TL;DR: A gorgeous wuxia sandbox with fun combat and tons of personality, held back by technical issues, cluttered systems, and stop-and-start progression. Fun, but frustrating. Potentially great, but not quite there.

I’ve always had a soft spot for wuxia. Blame a lifetime of shawarma-fueled late nights watching Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon on a dimly lit laptop or those weekend marathons of Jet Li VHS tapes that my uncle insisted were “educational.” So when I booted up Where Winds Meet, its opening minutes hit me with the kind of theatrical, high-flying martial arts melodrama that scratches something deep in the lizard brain: heroes sprinting up walls, gravity renegotiating its contract, poetic monologues whispered over moonlit rivers. It felt like being welcomed into the genre’s warm embrace.

But as often happens with giant open-world RPGs—and as especially happens with giant open-world RPGs trying to be an MMORPG, a rhythm game, a spiritual sim, and a wuxia epic at the same time—the honeymoon phase was brief. Where Winds Meet is a game dripping with ambition, charm, and style, but it’s also a hydra made of systems, menus, and technical gremlins that stab you in the ankle every time you let your guard down.

It’s beautiful, absolutely. It’s soulful, often. But it’s also one of the most uneven experiences I’ve played this generation—an amusement park where every ride works, technically, but the operator seems to be running each one on half power because the manager told them to conserve electricity.

Still, let’s start with the good stuff.

The setting—a fictionalized 10th-century China caught in the crossfire of scheming clans and political rot—is instantly compelling. My wanderer began life as the adopted kid of a wine maker, which already had me rooting for them because honestly that’s a much more relatable RPG origin than “chosen one who kills gods before breakfast.” But the story that follows never quite figures out how to harmonize its big wuxia energy with the grounded character beats it clearly wants. The bones are there. The heart wants to be there. But the English localization often feels like someone fed a dictionary into a blender and decided the result was definitely soup.

What should be emotional crescendos get kneecapped by voice lines that cut out, subtitles that wander off and do their own thing, and dramatic exchanges that read like AI-generated fortune cookie poetry. It’s not unplayable; it’s just constantly distracting. Even late-game revelations—moments meant to stun—got undercut for me because the characters’ voices simply decided to never load again. Silence can be powerful, but not that kind of silence.

The side quests fare better, weirdly enough. There were evenings when I told myself I’d do “one quick quest” before logging off, only to find myself leading the tormented ghosts of a fallen Buddhist commune toward the afterlife, or joining a half-naked martial arts school initiation ritual that felt like a fever dream cooked inside a bamboo steamer. These stories are flavorful, eccentric, sometimes profound, and often better written than the main plot—but they’re also plagued by even more bugs and rough edges.

Combat, though? Combat hooked me. It’s not Devil May Cry levels of slick, but it isn’t trying to be. It’s an MMO soul wrapped in action-RPG skin. Seven weapons, each with multiple styles. Buffs that cascade into other buffs. Parry windows sharper than a stiletto blade. I spent most of my adventure as a spear-and-glaive tank because the synergy between the two felt like some secret chef’s kiss combo the devs quietly snuck in for the mechanically obsessed players who read patch notes the way other people read love letters.

But there’s no getting around the fact that the game slowly becomes held hostage by its own RPG systems. There’s leveling. And breakthrough tests. And equipment ranks. And equipment-slot ranks. And crafting materials. And mystic arts. And secondary mystic arts. And set bonuses. And sub-set bonuses. And a Quick Advance button that essentially screams: “We know this is too much; just push this and pretend you engaged with the system.”

It’s telling that I never once felt proud of leveling up. I only felt relieved.

Breakthrough Tests, especially later on, nearly broke me. These timed encounters force you to pass tight DPS checks to raise your level cap. Fail, and you grind. Succeed, and the enemies immediately scale up anyway, which is the psychological equivalent of climbing a staircase only for the building to turn into an escalator going down.

Twice I had to wait real-world hours because the game told me I was progressing “too fast.” A video game telling you to touch grass is one thing. A video game telling you to touch grass because its servers need a nap is… another thing entirely.

The world, at least, is a joy to traverse—when all the traversal systems decide to work. Wall running. Triple jumping. Air dashing. It’s fantastic, until the game spontaneously forgets you have legs and refuses to let you use any of these abilities until you relog. It’s not a rare glitch. It happens constantly, as if the game is gently reminding you not to get too attached to comfort.

Where Winds Meet is funniest—not intentionally—when it throws its absurd abundance of activities at you. Yes, you can practice tai chi with a bear. Yes, you can become a battlefield medic through a card-battler minigame. Yes, you can pick herbs, fish, craft, duel, leap across rooftops, or spy on villagers to learn mystical arts that let you yeet wildlife across fields using the power of the wind. It’s hilarious, it’s creative, it’s endearing—and also once again, most of these systems flatten out quickly or drown you in loot you stop caring about.

I opened my inventory only to press Quick Advance. I opened the map only to sigh and squint at icons that stacked like unwashed dishes. The game wants you to micromanage your life the way an overbearing parent micromanages your college major.

And yet… I kept playing.

Because every now and then, Where Winds Meet hits a moment—an unscripted, bizarre, beautiful moment—that makes you feel like you’re inside a living wuxia folktale. A monk meditating on a cliff. A rogue swordsman strumming a melancholy tune in the reeds. A random encounter where a bandit, of all people, teaches you a new combat stance because he thinks your technique lacks flavor. These flashes of brilliance shine like shuriken in the sun.

But then the menus crash or the wall run bugs out or the game suddenly insists I need to do a Breakthrough Test before I may continue my heroic destiny. And the illusion shatters.

Where Winds Meet desperately wants to be everything: an open-world wuxia playground, an MMO-lite, a spiritual wanderer sim, a chaotic minigame sampler. But the result is a game that’s never bad—just never as great as it keeps hinting it could be.

Maybe one day patches will stabilize the systems and speed up the amusement park rides. But right now, this beautiful behemoth is held back by technical hiccups, design clutter, and pacing that swings harder than any of its boss battles.

And yet… man, when it works, it really works.

Verdict:

Where Winds Meet is a visually enchanting wuxia adventure with a magnetic atmosphere and a genuinely fun combat core, but it’s buried under layers of bloat, pacing issues, and technical quirks that keep it from achieving the greatness it clearly reaches for. You’ll catch glimmers of brilliance—moments worth remembering—but they’re constantly tugged down by the game’s tangled systems and overambitious design. If you love wuxia and can tolerate uneven polish, there’s magic here. Just be prepared for a lot of relogging, re-leveling, and re-reading menus.