. The movement feels very free, you can double jump and jump dash and wall run as well as cling to things. I know later you can kinda fly. But they seem to have done it per area/zone, so you start off exploring on foot and you're rewarded the more you complete an area with new movement abilities for that area.

I had fun, it's different, there's some innovations in there, there's a LOT to it, there's so many different options screens it's like a maze at first, it feels like there's a lot to do as well, the game has both width and depth. It's all a bit too much at first you're bombarded with stuff. Even though they do limit what menus and activities you can see from the start, and open them up as you level. It's going to take a good week or so to really get a feel for it.

It's free and funded through cosmetics, I'm OK with that model, all it costs you is 95Gb download which can be done quickly on a fast connection, or left overnight if you need to. Because of that, i'd say if you're on the fence just try it. So far score on steam is mostly positive.
 
I gave this a decent try yesterday, then uninstalled.
Just not my cup of tea.

It feels like a cross between oblivion and Forza. What I mean by that is that it's just too busy. Walk a few metres and there's something new to do. Exploring is just massively compressed and seemingly just wandering around provides another bunch of free "stuff", i.e. bits, XPs etc.
Combat was also decidedly underwhelming. You've given a bow, which when used appropriately, can happily pepper the bad guys without them even reacting. Damage includes elements like "headshots", with a bow!?
However, fire from slightly further away and even though the game shows damage being inflicted, close up towards the enemy and it's undamaged. I assume to prevent players doing what I was doing, i.e. spot, back up a little and then snipe. The lack of damage when a few further metres away is just poor design.
Melee combat includes massive hints, e.g. "hit F to block".

On a positive note:
- Looked lovely
- Ran well
- The China setting is refreshingly different and really is embedded into the feel

If you want some some Chinese feel, mixed with "on a plate" grind, this might well really float your boat.
 
Mr_Sukebe said:
I gave this a decent try yesterday, then uninstalled.
Just not my cup of tea.

It feels like a cross between oblivion and Forza. What I mean by that is that it's just too busy. Walk a few metres and there's something new to do. Exploring is just massively compressed and seemingly just wandering around provides another bunch of free "stuff", i.e. bits, XPs etc.
Combat was also decidedly underwhelming. You've given a bow, which when used appropriately, can happily pepper the bad guys without them even reacting. Damage includes elements like "headshots", with a bow!?
However, fire from slightly further away and even though the game shows damage being inflicted, close up towards the enemy and it's undamaged. I assume to prevent players doing what I was doing, i.e. spot, back up a little and then snipe. The lack of damage when a few further metres away is just poor design.
Melee combat includes massive hints, e.g. "hit F to block".

On a positive note:
- Looked lovely
- Ran well
- The China setting is refreshingly different and really is embedded into the feel

If you want some some Chinese feel, mixed with "on a plate" grind, this might well really float your boat.
Click to expand...
Yeah you can turn the hints off and you can also not use the bow in that manner, swaping between the spear, sword and Fan gives plenty of fighting options that are pretty decent.

There is a lot of stuff going on and you do have to have that mindset of not doing and chasing absolutely everything, just take it steady and enjoy the ride, of course if you must do absolutely everything and try and game teh system you probably won't enjoy it anyways.
 
I've played about 10hrs and I'm hooked - the combat is decent and the game rewards exploration. Not a fan of the stealth missions but they are not too common (seem to be for weapon unlocks).

The spear charged heavy spin move combined with fire pots is amazing
 
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Put 2 hours in at the weekend to see if it would grab me, visually it looks well especially for a new MMO, ran without issue and apart from a few odd voice lines that sounded like AI translations it's not bad, did like how they have added the option for either a focus on solo play or group.

Combat does feel like it was built more for mobile use than with a kb+m / pad

Will be interesting to see if it can hold a decent amount of players after the novelty of it being the latest MMO wears off.
 
I've only played a few minutes. I'm not sure I can cope with the corny story so far though. The little girl immediately reminded me of Paimon in Genshin Impact.. which is not a great start.
 
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