Black Myth Wukong Review: Rewriting A Mythical Legend

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Black myth wukong review. Black Myth: Wukong is an epic saga that’s both confounding and spectacular to behold.

Vast Variations of Wonderous Abilities

One of Black Myth: Wukong’s greatest strengths is how it weaves Sun Wukong’s wonderous abilities into the framework of its fast-paced combat. The Monkey King is known for wielding Ruyi Jingu Bang, a magical staff that can shrink and extend at will. He can also create clones of himself from a single strand of hair, freeze enemies in place with a point from his finger, and shapeshift into a vast array of different forms. All of these abilities are represented in the game, expertly showcasing the Monkey King’s prodigious combat capabilities. By executing combos with the staff, you’ll see it elongate to bludgeon enemies with extra ferocity before reverting back to its original size. You can also make use of various spells that consume mana and operate on cooldowns. These include the ability to generate clones of yourself to give enemies more than a single target to focus on, and the use of a magic spell called Immobilize that lets you freeze your foes in place for a few seconds, giving you time to wail on them while they’re helplessly trapped or using the opportunity to take a step back and heal.

Shapeshifting is a significant part of your arsenal, too, as you’re able to transform into specific previously defeated enemies and utilize their different movesets and weapons. One of these transformations is called Red Tides, which you acquire early on after defeating the giant wolf Guangzhi. By shapeshifting into this ferocious canine, you’re able to wield his flaming glaive to inflict burn damage on your opponents as you twirl around and pull off a variety of combos. What’s more, each transformation has its own health bar, essentially providing you with an extra life. Once this health bar is extinguished or you’ve used up all of your Might by performing various attacks, you transform back into your usual self.

Boss Fights And Mythical Creatures

As an elaborate boss rush, Black Myth: Wukong lives and dies on the quality of its boss battles, and for the most part, they’re excellent. Each of the game’s six chapters offers a rogue’s gallery of thrilling foes to fight. Known as Yaoguai, these mythological beasts range from a giant black bear to a traditional Chinese dragon, a blood-spattered tiger, and many, many more in between. Blocking is not part of your extensive repertoire, and the only form of parrying is limited to a magic spell on a cooldown timer, so you need to excel at dodging to make it through each fight alive. This might sound intimidating if you don’t usually play tough action-RPGs, but outside of a couple of boss fights in later chapters, the game isn’t particularly challenging. This is coming from a souls-like veteran, so my gauge on what’s hard might be slightly skewed, but I defeated a number of the game’s bosses on my very first attempt. I still wouldn’t say Black Myth: Wukong is approachable, however, as its toughest bosses still pose a considerable threat, and there aren’t any difficulty options. The ramp-up to its most challenging moments is just more forgiving.

Whether you’re fighting on a frozen lake surrounded by snow-capped mountains or sloshing through a shallow pool of blood, these battles against the Yaoguai are frequent triumphs. There’s a sense of balletic elegance to its best boss fights, mixing martial arts influences with supernatural flair to create these tense and awe-inspiring encounters. You’re often challenged to learn attack patterns to nail the timing on dodges and figure out where openings occur so you can get a combo in. But there are also opportunities to be strategic with your abilities, too. Immobilize is ineffective against certain bosses, so you might go for a different spell, or vary your transformations to attack an enemy’s elemental weakness. Even if I sometimes found bosses relatively easy, that didn’t take away from their thrills, while the toughest among them were often met with a pounding heart and palpable elation when I finally managed to emerge victorious.

Black Myth Wukong is not Souls-like

The game’s ability to produce this sensation is where Black Myth: Wukong feels most like a souls-like. There are more obvious similarities, such as a checkpoint system that respawns enemies when you rest, and a flask for healing that has a finite number of charges and can be refilled at said checkpoints. Yet aside from this, Game Science wasn’t lying when it said it wasn’t making a souls-like. This is none more obvious than in the game’s level design. For the most part, your path through each chapter is linear, albeit with a couple of forks in the road leading to optional bosses and crafting materials used for brewing potions and forging armor. Occasionally it opens up with more-expansive areas featuring numerous branching paths, but progression is still usually confined to a singular route, so linearity is present even when it doesn’t initially appear to be.

Black Myth Wukong: A Gorgeous, Most Stunning AAAA Game

In short, Black Myth: Wukong is a huge triumph. A surprising triumph in the sense that I can’t quite believe it’s as good as its drip feed of screens and trailers looked over the last few years. It’s a generous Soulsy adventure hybrid that works within its limitations and delivers a beautiful challenge to be unpicked with a magical toolbox. I appreciate that it’s not just another souls-like in what is now a crowded genre, and the choice to go for a boss gauntlet is unexpected and, honestly, quite refreshing. Arguably, I’d say Black Myth’s world sucked me in more than Elden Ring and Lies Of P, probably more so than anything I’ve played in ages! This is Game Science bursting onto the scene and saying: “You’ve got competition”. And hey, I’m listening. You should be, too.