Black Myth: Wukong | REVIEW

“Who knew that an action game from China would spark up so much controversy?" 

PC | PS5

HOW I PLAYED: I played on PC via Steam, I purchased the standard edition on day 1 (no pre-order). I also played on my Ryzen 7 7800X3D, RTX 3080, 32GB DDR5  gaming PC. Played in 1440p with DLS set to Balanced. (Basically, I used the recommended settings via GeForce Experience)

STORY — 16/20 

INTRO 

At the start of the game, you are INSTANTLY whisked into an incredible cloudscape as the ancient Sun Wukong! You are immediately confronted by one of the gods Guangzhi. This is a cinematic and FX treat as you combo your way through a flurry of cloud particle effects that look stunning on PC. This gets you (the player) introduced to the flurry of the combat mixing light attacks with heavy attack specials or abilities. Great way to kick off an action game like this!

Way better than rowing a canoe for an hour as you go chop down your dead wife's favorite tree... 👀

CUTSCENES 

I was genuinely surprised at how POLISHED this game was! After the now  "questionable" IGN review, I was expecting some major jank to come my way during my play-through. But Game Science has fully brought on actual animation studios to create each of the chapter-ending cinematics. And each one being unique in its style was a welcome treat after a rush of boss fights each chapter delivers.

WORLD BUILDING

This is where Black Myth: Wukong fell a little short for me. I didn't see much world-building outside of cut scenes and NPC dialogue.

OVERALL STORY 

Wukong is based on a very famous Chinese tale "A Journey To The  West", and from what I hear it is very accurate with that story's lore.  Since I am not familiar with A Journey To The West some things did not quite connect with me. The overall story was still pretty good considering I went in not knowing anything about this tall tale!

GRAPHICS — 15/15 

CHARACTER MODELS 

The character models all look stunning! This is true tip-top Unreal Engine 5 fidelity mixed with amazing art direction. All of the creature's bosses and NPCs have unique designs that look awesome!

ENVIRONMENTS

When I first saw that UE5 tech demo in 2020, I was blown away. But then I didn't see any games made in UE5 match that level of fidelity...until NOW! Black Myth: Wukong uses Nanite in UE5 which allows game devs to create immensely detailed environments. The dirt pathing in the forests looks like dirt paths and not the simple flat path texture that you would normally see. I was also very impressed with all of the decorative assets like grass, trees, bushes, rocks, etc. Everything looked well placed and like it fit that particular environment.

SPECIAL FX

The particle effects are insane! I have not seen effects like this since  Returnal in 2021. All of the special FX for special attacks and abilities and the ones used in cutscenes all look top-tier.

AUDIO — 11/15 

AMBIENCE 

There were a lot of nature sounds and ambient forest sounds which was nice.  The big winner was the Headless Monk! I found each of his tracks incredibly catchy and a joy to listen to.

BOSS MUSIC 

The boss music was good, but nothing popped for me. The final fight had a great track but I am a sucker for those MASSIVE scores that you find in games like Final Fantasy or Modern FromSoftware.

SOUND DESIGN

I was expecting the English voice acting to be cheesy but I found it done exceptionally well. Nothing seemed off or out of place. I also felt the sound mixing was done well and never once did I run into an instance where music was louder than NPC voices etc.

PERFORMANCE — 9/10 

FRAME RATE  

I was able to run Wukong at a pretty stable 100+ fps, with some minor dips to the 90's and 80's. But I was really happy with a game this graphically challenging to run this well on my now aging GPU (RTX 3080's are considered OLD now...).

I was also happy to see console performance on PS5 able to hit 60fps using techniques like FSR 3.0 + Frame Generation. I have seen some internet uproar over the fact that FG is just duplicating frames so the game is running at 30fps. But in my opinion, I feel like that is the whole point of what we gamers have been asking for. Offer us a 60fps option no matter how you were able to get there! Yes 60fps using FG isn't as good as a true 60fps experience, but it's still better than 30fps IMO even with the minor input lag. Black Myth: Wukong also adds a "Balanced Mode" for the console players who have a VRR display.

STABILITY

As mentioned earlier, I was kinda off put by IGN's review of Black Myth:  Wukong (NOT for the interview translation controversy) when they talked about running into some major issues past Chapter 2.

So during my playthrough, I was waiting for these issues to come up... and they just never arrived! I didn't run into ANY game-breaking bugs for progression or gameplay. I barely even ran into any minor cosmetic glitches during my play-through (Sometimes equipped items would have graphical glitches but this happened maybe twice during my entire 40-hour play-through).

The only issue I ran into, was in the later chapters 4&5 I did encounter more traversal stutter and some framerate dips. But for a new game, this is nothing new and I am sure it can be patched out. But I am still deducting a point because performance may be different on other platforms. And I am not going to hit you with

"wOrKs fInE oN mY pC..."

GAMEPLAY — 32/40 

CONTROLS 

The controls felt pretty good, I played with a controller on PC. I did feel like there was some input delay or "stored inputs" going on at times. I  would often find trying to use an ability not prompting right away on press. This can be annoying especially when trying to chain together attacks/combos.

MECHANICS 

I loved all the special abilities you could unlock with "Sparks". I also really liked the different mini-bosses you could summon with a special attack during combat.

One thing that I was not a fan of was the healing gourds. EACH can be upgraded with a limited upgrade material. Yes, the game is very generous and allows you to fully refund upgrade points if you change your mind. But I felt like the healing items should just upgrade across the board so if you wanted to switch to a different one you could do so and keep your upgrades.

I also found it frustrating that your character doesn’t get “hyper armor” when doing special attacks or charged attacks. And I wish that when using a transformation attack it would work with enemy lock on. There were many times my transformation attack would just miss the enemy entirely even though I was locked on. 

PACING 

This game is very fast-paced, and you are always running into new enemies and new mini-bosses and new bosses. There is very little downtime in Black  Myth: Wukong. There were some chapter maps that I did find a bit fatiguing, as they were mostly large figure 8 designs where the main path is through the middle but you are given the choice of "left or right" but those usually just both looped around to the main path. Very frustrating when you are out of heals and low health and looking for a checkpoint!

UI/UE 

I felt the UI was very clean and fit well even with all of the cool unique abilities you can eventually unlock. I never felt like my screen was cluttered! I also found navigating the menus to be fluent and easy to understand.

BOSS QUALITY

There is a WIDE variety of bosses in Black Myth: Wukong! Some are just beefed-up enemy NPCs with a health bar, then your standard mini-boss type. Then you have the major story bosses that get a cutscene to introduce you to them, or show off a crazy 2nd  phase transition. 

Some bosses were very annoying with their hitboxes, either having very thin insect legs or a dragon that constantly flies out of your hit radius. Yes, I am aware you have specific "Punish windows" you need to take advantage of so you can get a stagger. But sometimes with bad RNG or bad placement, you can get screwed and it is out of your control.

ENEMY VARIETY

Black Myth: Wukong has an INSANE amount of content packed into it. There are unique enemies in each chapter and unique bosses, but very few repeat. But I  was genuinely impressed with how much variety this game offers. There was more enemy variety in this first release from Game Science than in both God Of War 2018 + Ragnarok put together...

Kudos Game Science!

GAMEPLAY VARIETY

There isn't any in Wukong. If you don't like action games, then you will not like this game. There is some level exploration, but I was disappointed with how many invisible walls Game Science used in each level environment. 

REPLAYABILITY

There are upgrades and hidden bosses you can work your way up to after you beat the main game. You don't move into NG+ right away which is nice, so if you missed anything on your first play-through then you can go back and finish it later. But with many unskippable cutscenes, I definitely feel like Wukong is a “One and Done” kinda game for me.

BONUS — 1/4 

I was surprised that Game Science had a colorblind option but little to no other accessibility options 🤷🏼. But something is better than nothing I guess!

OVERALL — 84/100 

GREAT

Black Myth: Wukong Who knew that an action game from China would spark up so much controversy? This game went from being a "meh" on my radar to a very enjoyable action game experience! From its goofy NPCs and over-the-top cinematics Wukong was a big surprise in my 2024 gaming roster. I am stoked that the hype was real for this game and I definitely would recommend it to action game enthusiasts. To those who are expecting a  "Souls-like", you will be disappointed but that doesn't mean Wukong is not a great game! It actually kicks a lot of ASS!

TLDR: 84/100 (GREAT) Black Myth: Wukong surprised me as a highly polished action game with stunning visuals, impressive special effects, and smooth performance on PC. While the story, based on the Chinese tale Journey to the West, features strong cinematics and a great intro, the world-building is lacking outside of cutscenes. The game excels in graphics and character models, showcasing the full capabilities of Unreal Engine 5, but the audio is mixed; the ambient tracks stand out, though the boss music is underwhelming. Performance is mostly stable with minor frame rate dips, and the gameplay offers fast-paced action with a good variety of bosses and enemies, though controls and healing mechanics can be frustrating. Overall, Wukong is a great recommendation for action game fans, but may not satisfy those expecting a "Souls-like" experience.

PICK UP Black Myth: Wukong HERE:

PlayStation: PSN

PC: CDKeys