Black Myth Wukong Review
Aug. 22, 2024Black Myth Wukong Review
In thisBlack Myth Wukong Review, we’ll take a deep dive into the recently released Action Adventure game by Game Science. The title was in development for many years and is the culmination of an enormous effort from the developer to bring a beloved asian story to a wider audience. So how does it play? Does it live up to the hype? Is it worth buying at full price? Read on to find out.
If it wasnt already obvious,Black Myth: Wukong’sstory is based on the legendary chinese classical tale Journey to the West, a story about a powerful monkey reaching great heights of power, getting humbled and reaching enlightenment. If you follow our channel, you probably saw that we had some extensive coverage on the game’s setting and lore in a previous video titled “The Mythical Origins of Black Myth Wukong“. In that video, we explained the basics of Journey to the West, which I highly recommend you watch before you play to get a full understanding of the scale of this ficitonal work.
As a person fairly familiar with Journey to the West thanks to personal interest and my extensive knowledge of asian folklore from lots of travelling, I can confidently say that this game is pushing the boundaries for the quantity and quality of content based on their source material. Seeing these legendary myths and places onscreen was thrilling and it feels like modern gaming is finally arriving at its long overdue Asian myth exploration phase. Its clear a lot of passion went into this part of the game, with literally any enemy or boss having at least 4 paragraphs of lore each in the journal section, and bosses having these cool mechanics that are probably original ideas, but just fit in so well with the mythos and setting. I genuinely cannot stress enough how well the content of Journey of the West has been used to fit into an ARPG format, and its ridiculous how a completely new studio managed to find the hours to fit all this content in.
Unfortunately though, there is one problem; the events of Black Myth Wukong will probably be extremely confusing for most people unfamiliar with the work it is based on. This is in part because the game avoids having lengthy exposition, with most of the background story explained via the Journal. I feel like the game tried but failed to give enough exposition for new players who dont want to read paragraphs upon paragraphs of lore, who will just end up floating along with the story to enjoy their cool boss rush gameplay. It doesnt help that 30% of the time, dialogue is spoken in confusing Chinese poems which are incredibly hard to translate into english with the same meaning, which means alot of exposition is just lost for most players. This was to be expected though, as Journey to the West and basically any other classical Chinese media is filled with poems that are incredibly hard to understand without a good understanding of Chinese.
In terms of the game’splot and progression, pacing and general storytelling left much to be desired to live up to the greatness of the works its inspired by. I expect most people will be confused and only have a mild or passing interest in the creatures they are facing, as ultimately the focus of this game is the gameplay, and the story seems to exist just to support your progression. The monkey you play as will randomly appear in different locations throughout the game without much explanation as to how or why, which was also incredibly strange. All in all though, the setting of Black Myth Wukong has to be one of the best executions in recent years for gaming, but its a shame that most players wont be able to understand 90% of it.
Moving onto gameplay, as an action adventure game with some mild rpg elements, Black Myth Wukong puts most of its points into Combat, and delivers a very interesting experience that can be described as a more complex version of God of Wars quite simple combat system. The overall gameplay loop can feel a bit dull at times, with normal enemies feeling like a chore, but this is countered by excellent boss variety.
The gamescombatsystem is at first very hard to understand due to a very lackluster tutorial, but can be learned as you go along. You have a health, mana and stamina bar, a vessel slot, a spirit summon slot, a focus meter, 3 stances and 4 spells. The combat revolves around the signatureweapon, Wukong’s mythical staff the Ruyi Jingu Bang, which can be swapped out and upgraded as you go along using variouscrafting materialsand boss drops that you find in your travels. Using light attacks and heavy attacks with your staff consumes stamina, and you want to be dodging enemy attacks as well as using occasional jumping heavy or light attacks.
The staff has three unlockable stances that each have their ownskill line. Each of the 3 stances have a different heavy attack that can be enhanced by using focus points found in the bottom right; the main way to gain focus is by spamming light attacks, but you can also just charge a heavy attack after staggering anenemy. Each stance will also have a unique Varied Attack, which is when you input a heavy attack after any number of light attacks. This makes for great variety on paper, with 3 different heavy attacks and varied combos for different situations and enemies. However, more often then not, I found myself leaning into 1 heavy attack and 1 varied attack for most of my playthrough, as the default stone stance has a very powerful hyperarmor mechanic on the varied move, and the pillar stance has a very safe, massive ranged heavy attack.
The next most commonly used combat method involvespells. As you progress in the game, you get spells which you can slot up to 4 of which are incredibly powerful, but also very resource hungry. Most spells will have a cooldown of around 1 minute, and take a sizeable chunk of your mana bar which cannot be regenerated without special items or resting at a shrine. This is a good limitation though, as it forces the player to learn how to manage their resources againstbosseswithout going trigger happy on spells, making the gameplay feel more methodical and less button mashy. Spells get even more awesome later on, and one slot will be reserved for special transformations that allow you to temporarily turn into specific enemies and use their unique abilities until your meter runs out.
The last two combat abilities are like ultimate abilities; thevesseland thespirit summon. Vessels are special items which you can find by defeating secret bosses in the game, and are tailored to counter the final boss of the current chapter. They usually have a special passive effect like damage reduction or critical hit chance, as well as an active ability. The spirit summon is the same, giving you a passive effect as well as an active effect where you briefly turn into an enemy and use one of their signature attacks.
With all of these options paired with the RPG sprinkled in from armor set bonuses, accessories, weapon upgrades and special relic passives, there is a decent amount of build potential and variety in this game, but unfortunately I feel like most people will be funnelled into using the same overpowered abilities. There is room for experimentation, but its just very clear which builds will be the strongest based on which spell they complement the best.
In the end, you will have to master the art rolling and attacking to fight in Black Myth: Wukong. The game offers a satisfying rotation of spells and abilities that, when executed perfectly, can decimate bosses. However, the high cooldowns to these crazy abilities keep your basic dodging and attacking skills on point. The combat system is overall very solid, though it could benefit from a few buffs and adjustments on certain abilities.
Unfortunately, the rest of the gameplay loop suffers from the laser-focus on boss fights. While generally beautiful, the level design has the very outdated choice of “invisible walls” that feel a bit like someone printed a view and pasted it on your window. There’s something about Wukong’s level design that makes it seem really linear and corridor-like despite its gorgeous environments, which made me them feel very claustrophobic.
As the game progresses, thelevelsdo open up and improve, eventually introducing shortcuts and offering many special unlockables and secrets for those who are observant, including entire areas hidden behind NPC quests.Chapter 2in particular stands out as my favorite for this reason, featuring two incredible secret bosses and solid level design. However, despite these improvements, the level design still falls short of the standards set by top-tier games in the industry, leaving me somewhat underwhelmed by the exploration of the beautiful, Chinese-inspired environments.
Another issue I encountered with exploration is that the enemies outside of boss fights never stop feeling like a chore. Since we have this high cooldown, resource taxing combat system, you often feel forced to rely on basic light attacks against most enemies which can feel tedious and unsatisfying. I frequently found myself frustrated when facing groups of regular enemies, as it felt like a roadblock to the otherwise fantastic boss battles.
Overall, the gameplay loop is very simple and does not require much thought or consideration. You progress through a fairly linear levels, encounter a few standard enemies, discover secrets orNPCsthat can lead to epic boss battles and valuable rewards, and then face a few minor bosses before confronting the main one. Along the way, you’ll gather plants to craft potions and perhaps farm materials to purchase the latest unlockable armor set
Black Myth Wukong is a beautiful game. Developed in Unreal Engine 5 and with an incredibly creative and unique art direction, it stands out as one of the most impressive-looking titles you’ll see this year. Game Science have succesfully managed to bring forth the aesthetics of ancient China and general Chinese mythology, making them the star of their game in even the smallest of details.
I thoroughly enjoyed the artistic choices and beautiful environments from the very start of the captivating opening cutscenes, and it had the support of a fantastic soundtrack and great voice acting which is best experienced in Chinese.
Unfortunately, Performance-wise the game has some issues. I played the game both on PS5 and PC to get a clear idea of how the experience differs. For the PS5, the “Balance” and “Quality” options are virtually unplayable. Fortunately there’s a “Performance mode” that brings the FPS up to 60 and serves well enough, but even then I still experienced a few crashes in my playthrough.
In terms of PC performance, the average FPS will change based on the area you are in. Chapter 1 was the worst, with my AMD Ryzen 9 and 3090 only managing around 50 FPS with max settings and DLSS off, but most other areas are a stable 70 FPS. I had no crashes, but there are a few visual bugs within the game which can be jarring, but nothing game breaking.
Black Myth Wukong’s main campaign is around 30 hours, but this is highly dependent on your skill level and observation. Since the game features multiple missable secrets, its rather easy to accidentally skip content and miss out on special locations, collectibles and loot. I would expect a completionist playthrough to take a decent player 60 hours.
In terms of replayability, I feel there’s little to be done, as once you have experienced the story there isnt much incentive to move forward into NG+ and beyond. There are a few new upgrades to try out, but people will most likely play this game once and be done with it, as is common with action-adventure games in general.
Because of this, our pricepoint recommendation for this game also suffers. While it provides a uniquely dressed adventure with Asia’s Superman that is fully worth experiencing, it is also a one-playthrough game in an industry were many gamers make purchasing decisions based on playtime. Personally, I think there’s little reason to buy this on day one unless you’re really excited to play since you know the myth. This is a title that you should absolutely get to playing, but it’s also easy to leave it for later when it comes down in price a bit.
Black Myth Wukong is a remarkable achievement by a studio completely new to ARPGs who are challenging themselves to spread their culture to a global scale. With the incredible success of the game in China and positive reception elsewhere, they have without a doubt set the stage for more aspiring studios from China to bring their creativity and unique aesthetics forward, such as the upcoming Phantom Blade 0 or Where Winds Meet.
The games setting is one of the best I have ever seen in gaming, but the story lacks a way to explain itself to people who havent read Journey to the West and arent familiar with Son Wukong. The slogs in between bosses are also quite a setback, but when you do get to those big moments, thats when the gameplay and visuals carry the experience, with a well done combat system, phenomenal boss designs and some incredibly cinematic fights that will blow you away.
I wouldnt recommend this at a 60$ price point unless you are familiar with Journey to the West, since there are some performance issues and the story is hard to understand, but this is a game you should definitely buy when its on sale.
Black Myth: Wukong mirrors Sun Wukong himself — imperfect yet charming. Despite its flaws, the world of Journey to the West has been masterfully adapted into an ARPG format with great combat and fantastic visuals, and we’re here for it.
Fexelea
MMO raider by day and guide writer by night, Fex enjoys multiplatform gaming, good books and animes, and streaming with a cold beer.
