Recent reviews by LTan500

Black Myth Wukong is a beautiful game that had its enjoyment diminished through a variety of clunky design choices and has a hollow narrative that is masked by its rich cultural nuances.

It is without a doubt that the visuals and animations in this game are breathtaking with unique and fun challenging boss battles along with interesting move sets. This is not something that needs to be explored further. I will be doing more of a critical take to the game so then the same mistakes do not appear in Game Science's future releases (Thus the negative review).

What needs to be addressed are the questionable design choices that, by themselves, can be tolerated, but put together, causes frustrating and clunky game-play.

- Lack of auto rest at save point. Although not a giant issue, implementing this would have allowed a smoother game-play where you do not need to click rest at the save points to reset your status. There has been many times during my exploration where I have found a save point, traversed away, find a boss, use potions, and then realising that I am at half hp with no mana.

- On the topic of save points, there is a specific debuff in one area that does not get reset after resting. This made fighting a certain boss especially frustrating since after each retry, one will need to wait for the debuff to clear in order to have a fair fight. This wait took around 1-2 minutes where the only thing to do is to twiddle your thumbs.

The next few are design choices that individually, are fine but collectively, very frustrating.

- Lack of map. This makes it hard to traverse but make for an interesting exploration experience. However, it does make it hard to find places where you may have missed.

- Invisible walls. Given such beautiful scenery, it is frustrating that there are so many areas that look like it could be explored be blocked off with the boundaries of the map. This is actually one of the issues caused by having such beautiful visuals. It prevents you from intuitively knowing where places can be explored and what areas are completely out of reach, making you attempt to jump onto a platform only to be disappointed that it is inaccessible.

- NPC positioning. Some NPCs are hidden away quite obscurely and sometimes found relatively late in a chapter making them easy to miss.

- Most of the bosses are fun and some are an exhilarating challenge. This is because they are fair fights. Unfortunately, some bosses have an unfair abilities which causes you to die in a way that seems like dumb luck rather than lack of skill unless you have a specific item from a side quest.

Now putting things together, a lack of map makes exploration interesting and, like the developers put it, increased an immersive experience. However, with invisible walls everywhere, traversing became a chore as I find myself continuously running into and bounced off wall after wall. This made some hidden areas hard to find since they are placed in areas where, after continuously ramming into wall, one could assume is another wall.

Without a map, sometimes one can feel like they have explored everywhere already and decide to fight the final boss of a chapter only to see them use an ability which makes them seem unfair. But surely you have looked through every nook and cranny no? Turns out you missed a turn somewhere and missed an NPC quest line to give you an item to counteract the unfair ability. If the NPC starts closer to the start of the map on a main traversing location, it would be forgivable since you become aware of their existence and know to explore through their quest. This give you a better idea on whether or not you have explored through the entire map.

- Some exotically shaped bosses, although interesting and have beautiful move sets, also have some annoying hit boxes. There are times where I find myself running as close as possible to a boss and performed a full combo only to have it completely miss due to the hit box and the space it takes up be different.

Story wise, it is a sequel to Journey to the West, paying homage to the original material but completely neglecting its overarching theme and motif. Unfortunately, the game's story lacks depth and is void of any sort of meaningful development to the character you play and to those around you, apart from a selected few. Thus, it is also another victim of a Chinese animation/game narrative displaying a large variety of rich cultural elements without the depth and backbone to hold it together. AKA, the toppings without the bread.

All in all, Black Myth Wukong was a visual spectacle but as a game and a story device, has many flaws which I am unable to give it a free pass on, especially because I want to love this game. As frustrating as some aspects were, I still had a decent experience (As can be seen from me 100% ing the game).


6.5/10

An excellent game in a multitude of ways. From the fluidity of its gameplay and intrigue of the story to the ambience of its sound design and artistry, everything meshes together really well.