Game: Wuthering Waves Closed Beta 2
Platform: PC & MOBILE
Genre: ARPG, Open World, Gacha, Exploration
Overview
Wuthering Waves is the most hyped-up Gacha since ToF, which inevitably flopped after only one year of its release. So far, after 15 hours of gameplay, the experience has been both negative and somehow somewhat fun, if that makes any sense.
This will be a big open world, comparable to Genshin, Breath of the Wild, and other exploration games. However, in the current state of the game, it felt very forced in its execution, as it forces you to spend massive hours of your day farming meager scraps of EXP to progress through several gated quests and side missions by doing hidden quests that simply do not appear on the map at all because this is more of a hands-on mapping experience, where when you find a location, you must mark it, but they could be hidden in a cave or behind a structure, you would never know.
Story
It is your average cliché storyline in which you are powerful but have lost your memories. While it was around 90% redone compared to the first beta, it was still very uninteresting, as were the majority of the characters. However, Lingyangs' story was quite well done, with enough flair and personality to make you love the little guy.
Issues
It's crucial to note that the game has a number of issues because it's still unfinished, dialogue is missing, and audio is absent for all languages except Mandarin.
The controls felt very clunky for everyone I played with outside of Lingyang, as if there was a slight pause before the next action could be taken, not to mention that the camera would frequently fling around in the wrong direction, causing you to lose focus or refocus onto a completely different creature if you didn't lock on with the targeting system, which also felt very messy if the target had multiple weak points.
The concept of having to run around climbing buildings and structures to gain a high vantage point and mark everything before gliding down to each one did not appeal to me. You have all of these towers that show a significant chunk of the world, but you still must search every inch of each area until it is fully complete. Until the community creates an interactive map, I don't like the concept. I would rather have a map merchant in each location to find and help reveal things for me.
I understand why Gacha games are incorporating weapons into character draws, but there is a weapons only pool, a character / weapon pool, and no characters only pool, which irritates me because you know they're doing it on purpose so that in the future they can make more money out of you or, at the very least, waste more of your time grinding to even have the chance of one of the good characters.
Graphics & Presentation
I tried Wuthering Waves on both PC and Android, and from both perspectives, PC was far more visually appealing and did not appear as pixelated as Android, as each of the character's eyes had an awful static gray effect and many other bugs. It had no influence on the gameplay, but in terms of controls and everything else, the PC was significantly better, though the key binds needed to be adjusted.
It's a very clean and attractive world with a lot to discover, but that's the issues. There is often too much to explore, while gliding around and looking down and suddenly seeing five locations right next to each other, incentivizing you to drop down and be distracted from your current objective, leaving you feeling very unrewarded when you finish them all and have to slowly run 500-1000m to that quest.
The overworld music was extremely peaceful, which likely aided the lengthy hours of wandering around discovering and unlocking each and every teleport waypoint instead of being devoid of life, and the boss battle tracks were quite engaging!
I would have loved to see more visual flare and combat combo variations, and I hope that more will be incorporated in the game's future edition and complete release, but for the time being, Lingyang was the only one who had any actual lasting impression.
Gameplay
I hate to say it, but it felt rather linear.
It felt like every time you entered a new location, the game would yell at you to go do something useless on the way, and although this can be beneficial to many open world games, it usually lasts for 3 seconds because the vast bulk of the content in this game is quick puzzles that required you to link 3–4 colors or push a box a few inches forward and then get back to what you were doing.
The best way to level up is to focus your efforts on bosses or dungeons, which costs a lot of energy to claim the rewards; however, the second way to level up is to run around finding side quests and raising your union score, which is a form of gated progression that can take 4-5 hours of your time before you can move forward.
You only get 10, 20, and 50 EXP for accomplishing content in the overworld, which I honestly believe should be increased more to give more ways to level up without feeling like you're being forced to do fetch quests. You need 1000+ to level up and requires a lot of levels. You can imagine how frustrating it can be if you can't find the hidden side quests that don't appear on the map. You must find and complete them until the game gives you the longer and more drawn-out ones.
Conclusion
I want to say I really like what I have currently been presented with, but that would only be partially true. There are so many things I would still like to see.
My one and only main concern for this game would be rushed development. I would appreciate the developer holding off and taking their time polishing out all of the bugs and faults, resulting in a game that everyone can agree is wonderful and enjoyable to play instead of being labeled the next failed Genshin killer.
The fact that I was able to play for 15 hours before becoming exhausted shows just how good this game can and could be if the right features are added to make it feel more engaging and rewarding rather than like a chore to be done every day until you eventually find what you're looking for. I would like to be challenged by events.
I don't believe it's a big deal to ask for simple character pulls, perhaps a dungeon to farm specific weapons, rather than artificially increasing the difficulty of pulling and leveling up your many different characters over the course of a year because you were unlucky enough to pull four times and only get one 4-star character.
Wuthering Waves is one of those games that has so much promise to be something, but when you see so many similarities with very few distinct changes to make it feel fresh, it can frequently come across as nothing new or exciting.
are you a beta player?
2024-05-07
I had access to the game during Beta, yes.
2024-05-08
Wuwa on May! Lesgoooo!
2024-04-01
Author liked❤️
2024-04-01
Turn to Jesus and repent of your sins, turn away because it’s a path of destruction. The Lord loves every single one of us, and he wants us all to repent so that we can truly be free. I know that sins may feel like freedom and fun but it only leads to death and destruction. Galatians 3:26-27) So in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. (John 3:16) For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. Believe in him and let him transform you into a new creation, let him guide you into the path that he wants you to go in. Repent before it’s too late.
2024-04-01
you must be really excited about the weathering waves game release? lad your here.
2024-04-04