Last week, we published our review of Where Winds Meet, the free-to-play quasi-MMO open world action-RPG with soulslike combat. The review was based on an “Early Access” build for the media that still has unfinished features as well as bugs.
While this happens all the time, this is the first instance where Gamer Matters got access to an early build of an upcoming game that’s by far incredibly inferior to the actual, release build available to the public.
After spending another 20 hours into the live version of Where Winds Meet, here are some additional notes on some of the criticisms we had with the game that has either be addressed, fixed or virtual non-existent in the live game.
The Technical Performance
In our review, we noted that “technically lacking, so many pop-ins, low-res textures and NPCs animated at lower framerates.” The live version of Where Winds Meet still struggles with performance, but not as bad as we described. The pop-ins aren’t as aggressive though you can still see it in moments where cinematic camera cuts between different landscape shots.
The drawback to this is that low-res textures are more prominent than the Early Access build we saw. Frame rate dips also drops more regularly.
That said, the overall beauty of the 10th-century semi-historical, fantastical take on China is presented in a better light with these compromises.
The abrupt weather and lighting changes is just the same as we previously experienced, it can make you disoriented as you literally can’t see stuff for a moment or two. That’s still a problem.
The English Localisation
In our review, we describe Where Winds Meet “needs another pass to make the localisation feels just right to the ears of English speakers” with full knowledge that the Early Access build doesn’t have the finalised English texts yet. The live version’s dialogue reads better and sounds better. A lot of the ability names and features are entirely renamed, for the better.
There are still hints of the old unoptimised texts, however. The Martial Arts “Nameless Sword” and “Nameless Spear” are still described as “Noname Sword” and “Noname Spear” like the Early Access builds.
However, there is one odd choice the live build has made, specifically in one side quest. There is a puzzle that requires you to display specific Chinese symbols for a puzzle. The clue is given as this specific phrase.
In the Early Access version, the clue for this is both written in English and displayed in Chinese text, designed to hint at this being a clue to solve the puzzle.
The live release for whatever reason omitted this.
Thankfully, the game’s online signposts have players sharing images of the puzzle’s solution, but that robs out English-speaking players out of working out the puzzle on their own, which was possible when it had that text. The devs should stick to their guns and make us players learn a little Chinese, and I think what they did in the Early Access build I played before was in the right direction, but just need to have all the Chinese text translated into the player-chosen text language on top of it.
The Character Progression
In our review, we describe Where Winds Meet’s character progression as “unnecessarily convoluted.” While the systems we experienced are all there, there has been some significant balance changes to make the process less overwhelming.
You don’t have to deal with breaking the level cap every ten levels, the first only appear at Level 15, giving players enough breathing room to just explore the world before having to meddle with its RPG systems.
The clearer English text makes it much easier to find out where exactly the materials for levelling up the various systems can be attain.
It’s still a lot of busywork, but at least the live version feels more manageable.
The Monetisation
Where Winds Meet is a free-to-play game, and the way it monetises it is via cosmetics. Prices for the most luxurious cosmetics are a little absurd, going upwards of RM200 (the price of a AAA game just for a hairstyle and an apparel that may or may not include extra accessories!).
The cheapest denominator for its premium currency bundle costs RM5 and for a limited time, several cosmetic sets can be purchased by that same, exact value of RM5.
The gacha offers rare customisation drops, but the duds you can get from a bad draw are awful. You’ll be getting a lot of consumables, things you can craft or buy with in-game currency to pad out the rare cosmetic item. I
f you like the idea of going online with other players and throw out consumable fireworks, gacha away, you’ll be getting a lot of those. You do gain special currency for drawing enough gacha to be spent on an item shop, however. But they don’t have the cool outfits you’d want from the gacha draws.
Some outfits can be dyed freely, but there’s a catch: there are two different dye items and they offer a different colour palette. The cheaper dye item, the one you regularly accrue through gameplay, limits the colour saturation so you can’t get those deep reds or yellows (cooler colours like green are fine). The rarer dye item is the one you want to properly colour your outfits. At least you have access to the full colour wheel in either dye options.
If the publisher can regularly offer cosmetics at a more affordable price (Under RM30 is within impulse-buy territory, but not more) that should help get players to keep playing and maybe throw in a little tiny purchase as a way to say thanks. But outside of the few whales out there, the top-tier cosmetics are out of reach for the reasonable spender.
Closing Thoughts
The rest of the points on our review of Where Winds Meet still stands, but it’s important for us to address that the experience we had with the game certainly doesn’t match at all with the live version that more than 2 million players have witnessed. It’s actually a better game that what we were led to believe.
Where Winds Meet is out now on PS5 and PC (Steam, standalone launcher).