Games worth discovering

BLACK MYTH WUKONG - IS IT AS GOOD AS THEY CLAIM?

2K View2024-08-28

Black Myth Wukong

Developer: Game Science

Publisher: Game Science

Released: August 19th, 2024

Price: 59.99 USD

Sure is

Black Myth Wukong has been the talk of the town in almost every community and outlet since its release in a very positive view, but if you've been paying attention to most reviews and coverage, you might notice a comments from a wide spectrum of players. It ranges from jokes to serious discussions, yet you seldom hear much talk about it in a negative view, which has a few people feeling very skeptical and questioning if it is actually good or not since you can't always take them seriously.

As someone who does not play much Dark Souls or difficult style games, I can attest to the game's positive reception among players. It's definitely on the list for game of the year even if you're someone who doesn't understand JTTW background lore.

Black Myth Wukong is not as gloomy as Dark Souls, Seikiro, or Bloodborne; in all honesty, I really like that because finally we get a game that seems a little more vivid and colorful, less decrepit, and more loaded with mythology and story telling than say an extremely difficult world full of death everywhere you look which is a bit too dark.

Issues

Waiting with combat

This is more a complaint about the game's combat. It is not tough; it is simply built in such a manner that you must wait for a certain amount of time before hitting certain targets, namely bosses. They leap far away, out of the arena which forces you to focus solely on avoiding with perfect dodges or stone parries before striking them. Basically you're punished for being aggressive, and rewarded for learning.

Controller VS Keyboard

The other thing I didn't enjoy was the controller configuration for using vessels. To activate your vessel, you must press (RT) and (L-Analog Button), which briefly opens up the UI. I guess owing to the not so ease of access? Just for comparison keyboard and mouse do not have this issue because all you have to do is press (T) by default which doesn't open up any overlay. It takes a bit to get use to but it did get in the way some times because it wouldn't always activate when I needed it to so I kind of just resorted to press (T) and then going back to controller.

Settings & Frame Rate

While launching the game, I had to fiddle with a few of the game's settings to get it to run better because Shadows and Illumination seemed to cause the frame rate to max out your GPU settings even with frame limiters; however, the Accelerated Hardware setting appeared to fix that issue, and the game itself ran flawlessly after that.

Lore

Improves the experience

I've never read or watched Journey to the West and I can't say that I am very knowledgeable about it. I'm more familiar with Japanese mythology than I am with Chinese mythology so a lot of the background story telling isn't very comprehensible or something I feel like most or even I can truly understand unless we get some background about it ahead of time which I highly recommend you do.

In my most basic explanation of what the game showed for the first two chapters. Sun Wukong is beaten by Erlang because of the Golden Circlet, which binds him to the Celestial Rules. He is sealed away in a rock, and his legend continues on via those who are destined to carry on his legacy of gathering the relics spread across the world so he might once rise again.

I don't know much about Buddhist monks or their cultural traditions, let alone Sun Wukong and his Journey or even the history behind his Golden Circlet. Though, based on what I've heard from those who live in this type of culture, it appears to go into a lot of detail without feeling disrespectful and true to the source material all the way through with no filler. For me a lot of the story does fly over my head, but it's not really confusing because you don't really need to know much about it to enjoy the rest of the base game. Just consider this to be a bonus if you're someone who has read the book or lived in this type of culture.

Presentation

Impressive to say the least

This is definitely more on the cinematic side of things when it comes to visuals, with several fly-by camera perspectives from meditation areas all around the world to the many different camera elements used during boss fights and even flying scenes.

Boss battles, terrains, monasteries, and, most importantly, the lighting in this game are exceptional. You could find yourself taking on a boss only to have it disappear into the shadows, which behaves as shadows should with the sun nearby blinding you or a sandstorm that lowers your perceivable vision. This might lead you to lose track of their movements and incoming skills and body motions, which can be frustrating in a good way, but it's the first time I've seen a Souls-like game use this style of visual element to enhance gameplay and it's all thanks to Unreal Engine 5.

As I progress through each chapter, I see more aspects, like music becoming more focused on a spiritual level, rather than being utilized just for boss fights or cinematic moments in full Chinese, which I thought was actually very pleasant.

I respect a clean interface

It's very neat, with Wukong in the center of the image, simple stats on the right, all of your settings and sections at the top, and gear and gourds nicely lined up for your ease of navigation. No need to rest to level up, you can level up whenever you want only having to using resting places as a place to reset your allocated skills for free.

Gameplay

Fun

Think of the gameplay as a combo system, similar to the classic God of War titles. It's more about avoiding a lot of the skills and boss combos, getting everything down, and praying they don't randomize their rotation before you phase them. Mostly since this revolves around Sun Wukong, you have the ability to transform yourself into foes you have defeated while using the power of spirits that you have acquired to aid you.

It's definitely exciting to learn each boss and combine different styles, than with similar games of this genre. There aren't many things to explore besides materials, but if you pay attention, there are plenty of secret bosses to encounter & reward well!

Massive diversity

I kept getting the impression that the combat itself, while very responsive and fun with the array of skills and transformations you can equip for yourself, and of course being able to reset your skills to try something new as you level up, was difficult not because it is, but because a lot of the combat itself is the typical attack, wait, back off until you figure out the enemies rotations and then it's just attack, perfect dodge, attack, perfect dodge. It's a rewarding system for sitting back and playing it safe.

Conclusion

So far it's great

I'm certainly having fun with the game, which is surprising given that this isn't a genre I play frequently; I don't mind frustrating gameplay, and there's nothing fundamentally wrong with it. It's just that we all have our own particular preferences for games we enjoy more and games that we enjoy less. Given that it was my first impressions, I played for 10 hours straight without feeling being bored, or fatigued or really all that annoyed backing up the Overwhelmingly Positive reviews surrounding it.

Unlike other titles this felt more like I was cycling through more bosses than I was actually running through a world, which is literally what you would do in the original God of War games while hacking and slashing through minor threats along the way.

I'm presently going through Chapter 3 and just finished the earlier chapters, and I did skip over a lot of the dialogue since mentally because it didn't really click with me. I could see there was a lot of passion behind it but the gameplay more than made up for my lack of attention. If you're someone who knows a lot about JTTW it will only add more quality to your experience than it did for more.

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