To say that the hype surrounding Black Myth Wukong was immense would be an understatement. Game Science’s debut AAA title received its first trailer back in 2020 – and has captured the attention of players worldwide ever since.
Keeping my expectations in check, I jumped into the game expecting to have a reasonably modest single-player title – and was entirely blown away by what the team managed to achieve as their first AAA release.
It’s not perfect, but Black Myth Wukong is a very solid game overall, and has me excited for what the studio can cook up next.
Jumping back into a ‘Journey to the West’
Black Myth Wukong is based on the classic Chinese novel, ‘Journey to the West’. While the game doesn’t exactly let you play as Sun Wukong, it offers you control of the ‘Destined One’, who must ascend mortality to become the true successor to Wukong’s legacy.
Despite having little to no background knowledge of the novel, I was deeply engrossed by its many twists, turns and vibrant cast of characters. The game has a ton of content that feels evenly spread out.
Wukong made me want to binge through more Journey to the West media, as well as hope for the faithful representation of other cultures within video games in the future.
Black Myth Wukong isn’t a soulslike, and it doesn’t need to be
Despite my initial presumption, Black Myth Wukong did not turn out to be a ‘true’ soulslike. While the game does borrow a lot from Souls games, its execution is far different from the vanilla FromSoftware formula.
I’d even dare to say that Wukong is an action-adventure game first, and a ‘Souls-lite’ later.
The game’s many, many ‘cinematic’ moments in both its gameplay and cutscenes, along with the overall fast-paced nature of the combat made me appreciate it a lot more.
Attacks feel snappier, faster and you generally should have an easier time fighting off bosses. There is no weird ‘clunkiness’ to the combat that Souls games usually possess.
Game Science made their own kind of game, and it works out very well in their favor – through the entire 40+ hour long campaign. In an industry of remakes, remasters and ‘inspired clones’, this is quite refreshing to see.
Picturesque visuals with delightful sound design
Wukong looks amazing, and the novel’s many moments are painstakingly crafted, with intricate character models and environments. The game also looks very, very sharp with intricate, detailed animation work.
The voice over work is also great, and I particularly enjoyed the performance of the ‘Headless Singer’, performed by Xiong Zhuying.
Wukong may just become a technical benchmark for video game graphics and PC benchmarking soon.
Even on my rather mid-range PC (AMD Ryzen 5700X/32 GB RAM/RX 6700) I was able to push high resolutions with acceptable performance at the Medium setting preset (with some minor tweaks).
Frame generation was absolutely necessary for maintaining stable performance though, and I thankfully did not notice any stutter.
Difficulty scaling can be skewed at times
Black Myth Wukong is not an easy game. This would have been (mostly) a plus, but there are quite a few instances where the fights are not scaled properly. Some fights are downright punishing, and took me quite a few retries to complete.
These bosses almost always have some sort of gimmick that makes them all the more annoying to deal with.
Another issue I had was with the level design, which had a curious syndrome of invisible walls – at rather odd places, which turned out to be a minor nuisance. This stands in sharp contrast to the game’s overall excellent world sculpting.
At the very least, I was pleasantly surprised to find that each individual boss had unique movesets and patterns to deal with – instead of the usual copy-paste job.
In Conclusion
Black Myth Wukong is an excellent game that blends together elements of classical Chinese literature with a solid gameplay loop that entertains and keeps you engaged until the very end. Despite a few minor setbacks, the game is overall enjoyable and I can’t recommend it enough.
Scorecard: 9/10; Black Myth Wukong sets a new bar for games and is easily one of the best games of 2024.
Reviewed on: PC (Steam)
