But there is a lot more to the game than meets the eye, so, here is a complete review of Black Myth: Wukong. We have divided the review into portions for you to better understand. These include in-depth discussions on the gameplay, the visuals, the plot, and the performance of the game.
Visuals And Art Design
Black Myth: Wukong utilizes the Unreal Engine 5 to a great result. The visuals are crisp, and bright, and feel truly next-gen. Every minor detail of the game has been very masterfully thought-out including the environment, character models, the lighting, and the shadows.
The game’s art design is a mix of Chinese tradition and mythology. The stunning temples, the breathtaking mountains, and the gorgeous forests all have a very profound sense of Chinese culture and tradition.
As, for the characters, we were blown away by how detailed they were. The protagonist called The Destined One has some of the best facial expressions we’ve seen in a while. Despite, being a mythic creature, this makes him feel very natural and human.
Then there are the multiple other creatures that he turns into. So, you collect the spirit of the enemies you defeat and transform into them. So, those, combined with the smaller enemies represent a great amount of how much work has but put into the game.
Gameplay And Mechanics
Black Myth: Wukong isn’t an easy game by any means. Some bosses are as difficult as the bosses in the Elden Ring’s DLC. This will be very annoying for the casuals as the game isn’t exactly souls-like, it falls in the genre of action RPG.
We were really challenged especially in the later chapters of the game. You can take out the smaller enemies quite easily, but boss battles will be where you’ll have to grind. Now, we won’t say all the bosses are as hard as games like Dark Souls, but they can be quite challenging.
In addition, despite not being called a ‘souls-like’ most of the elements are borrowed from there. For example, you kill enemies for XP, death will cause the enemies to respawn, and your stamina will be replenished as you rest at the checkpoints.
Moving onto how the combat actually feels, it is crisp and fast-paced. The Destined One’s Staff is your primary weapon, combining it with great reflexes and perfect timing is the way to play the game.
The staff isn’t limited to short-range combat, it can extend to attack enemies from a bit farther away as well. This helps you chain together a bunch of attacks and create combos. Other abilities include magical powers, and shape-shifting into the defeated enemies.
This is a perfect segue to something we really enjoyed. Yes, the boss battles can be really challenging, even frustrating at times, but they are very rewarding. Killing off a boss after multiple attempts, and suddenly you can play as them, was something we enjoyed.
But just like most other action RPGs, dodging, parrying, and managing your stamina are the tactics you must master to beat Black Myth: Wukong. The amount of depth the gameplay has makes the game unique, and stand out from a saturated market.
The Plot
Black Myth: Wukong’s story has been inspired by the famous Chinese novel Journey to The West by Wu Cheng’en. It is kind of a follow-up to the novel and share some huge references. While the game does explain somewhat of the story at the beginning, the novel can help you with a better understanding of the lore.
You play as The Destined One, who sets out on a journey to find 6 relics of Wukong. The plot i the weaker link of the game mainly because of the mute protagonist. However, each chapter has a stop-motion animation to explain what happens which is exceptionally well done.
Considering, how rich the source material is, and the game is also fairly decently sized at around 40 hours, the story could’ve been more fleshed out. Nonetheless, the rest of the game makes up for what it lacks.
Performance And Optimizations
Currently, the only platforms where you can play Black Myth: Wukong are the PlayStation 5 and PC.
The Xbox Series X|S versions were seemingly delayed due to some optimization issues, and they don’t have a release window as of yet. As you’d expect from a modern AAA release, Black Myth isn’t exactly an easy game to run on PC. It will require a beefy system for good FPS at higher resolution.
However, we can’t say that the optimization is bad by any means. In our testing, we hardly faced any hiccups. There were are few bugs and issues, but in the grand scheme of the game, they were quite easy to ignore. It even runs fine on the PlayStation 5 as well and offers both a performance and a fidelity mode.
In fidelity mode, the visuals do take a bit of a hit, but you get consistent 60 FPS at most times, without any notable drops, even when facing different bosses. The fidelity mode is there, but the smoother frame rate is the way to go to match Black Myth’s fast-paced combat.
Final thoughts.
We can confidently say that Black Myth: Wukong is one of the best releases of this year. It will even be a solid contender for the Game of The Year award.
The game will also help other smaller developers to work harder on their games as players are hungry for creativity and something out of the ordinary. Black Myth is a great example of a game that does no nonsense, and just purely focuses on gameplay and being incredibly fun while being quite challenging at the same time.
So, for us, it gets a perfect score, in almost every department.
