I fought a bear with an umbrella in this new soulslike MMO that plays like Genshin Impact with way better combat

If there's one thing that bugs me about Genshin Impact, it's the combat. Exploring its pretty open world is all fine and great until the moment you're dumped into a boss fight and realize it's a baby's first action RPG where every move you make is tied to one annoying little stamina bar.

Even though Genshin Impact is about much more than its combat, I've always wished there was more to it than leveling up individual pieces of gear until you can trivialize every encounter. Swapping characters isn't even that fun to do when the best strategy is to have most of them act as cooldowns you press every once in a while. Once I found myself stuck in this routine, I stopped playing it.

Thankfully, despite all of this, Genshin Impact is so massively popular that it has inspired a few other action games that push its style of combat closer to something I'd actually enjoy doing for a couple hours a day.

I had never heard of Where Winds Meet before playing several hours of its recent beta. It didn't take long to discover that it works like extremely a post-Genshin Impact open world action game. You play as one character who can wield multiple weapons, and you'll dump all kinds of materials into leveling them up as you finish quests and explore new regions. You can't walk 10 feet without finding a glowing treasure chest or some shiny flower to pick up.

There's still a little stamina bar next to your character that depletes as you sprint and triple-jump up mountains, but it doesn't ruin the combat. Where Winds Meet is what you get if you took the fast, parry-heavy combat of Sekiro and padded it with bigger health bars and more forgiving margins for error. I actually flipped on a parry assist option that turned them into quick-time-events, which give you the thrill of clashing blades with your enemy without the frustration of mistiming it.

An early quest let me pick a starting weapon and one of the options was an umbrella that does ranged attacks. I'm not usually an archer kind of player, but I think I could be an umbrella wizard type of player. I flung magic at bandits like the umbrella was my wand, and one move I learned let it hover above me showering enemies with magic projectiles.

It was a duel against a mysterious swordswoman under a blood red sky that made me realize Where Winds Meet makes its strongest argument: If the combat isn't going to be that tough, it should look cool as hell. I'm not going to say parrying her was hard, but it was a joy to watch as our blades met and my character overpowered her, dealing loads of damage to her big health bar.

Not once did I have to wait for my stamina to refill because I did too many heavy attacks or dodged too much. Unlike Genshin, that is reserved for exploration. Where Winds Meet seems designed to give you the thrill of playing a soulslike without having to deal with the fussy parts that lock out anyone who isn't interested in spending hours trying to beat a single encounter.

New flavor

I couldn't tell you what exactly is going on in Where Winds Meet's story. The localization in the beta is kind of rough and much of the dialogue is hard to follow. One of its many menus has pages and pages of text to read through if that's your thing, but I spent most of my time just seeing where the quests would lead me.

Most of what you're asked to do is talk to people and explore what are essentially underground dungeons filled with enemies and puzzles to solve. I shot explosive barrels with fire arrows and burned vines to open passageways. Everything is pretty typical for a free-to-play game that is more interested in your time than your skills. There are some MMO trappings here, too: Other players don't show up in the world, but at any time you can call on them to assist you, and I expect that will become more important deeper into your journey.

Mounting a horse to gallop across fields and through forests actually reminded me a lot of Assassin's Creed Shadows. The setting's different, of course, but Where Winds Meet gives you a similar amount of downtime to enjoy the scenery as you move from objective marker to objective marker. You can turn off the UI and travel in whatever direction you want. I found cats to pet, bears to fight, and a purple wisp that led me to a rare flower to pick.

The more I ignored the wall of notifications beckoning me to collect daily login rewards and battle pass unlocks, the more I enjoyed my time; Where Winds Meet isn't out here rethinking what it means to be a free-to-play game where there are tons of cosmetics and rare materials to earn. As far as I can tell, however, you can only roll on cosmetic items as opposed to weapons or characters like in most gacha games. The shop is full of fancy dresses and masks you can buy with a premium currency, but none of was actually available to purchase in the beta I played.

Where Winds Meet is already available in China and is slated to come out in the West before the end of the year. While I doubt it's going to pull away any diehard Genshin Impact players, it might be a worthy contender for anyone looking for something a little less anime and a lot more soulslike—but without the brutal difficulty. And, like I said, you can fight a bear with a magical umbrella. Can Genshin Impact do that? I didn't think so.