Black Myth: Wukong reminds us of a next-gen launch game. It's absolutely gorgeous and technically powerful, but its gameplay and story leave a lot to be desired.
The game, Game Science's first console game, is a retelling of the 16th century Chinese novel Journey to the West. Players battle their way through a land that combines high East Asian fantasy and realism.
Each chapter of the game is full of bosses, and it's up to the player character Sun Wukong to defeat them. We played through three of the game's five chapters and spent around 11 hours with the action title.
The game begins with an incredible (and graphics card-testing) battle above the clouds before Sun Wukong crashes to Earth to regain his powers and save the world.
The gameplay of Black Myth: Wukong is almost similar to Souls at first, but as the game progresses it becomes clear that despite the allusions to FromSoftware, Black Myth: Wukong is more of a traditional action game.
The game's lush levels typically feature a wheel-and-spoke design, with a central area leading to bosses via multiple paths. Defeat all the bosses, interact with that area's gimmick, and make your way to that section's main boss.
So this is not an open world. In fact, we wonder if an open world would be possible with this graphical power.
There are smaller enemies in the areas between bosses, but they serve little purpose other than working out a few combos before the big fights. We actually think this is a bit of a shame, because it means that these incredible looking areas are quickly forgotten as you're led from boss to boss.
There are also collectibles and items to be found, but they have been of little importance on our journey so far.
This game stands or falls on the strength of its bosses, and so far it's a mixed bag. There are some extremely challenging, visually interesting fights, such as facing off against a sword-wielding tiger in the second chapter, but the game's relative lack of difficulty, even halfway through, means you spend very little time on them.
Sun Wukong is just too strong and too fast. The first skill you learn lets you freeze enemies. This is incredibly overpowered, and if you're even slightly adept at recognizing when a boss is about to attack, you can basically lock them in an endless loop. You also get so many upgrade points that you never feel like you're climbing a wall, you're just smashing through it as violently as you can.
We didn't die until late in the game's second chapter. We're not saying that games like this have to be some kind of hard-hitting grind, but we were very surprised by how slowly the difficulty increases. This makes bosses that look great and are often accompanied by interesting attack mechanics very boring because we steamrolled them so quickly.
What's undeniable is how impressive the game is visually. We played the game on a top-of-the-line PC with an RTX 4090 and it's without a doubt one of the most visually impressive games ever made. We don't think there's a PC in the world that can crank everything up to full and still hit 60 FPS, but we got pretty close, with only a few dips in some visually demanding areas.
Honestly, it's the impressive visual effects and character designs that keep us playing more than the gameplay itself. Combat is a serviceable hack-and-slash game, and while it's well animated, the strikes lack weight and precision, which is disappointing.
However, the different stances provide interesting variety in combat. In one stance, for example, Sun Wukong balances on the tip of his staff, which makes him invulnerable to ground attacks.
The problem, again, is that we're barely motivated to actually use the different stances since we're doing so much damage with the standard attacks and the ability to freeze characters. The game mechanic that lets you absorb the spirits of certain bosses and then either transform into them or use powers based on them is cool, but feels a bit unexplored.
Black Myth: Wukong is a solid first console game from Game Science, but we're not thrilled with the game's combat. It's a technical marvel that we'll likely play through to the end, but we're disappointed by the low difficulty and lack of reasons to really explore the game's semi-open levels.