Black Myth: Wukong Specifications
Platform: PC (tested), PS5
Price: 59$
Release date: 20 August 2024
Genre: Action-Adventure, Role-Playing
Black Myth: Wukong is an entertaining game that falls just short of perfection. Deeply rooted in Chinese mythology, this action-adventure game from developer GameScience features stunning graphics, thrilling gameplay, and imaginative boss battles. Unfortunately, an abundance of invisible walls, a confusing storyline, and technical issues mar the overall package.
I’ve been looking forward to Black Myth: Wukong since its announcement in December 2020. The Unreal Engine 5 graphics and over-the-top boss battles caught my attention, but I was also curious to see how a “AAA” game from a Chinese developer would differ from the Western and Japanese titles I’m used to. While it certainly has its own character, Wukong misses the mark for the reasons mentioned above.
Black Myth: Wukong may not be on par with God of War: Ragnarok, but its best aspects make it worth checking out for fans of similar action games. Find out why in my in-depth review.
A mythical journey
One of the main selling points of Black Myth: Wukong is that it’s based on the classic Chinese novel Journey to the West. While this aspect gives the game a unique visual style (more on that in a moment), it doesn’t do much good if you’re not familiar with the source material. In fact, it can make the game’s plot downright confusing at times.
Essentially, you are an anthropomorphic monkey who is a descendant of Sun Wukong, the Monkey King. Your task is to collect six magical artifacts so that you can unleash the powers of your legendary descendant and restore order to the chaotic land. To do this, you will have to fight many Yaoguai (monsters) along the way.
That’s about what I understood of the plot. I’ve never read Journey to the West and know next to nothing about Chinese mythology and spiritualism. Because of this, many plot points and speeches from the bosses went over my head. The fact that the latter tend to speak poetically only serves to increase the confusion. I wouldn’t call this a dealbreaker (I can relate to this plot more than Elden Ring’s), but it almost made me want to skip cutscenes to get to the next action scene.
The Art of War
Even though the story of Black Myth: Wukong doesn’t make much sense, the combat mechanics are straightforward and intuitive.
At its core, battles consist of you taking down your enemies with light attacks and dodging their counterattacks. Successful light attacks fill a heavy attack meter, which naturally deals more damage. This adds a strategic nature to battles, as you work towards landing heavy attacks when an opportunity presents itself. The aggressive enemies (especially bosses) force you to dodge almost constantly, which can make some battles feel like a dance. Different stances you acquire throughout the game have specific heavy attacks that work best against certain enemies.
In addition to melee attacks, you can also use magic spells you acquire as you travel. My personal favorite is that you summon a small army of clones that do an excellent job of harassing bad guys. Other abilities like freezing an enemy in place or turning them into a wolf with a fire staff are also useful. You can’t spam magic attacks, though, as they have cooldowns and consume mana. Knowing when to use magic to gain an advantage also provides a lot of strategy for the game’s battles.
The aforementioned wolf isn’t the only creature you can transform into. After defeating certain enemies (which are usually surrounded by a blue glow), you can absorb their essence and become them for a short period of time (usually a single devastating attack). Transforming into a giant frog to smack enemies with an extended tongue, for example, is both useful and fun. There are a ton of enemies you can transform into, so it’s good to experiment to find out which ones work best for a given situation.
Defeating enemies earns you experience points. Once you’ve gained enough experience, you’ll earn skill points, which you can use to unlock new skills in the skill tree. You can unlock new or more powerful attacks and spells, upgrade your health and mana reserves, and more. The game is pretty generous with skill points (which you can also earn by resting at meditation spots or completing side quests), so you can always unlock new skills.
Shrines scattered throughout the environment serve as checkpoints. They also allow you to swap spells (you can only have four at a time), buy or upgrade your armor and staff, craft healing and strengthening potions, and more. Several creatures also sell or upgrade items. It’s always a good idea to visit shrines to beef up your repertoire of skills and spells, especially if you’re having trouble with a particular boss.
The bosses in Wukong aren’t as tough as those in FromSoftware’s titles (like Dark Souls and Elden Ring), but they’re not easy opponents either. To win, you’ll need a mix of quick reflexes and judicious use of magical abilities. Make no mistake, you’re going to lose. And you’re going to lose a lot. But the satisfaction you feel when you finally defeat a boss makes up for the frustration. Plus, it’s hard to stay frustrated when almost every boss encounter is a highlight.
A mystical land
Black Myth: Wukong is one of the most visually stunning games in recent years. Thanks to the power of Unreal Engine 5, every single environment – from dense forests to snow-capped mountains – looks absolutely phenomenal. Architecture, landscapes and creatures are brought to life in vivid detail.
The mythological Chinese setting also adds to the game’s visual flair. Ancient temples, gigantic statues, brazier-lit cave dwellings, and more make you feel like you’ve entered another world. Combined with the razor-sharp fidelity, you get a truly unique visual experience.
The expansive environments invite you to explore them. And of course, going off the beaten path often brings rewards in the form of treasure, side quests, mini-boss battles, and the like. Unfortunately, there are far too many invisible walls preventing you from exploring everything.
Most modern games do a pretty good job of putting up barriers that you can’t get past, so it’s surprising that Wukong has the kind of invisible walls that were so prevalent in games from 15 years ago. It’s a design decision that hurts immersion. The fact that there’s no map to show you the boundaries of the environment only makes things worse.
A splintered rod
I played Black Myth: Wukong on my gaming rig, which includes an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 Ti GPU, 32GB of RAM, and an 11th Gen Intel Core i7 CPU. Most of the time, my desktop had no problems running the game at 1440p resolution with a relatively consistent 60 frames per second and high graphics settings. Even though my PC has higher system requirements than recommended (most of the time), the game didn’t always run smoothly.
The game stutters during longer sessions. Restarting helps, which suggests a memory leak. I also experienced minor bugs, such as the audio randomly switching between English and Chinese. Hopefully GameScience can fix both of these issues with a patch.
A promising start
Black Myth: Wukong isn’t perfect, but it’s still impressive, especially considering it’s GameScience’s first big-budget game. If you’re a fan of God of War or Ninja Gaiden, you’ll appreciate what this game has to offer. However, don’t expect the depth of combat found in a FromSoftware title.
I hesitate to call Black Myth: Wukong one of the best PC games, but it certainly does justice to its genre.
