Black Myth: Wukong has gained a lot of hype leading up to its release, yet not much was known about it. It runs on Unreal Engine 5 and is the first mainstream AAA game coming to the West from a Chinese developer. Early gameplays garnered over ten million views on YouTube. Clearly, there is an allure to this game that caught people’s attention. Let’s see if it lives up to the hype!
Black Myth Wukong PS5 Review
What Black Myth: Wukong Is – And Isn’t
What is Black Myth: Wukong exactly? Is it a Soulslike? Is it an Action Adventure? Is it a Hack and Slash? It’s a bit of all of them. But for the most part it’s a Bossrush Hack and Slash game. It plays similar to God of War, but with a higher density of bosses. The story can be completed in 15-25 hours and there are over 80 bosses. The game consists of 80% boss fights with six linear chapters, not an open world. The chapter structure is comparable to Nioh with shrines along the way that act as checkpoints and let you recharge health.
The difficulty is easier than Souls games and you lose nothing when you die. The combat mechanics are a tad simplistic: there is one quick-attack combo for the entire game which doesn’t change, a single heavy attack, one dodge, and 4 categories of spells. There is no parrying or blocking. Your only weapon is a staff. While there are multiple staffs, they are just visual reskins that improve the stats but don’t change the attacks or combos in any way. There are, however, two unlockable combat stances from the skill tree. One lets you climb onto the staff to evade incoming ground attacks, and one unlocks a thrust stance. There is also a small number of unlockable moves in the skill tree, such as spinning your staff to deflect incoming arrows, and the ability to charge heavy attacks while running.
A lot Of Bosses Await
Each of the six chapters takes around 3-5 hours or so, depending on how deeply you explore the world. If you try to rush only the story bosses you will be underleveled and will get stuck, so it’s better to do side tasks to get stronger. There is a leveling system, you get XP from every enemy you defeat, but there are no ‘Soulslike’ attribute points to allocate. Instead, you earn skill points. Some skills passively increase attributes, but for the most part your attributes are determined by your equipment and from merchants that sell upgrades.
The graphics are amazing, although performance on PS5 is not always perfect. There are noticeable framerate issues in some specific areas. Most of the time it runs fine though and when there are framerate drops it’s just a minor annoyance that doesn’t ruin the experience.
Each chapter takes place in a separate area. These areas are not connected to each other, but you can travel between them using shrines. This allows you to go back and forth between chapters as you like. The scenery ranges from jungles to deserts to frosty lakes and more.
Smartly crafted secrets everywhere
What really upped the experience for me was all the secrets that can be found. There is a secret area in every chapter which takes exploration to figure out. You get key items along the way and have to figure out where to use them. Exploration does feel meaningful in that regard, it can lead to new areas, new equipment, upgrade parts, hidden bosses, and even side quests. The game never tells you there are side quests, but each NPC you meet will have a task for you. These don’t have waypoints or objectives. Instead, you have to listen to what the NPC Is saying and infer what to do. Backtracking is often necessary, as items from later in the game are needed to reach previously inaccessible areas. How much the developers managed to pack into six relatively small levels is wild. There are so many secrets it’s downright impossible to figure them all out by yourself without looking them up. From breakable walls to secret multi-step quests to dozens of hidden bosses, there is a lot to figure out.
After the story I would have given the game a mere 7/10 in terms of fun. My main complaint being it’s too easy. After the first chapter you will quickly gain more spells and the difficulty goes downhill from there, turning into a routine of spamming the same spells at the start of each boss fight to take down 50% of its health within 10 seconds before it has a chance to attack. Most boss fights then end in 30-60 seconds, with standard mobs dying in 1-2 hits and posing no threat whatsoever. A lot of the bosses also have a similar moveset just with a different skin. Whether it’s a big rat or a big stone golem, they swipe a few melee attacks at you, then they do a jump to cause splash damage and repeat. Almost every boss starts with a 3-hit combo, after which they are vulnerable, then you spam your spells and the boss is dead.
Hidden Features Are Fun To Figure Out
In the first chapter it is still fun because you don’t have so many spells, thus need to rely more on dodging and counter-attacking. What made up for the relatively short and repetitive story for me was all the secrets. Sadly, most reviewers will not have bothered to 100% complete the game, but that is the best part where you come to appreciate the intricate level design. There are lots of fun mechanics to uncover that 90% of players will never know exist. Whether that’s an armor piece only obtainable by breaking specific body parts of a boss, or randomly obtainable seeds that can be grown at a hidden village to harvest plants for medicine, or the New Game+ exclusive items.
There is a lot more to do than it first seems. On that note, it’s also nice that the game launches with New Game+ and doesn’t gate it behind future DLC/patches. There are no microtransactions and it feels like a fully fleshed-out game at launch, not like a half-baked beta version we so often get from AAA games these days. The side content is where the game truly shines – it just never tells you this content exists until you stumble across it. This sense of exploration is what I love about gaming, not the mindless handholding most mainstream games apply. How the secrets are interconnected is also outstanding, mysterious key items can be used in other places that open up whole new areas and side content. Anything that looks irrelevant actually has a deeper side story attached to it, everything is meaningful.
The secret bosses are also the hardest, best-designed, and most fun. There is a whole secret ending that features the hardest boss and most epic fight in the game. But probably 90% of players will never get to it. After spending over 50 hours to reach 100% completion, I found more appreciation for Black Myth: Wukong than I would have otherwise.
Review code generously provided by the publisher.
Black Myth: Wukong is out now on PS5.