After being available in China for almost a year, Where Winds Meet is finally out worldwide. As I noted in my review, I had been following this game with curiosity, I had my doubts, but I was ultimately excited by the promise of a vast open world with an engaging, wuxia-based combat system. On top of that, all of the playable content was promised to be completely free, yes, the entire single-player, as well as the PvE and PvP campaigns, were not gated behind paid content.
It felt too good to be true, but all of that turned out to be completely accurate, nothing related to in-game progression is locked behind real money. The game has now been out for a few days and, at the time of writing this feature, it has already reached 2 million players in the last 24 hours, a stunning achievement for a game that faced a lot of apprehension from some players leading up to its launch. Not only that, it managed to reach a peak player count of 193,860 with over 180,000 active players at the time of writing.
It also became one of the top 5 most played games on Steam, reached the top 3 on the PlayStation Network across seven regions, and was among Steam’s top 7 sellers. It’s fair to say that Everstone’s efforts with Where Winds Meet are seriously paying off. Whether it will be able to sustain this launch success remains to be seen, but for now, Where Winds Meet seems to be one of the most addictive games of the year.
Why exactly? Well, the first reason is obvious: it’s a free-to-play game that doesn’t lock gameplay mechanics behind real money. As soon as you begin, you’re thrown into this open world (currently two areas), and it’s absolutely loaded with content. There are two huge locations to start with: Qinghe and Kaifeng. Both have been intricately designed and are absolutely gorgeous to look at.
Obviously, the animations and facial capture are not of the highest quality, but what’s here is largely acceptable. You have your story missions, which will require you to delve into the “Gold-Making Vessel,” a treasure that conceals a sinister purpose. This will likely be an ongoing narrative, with more story threads and cutscenes being added over time in the future. However, the main core of the experience lies in the several kinds of activities you can take up elsewhere in the game.
The core side missions vary by area and are organized into different volumes, with some of them taking more than half an hour to complete. They’re intriguing to play through and will often take you to places with grand vistas and even a boss fight or two. Then there are random encounters, some short and some so in-depth that they may be better than the story missions. You may find these encounters just by roaming the world, stumbling upon a suspicious dungeon and triggering the encounter by entering it. Once again, the attention to detail and environmental variety is key here, and it’s all so well done.
Back in July, lead designer Chris Lyu laid out Everstone’s ambitions for Where Winds Meet in an interview with TechRadar. He talked about wanting to build a game that didn’t really have a precedent, the hurdles the team faced in trying to do so, and what they’d learned from the feedback of players who took part in its various playtests.
“What we hope to create is a really immersive world experience, that was our core goal when we created this project,” said Lyu. “Of course, we ran into a lot of difficulties. Since no other studio has made this kind of game before, we didn’t have a lot of references.”
“The overall response has been pretty great and we’ve got a lot of positive reviews. Some of them would post videos of them playing and those videos would generate a lot of comments from others. Also, the response to the storyline has been great. A lot of players would burst into tears at the most moving parts and I think that created a lot of talk about the game.”
There are also many errands, some may be as simple as a brief conversation, while others might take you to a nearby area. Think of them as your usual fetch quests, the kind you tackle when you’re feeling a bit bored of other activities or just want another excuse to unlock more of the game’s numerous teleport points. And the world bosses? There are, once again, a dozen or so of them, with some being genuinely challenging unless you’ve hit a certain level, and that’s on top of the campaign bosses you’ll encounter.
Heck, even the Martial Arts mastery sets are tied to these side quests, and can be obtained through multiple methods, such as joining a faction or taking part in a stealth focused heist where you infiltrate a dungeon and steal the required skills. In short, every mission type is built around character progression, and the game never misses an opportunity to reward you with in-game currency and upgrade materials. There’s a constant cycle of completing and being rewarded, and that was one of the primary reasons it hooked both me and so many other players.
All of this wouldn’t be nearly as much fun if there wasn’t an engaging combat and progression loop holding it together. Instead of just the familiar sword spear, Where Winds Meet also lets you wield far flashier tools of destruction: think an elegant umbrella, a razor-edged fan, or a deadly rope dart.
As I mentioned in my review, the game puts a heavy emphasis on progression, you’re essentially upgrading the heck out of everything. Each Martial Arts set (which essentially functions as a different weapon type) has its own set of special moves, and they’re an absolute blast to pull off.
As mentioned previously, NPC animations aren’t particularly impressive, but the combat animations are stellar. The way your character moves, the impact of punches and kicks, it all looks and feels insane and over the top, which is exactly what you want given the genre. Then there’s the Arena mode (the PvP component), which is an absolute blast as you try to outplay other players in various versus setups, or you can simply roam the world and do whatever you want while tagging along with a friend. The length and breadth of what you can do in this rich, detailed world is outstanding, and it’s wild to think that all of this is free-to-play.
Sure, things can get grindy, but as someone who loves to explore every nook and cranny of open-world games, I didn’t find it overly grindy, at least during the first dozen hours or so. The existing economy system is definitely complex, and the game throws dozens of systems at you almost at once, which can be intimidating. But if you’re patient and take the time to learn how everything works, you might just end up experiencing one of the best action role-playing games of the year.
Look, I understand that free to play games are not everyone’s cup of tea. Some people simply don’t like the model, and that’s completely fine. But for players like me, who enjoy taking in all the sights, laying the smackdown on tough bosses and dumb enemies, and just having some fun along the way, Where Winds Meet doesn’t just meet your expectations, it absolutely smashes them.
Note: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, GamingBolt as an organization.
