Where Winds Meet First Impressions

I love martial arts films, and recently I’ve begun to dip my toe more into Wuxia dramas and series. For a long time, I wanted to be able to play a game that captured the same style of fluid, gorgeous choreography in its combat. For a long time, I couldn’t find something that quite matched what I was looking for, until Where Winds Meet.

Admittedly, Where Winds Meet is a game I’ve had my eye on for some time. Since it was announced, I was intrigued, and as the dev team released trailers, I got increasingly excited. However, I’ve learned in recent years to temper my expectations, because it is difficult to capture the game feel of a genre and art form that has been developed for decades. Where Winds Meet surprisingly (at least so far) captures it in spades.

The first thing I hear you saying is “Ugh, is this another Honkai Star Rail situation where you try to justify a game with microtransactions?” and to that I say, maybe. The microtransactions are there, but they speak for themselves. They’re cosmetic only, and you can choose how much (or how little) you engage with them. In that regard, the microtransactions (while annoying in general) aren’t as bad as they could be. I’m also not going to go too deep into whether the monetization system is good or not, because frankly, I have not played enough yet to say for sure. This is my first impressions after a few hours of play, not a full review.

Combat is very accessible in terms of difficulty. In fact, the developers have made Where Winds Meet friendly for players of all sorts of skill levels. At least, the solo play is friendly enough. I can’t speak to how friendly the multiplayer is because frankly, I haven’t needed to engage with it. The developers have designed things so that you don’t need to engage in PVP or any multiplayer content unless you truly want to, and I appreciate that.

Something to talk about, though, involves the NPCs in Where Winds Meet. I’m sure you’ve already heard by now that Where Winds Meet contains NPCs that serve as AI chatbots. Not all the NPCs work this way, and they are surprisingly easy to mess with. One player I’ve read about already convinced one of the NPCs that he was the father of their child.

I don’t support the use of AI instead of programming NPCs by real people. However, the developer already has them here, so if you ask me, I’d say enjoy messing with them however you wish. I’ve avoided the NPCs that utilize this functionality, since they’re totally optional as far as I can tell.

Getting the conversations about monetization and AI chatbots out of the way, let’s talk about the story. While I’m still very early in the story, it feels like a very intriguing mystery. Your character is a child rescued by a mysterious warrior. You have been raised in a small village, largely removed from the rest of the world. You long to explore and become a hero; thus, your journey begins with a fateful encounter.

It’s standard fare for a Wuxia story, but considering the game’s map (including unreleased areas) is massive, I can imagine that the storyline will be a sprawling epic. You can choose to join one of many Martial Arts Sects, abiding by their rules (or being kicked out) to roleplay living by their creed. Alternatively, you can be “sectless” and still learn skills by utilizing “skill theft” from other creatures. I learned Tai Chi from a bear, then proceeded to throw said bear into a pile of rocks to uncover treasure.

This is also the type of open-world RPG where you will lose hours just finding little secrets and side quests along the way. I started out telling myself I’d focus on the story for this article, then spent the first five hours just doing small environmental puzzles, exploring a dungeon tomb, and more.

The mobility is amazing, with movement elements like triple jump, dash, wall-running, and more available at the very beginning of the game. I joked with a friend that I felt like a Skyrim horse, because the game allowed me to run up a mountain with very little resistance at all. What’s even better is that there is usually something to be found off the beaten path, some kind of collectible or environmental puzzle.

It also helps that the environment itself is probably the most beautiful world I’ve played (in a visual sense) in a long time. Grass sways as you walk through it, the water ripples with crystal clarity, and petals and leaves move with your character’s strikes. I can imagine that people may struggle to play Where Winds Meet on lower systems, but considering that Where Winds Meet is planned for mobile platforms, it might not be as much of a struggle as I’d think.

Overall, Where Winds Meet impressed me beyond words in my first few hours. It isn’t perfect; you can look at the AI Chatbot NPCs and see that. However, beyond that and the monetization, there’s a love for Wuxia and a lush open world ready for exploration. The dev team is also transparent about their process of squashing bugs and improving performance too, which is great. I can’t say how long I’ll stick with Where Winds Meet, but it will be a world I’ll explore for quite some time.