Black Myth: Wukong Review - On Like Wukong

Summary

Black Myth: Wukong impressively stands as one of the most polished, beautiful, and entertaining soulslikes in recent years.
The game offers a unique experience with stunning visuals, challenging boss fights with a ridiculous amount of variety, and a diverse range of tools and spells.
It's easy to get frustrated with the game's massive open areas due to invisible walls and tricky terrain, but exploring is still extremely rewarding.

Over the past few years, it’s become clear that we don’t need to rely solely on 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:FromSoftware for competent and entertaining soulslikes. 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Lies of P, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Stellar Blade, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Rise of the Ronin, and 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Another Crab’s Treasure all launched in the past 12 months and managed to impress, but 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Black Myth: Wukong goes one step further. It’s the most polished, intricate, and entertaining soulslike I’ve ever played outside FromSoftware's masterpieces.

You are The Destined One, a monkey man with enormous importance as you’re tasked with retrieving various ancient relics. Each chapter of the game acts as a step on your journey to reclaim these relics as you meet various characteꦬrs from Chinese folklore or mythology.

In case you aren’t aware, Black Myth: Wukong is a loose adaptation of the classic novel, Journey to the West. Fans of th♑e story will likely find plenty of similaritꦰies as they play.

You’ll travel through a mixture of villages, temples, and other locales that have beཧen devastated by the actions of the people in charge. Black Myth: Wukong’s overarching story isn’t particularly complex, but every chapter has its own interesting tale to tell, usually focused on how the area you’re exploring became such a hostile hellhole to begin with.

The Destined One spinning his staff on a rope bridge

One of my favorite parts of the experience was finishing each chapter, and not just because of the excellent, visually impressive boss fights that act as their finale. Upon completion, you’re given music videos which artistically tell various stories, each one unique in its animation style. T𝓰here is a clear admiration for artistry even outside the core moment-to-moment gameplay that makes you care about this otherwise pedestrian tale.

These music videos don’t have much to do with the overall narrative, if anything at all, but they do act as fantastic breaks between the fast-paced action that let you pause and recompose yourself after a tough fight. They’re very reminiscent of Alan Wake 2’s c💃hapter ending songs, adding more flavor to the world and setting the tone for what’s to co🤡me.

Black Myth: Wukong Doesn't Monkey Around With Its Boss Fights

The Destined One jumping into a dark hole

You’ll be glad to have those breaks too, since Black💮 Myth: Wukong is relentless. Without a block or a parry mechanic, fights are fast-paced brawls that require you to perform precise dodges to avoid taking damage. You have a range of fighting stances which let you perform different dodging styles, such as one that lets you sit on top of your extended staff to avoid ground attacks. You’re never required to switch stances to take down enemies, but some fights are definitely easier depending on which stance you take.

Each stance also gives you a diffe🗹rent kind of heavy attack you can perform, which can then be upgraded with the game’s elaborate skill tree. Your light attack combo will remain the same no matter which stance you adopt, but each heavy attack has its own strengths and weaknesses. For example, your starting stance is all about hitting your enemy as hard as possible, while you also have a thrusting stance that le♚ts you hit enemies from a distance and push them away. It can feel incredibly satisfying to recognize an enemy’s attack pattern and swap to the right stance and capitalize on their weaknesses.

The Destined One stood next to various clones

There is a nice variety of spells that can improve your evasiveness even further too. Cloud Step allows you to quickly dash through an opponent and vanish for as long as your decoy survives, giving you a brief moment of respite before you 𝄹jump into the fray once again. You can also turn into stone righಌt before an enemy strikes to deflect their blow. There’s a lot of spell variety, and the game constantly encourages you to experiment to overcome bosses that may otherwise make you want to tear your hair out.

Thankfully, this won’t happen too of🐠ten, as Black Myth: Wukong is definitely on the easier side of the soulslike spectrum, which suits its boss rush design. Running up against a brick wall of difficulty every five minutes would’ve been extremely frustrating, but Black Myth: Wukong manages to nail the balance to ensure the game’s pace doesn’t suffer.

You&rsquo▨;ll still fight regular enemies as you make your way between each boss fight, though these gauntlets are much shorter than y꧃our average soulslike, usually only containing a single checkpoint.

And while flying through bosses with ease could have potentially made each encounter feel lackluster, Black Myth: Wukong makes up for it by having a ridiculous amount of variety in their designs. Despite having dozens upon dozens of boss fights to tackle, rarely💯 will you come up against a repeat or reskin. The vast majority of the game’s boss fights are completely unique, and even when you do come up against a familiar foe, they’ll have a completely different moveset to keep you on your toes. Combined with the chapter ending music videos, it’s very difficult to play through the game without having something enticing on the horizon.

You’re also very quickly given a wide range of tools that you can use in collaboration with your standard attacks and spells to make fights easier, including a huge number of transformations. When you take down a tough enemy or a boss, you’re frequently given either a spirit you can briefly transform into, or a lengthier transformation that gives you a completely different move🉐set. There’s an impressive range of enemies you can transform into, from lowly grunts to massive abominations, and it’s ♚always exciting to find one while exploring each location and try it out on the next poor, unfortunate enemy you come across.

Exploring Is Rewarding... But Very Disorienting

However, this brings me onto to Black Myth: Wukong’s biggest problem - the level design. Instead 🥂of the branching corridors and winding shortcuts you usually associate with the genre, GameScience has opted for a more linear experience, broken up with large open areas that you can explore. Unfortunately, these are plagued with invisible walls and tricky terrain, making it difficult to gauge where you can and can’t go. In a genre that is typically associated with freedom of exploration and experimentation, it💜 sucks to suddenly feel so isolated.

It doesn’t help much that these open areas are absolutely massive. That might sound great from an exploration standpoint, as you naturally💮 stumble across secrets and helpful items, but without any kind of guidance, it can be difficult to keep track of where you’ve been or where you need to go. It’s a game that desperately needs a map, and while the decision not to include one💖 feels deliberate, I can’t help but feel it would have stopped a lot of needless backtracking.

The Destined One on a snowy mountain, looking at a group of people

It’s a shame too, because Black Myth: Wukong gives you tons of reasons to explore. It’s a game bursting with secrets to find and optional bosses to tackle, and even includes a secret location in each chapter that houses a unique boss or two for the more diligent explorers out there to sniff out. Exploration is both extremely rewarding, yet highly confusing, and the game doesn’t do enough to naturally stop you from walꦯkin♋g in circles.

Apart from that, there’s a lot of fun to be had with Black Myth: Wukong, and it’s a must-play for anyone that enjoys a good soulslike. It’s also perfect for anyone with soulslike ಌfatigue and weary of the brutal difficulty that usually comes with them. It’s beautiful, frantic, challenginꦯg, and a delight toℱ play.