Where Winds Meet – Review

There’s a word often used in Singapore, ‘rojak’, which is Malay for “mixture” and can refer to either a salad dish comprising mixed fruits and vegetables or similarly, the process of lumping things together willy-nilly and calling it a day. Where Winds Meet, a free-to-play, online-only wuxia RPG (role-playing game) from NetEase and developer Everstone Studios, perfectly encapsulates this phrase, as the game is a mish-mash of genres, ideas, and inspirations thrown together haphazardly, except unlike in rojak, where each ingredient complements the other, here it’s the complete opposite, resulting in a whole that’s worse than the sum of its parts.

On first glance, Where Winds Meet offers an enticing prospect, especially for those daunted by other genre staples’ emphasis on online or social aspects. Despite being an online-focused RPG, the title isn’t positioned as an MMORPG (Massively multiplayer online role-playing game), and instead offers a sprawling story campaign that can either be tackled in co-op with up to four players or done entirely solo, and this is in addition to the usual MMORPG mainstays like raids too.

Set against the Wuxia or Chinese martial arts theme, Where Winds Meet should ring familiar for those experienced in the genre. Players will take on the role of a nameless warrior wandering the lands in a fictional version of tenth-century China, venturing into the lands not just in search of riches tucked away in the multitude of dungeons or caves spread throughout, but also to seek out eight martial arts experts that litter the world to learn their secret fighting skills, all while navigating the chaotic era of political fragmentation, war, and shifting allegiances.

While this certainly sounds interesting on paper, in reality, what could be an epic tale of self-discovery turns into a mess of utter confusion and missed plot points due to the game’s atrocious use of AI machine translation for its English localisation. This is a China-made game after all, and under the guise of AI translation, those without an innate understanding of Mandarin will have to deal with awfully translated subtitles instead, which can range anywhere from head-tilting sentence structures, to complete nonsense. 

Take the wuxia, or 武俠 phrase. The first word, 武, means martial or military and in this context, martial arts, while the second word, 俠, refers to chivalry, but more of a code, which means there is no easy translation for this phrase, and the AI used here fumbles, a lot. Let’s take some simple phrases used in perhaps every other game, for example. While most, if not all, other titles use “Interact” or “Use” to describe performing actions like opening chests or collecting items, here, it’s “Enable”. Similarly, while describing points of interest that are above or below a player is simply presented in other titles with, well, “Above” and “Below”, for some reason here it’s “High Ground” or “Low Ground”.

This might seem like nitpicks, but bear in mind that these are the most basic of examples, something that Where Winds Meet already struggles with, so it’s not hard to imagine how poorly it handles an entire fictional country’s worth of in-game lore. To make things worse, the game is plagued with technical issues in this regard, from subtitles not matching to spoken words, character voices overlapping each other, or, in worst cases, voice lines not playing entirely. If you thought the plot in Kingdom Hearts was hard to follow, you’re in for a treat, as here, it’s literally a struggle.

That said, those who understand Mandarin and the concept of wuxia might find something interesting about this game, but that’s also a cultural thing as even with Star Wars or Star Trek, some things will get lost in translation when adapting either for an Asian audience. The developers clearly want the game for a global audience, but using AI to do the groundwork isn’t helping its cause.

Where Winds Meet’s complex, if not complicated, nature extends to its gameplay too, although here it’s fortunately not as negative. As a wuxia game, combat is unsurprisingly built around being flashy and high-intensity, with players equipping two of seven total weapon types, including blades, spears, fans or even umbrellas as they engage in both human and beastly threats throughout the lands.

At its core, combat draws inspiration from Sucker Punch’s Ghost of Tsushima or FromSoftware’s Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, with a heavy emphasis on patience, studying enemy attack patterns, and parrying or dodging accordingly. Getting hit or performing most actions in battle, except for well-timed parries, chips away at a player’s stamina gauge, leaving them vulnerable upon being fully depleted, making deflecting hits the most viable playstyle, especially when faced with powerful foes.

Unlike its inspirations, however, pulling off parries in Where Winds Meet is a significantly more frustrating affair, with the window for parrying or i-frames (invincibility frames) while dodging enemy attacks never feeling quite right, leading to many instances where damage is received even though it seemed like the timing was right. To make up for it, the game does offer “Assist Deflection” – another example of poor translation, as grammatically it should be “Deflection Assist” – which slows down time just as a player is about to get hit with a powerful blow, allowing them to deflect easily at the expense of depleting the stamina bar by a slight amount, but admittedly this does dampen the flow of battle.

In true MMO fashion, combat is also supplemented by a plethora of additional skills split into two categories. Weapon martial arts, which like its name suggests, are tied to specific weapons, and for some baffling reason, must be unlocked before a player is able to wield said weapon (which means that fancy great sword you just picked up won’t be usable unless you actively hunt for an associated skill), and mystic arts, powerful abilities earned by exploring the world and completing side activities, letting players perform feats like leaping to distant areas or breathing fire.

If this sounds complicated, that’s because it really is, as Where Winds Meet tries to cram in as much content as it can, regardless of quality. This is perhaps best seen in the game’s world and progression, and the lands are absolutely filled to the brim with activities to partake in and side missions to discover, alongside its main quest. Alas, it’s quantity over quality, as every major “open-world bloat” seen in similar titles is seen here, such as no shortage of fetch quests, escort missions or your standard “go to area and kill X amount of enemies” type objectives. Once in a while, players might stumble on a questline that’s actually interesting, such as controlling a Mahjong-playing dog or learning Tai Chi from a bear.

At least, while exploring the lands, players will have no shortage of sights to behold, as just like it has done with everything else, the world in Where Winds Meet is designed to overwhelm your senses, a sprawling playground of places to go and things to discover. There’s a good amount of environmental variety, too, with its many different regions mostly feeling unique, from the calm of a countryside filled with blossoming trees and tranquil lakes to snowy mountain peaks or massive walled-in cities like Kaifeng.

With so much content on offer, interesting or otherwise, praise must still be given to Where Winds Meet for its fair handling of monetisation despite being a free-to-play title, especially in such a crowded genre filled with titles that operate on egregious systems to squeeze out as much real-world currency as possible. Players are given access to the entirety of the game, which can easily span 30 to 40 hours for a single playthrough, without spending a single cent, with monetisation limited to only fancy cosmetics for those who want to make their characters stand out. Here, it’s pay to look good, not pay to win, and that alone is deserving of respect.

Overall, it’s Where Winds Meet’s most ambitious goal, its sense of scale and the desire to throw as many different gameplay systems as possible at the player, that are ultimately its undoing. Yes, players can lose dozens, if not hundreds, of hours in its world doing anything from exploring, questing, fishing and the like, but the main issue is that none of these systems are actually particularly fleshed out, making the game just a massive bunch of bloat just with an incredibly enticing price of admission.

Kevin Low

Kevin is a reformed PC Master Race gamer with a penchant for franchise “duds” like Darksiders III and Dead Space 3. He has made it his life-long mission to play every single major game release – lest his wallet dies trying.