What makes a good open world game? First, the game needs to look beautiful with the scenery, then the game needs to have a thrilling story. Then you need to have characters that make you love them and finally the game has to have plenty of things to do in the world. Where the Winds Meets, is an example of a game that has all these factors but still has some issues.
The moment you start the game you’re brought into a beautiful world set in ancient China during the Ten Kingdoms period. The scenery is breathtaking and you’re immediately thrown into battle for the tutorial. You start on horse back being chased as the characters give you some backstory as to why all this is happening. Then after a tutorial fight you’re given your first boss fight where it teaches you how to block and counter. Then the real game begins.
After the tutorial you get to create your young sword master, a wanderer who lives outside official ranks and forges their own code while drifting from place to place. The customization options are incredible. You basically create someone from scratch. Not only do you choose the gender, you can adjust the cheek bone, face adjustment, hair style, etc. There aren’t many games that have this amount of customization, making it so the likeness of making a similar character to someone else less likely and you can truly personalize your character. The events kick off when your precious jade pendant is stolen,and you have to go through the gorgeous regions of Kaifeng and Qinghe. As the story progresses, the tone turns darker with a few familiar twists along the way. This game is a jack pack with everything you need to enjoy this game. The story will send you to lavish palaces, haunted caves, and dank dungeons with a handful of memorable moments that would be amazing, if the English localization made exchanges between characters less dense. The game is also plagued by weird technical issues like voice lines running over one another. Subtitles tend to not match the words coming from the characters mouths, or voices will go missing entirely.
The action in this game looks like it came out of a Wuxia fiction movie. These movies usually feature a young and masterless wanderer looking to find their place in a world. The main campaign is only two chapters but they last a long time. With some diversions into side quests and mini game dabbling, they take about 30-40 hours to complete, and while each ties up their own stories well, it leaves the journey of your wanderer on a rather unsatisfying cliffhanger.
The side quests vary from great to mediocre, but are still interesting. Some are a fetch quest, while another has you join some half-naked martial arts school trainees in what seems like a sort of hazing ritual. There’s a lot to these stories that you don’t really see in other RPGs like this, but they are covered with way more technical blemishes that end up undercutting the main story.
The combat is flashy and energetic as you’d hope for this type of game. You have the choice of the seven weapons, each feeling distinct and dangerous, and some of these even have different styles to discover that can change the patterns of your normal and heavy attacks, as well as the weapon skills you can unleash. You can equip two at a time, providing different kinds of offenses that might give you some much needed flexibility – but the weapons are classed into support, DPS, and tank types, and I recommend you use two weapons that match their distinctions, since switching between them will give you greater synergies, but feel free to experiment with different combinations to find your play style. An example of a good combination is a spear and glaive combo, which will make you a tank and the two weapons will actually buff each other, if you use specific abilities in certain combinations with this loadout. Switching between the two weapons is very easy to do and it flows with combat making the battles even more fun to enjoy.
In conclusion, Where Winds Meet, while having some issues that will affect the whole experience, it is still a fun experience. From a great character creation, interesting characters, and a story that draws you in, Where Winds Meet has potential to be a diamond with just some more polish.
Score: 7 out of 10
Reviewed on PlayStation 5