REVIEW: ‘Black Myth: Wukong’ Provides An Unforgettable But Imperfect Experience (PC)

Black Myth: Wukong is one of this year’s most anticipated titles. It promises an open, mysterious, engaging world, a unique retelling of a legendary folktale, and brutal but engaging combat. To a large extent, developer Game Science fulfills many of these promises, making for a delightful experience, but not one without some noticeable issues.

Black Myth: Wukong adapts the popular Chinese Mythology folklore Journey to the West, one of the Four Great Classical Novels of Chinese literature. The story follows a stone monkey referred to as the Destined One. Players control him as he ventures across the land to collect mysterious relics holding great power that could bring back Sun Wukong, the Monkey King.

The story hits the ground running by starting with a prologue showing Sun Wukong being entirely kitted up and in his strongest state. It also explains how he revolted against the heavens and the celestial court for killing his kind. He’s met by one of the Celestials, who shows up to discipline him, and a highly cinematic boss fight ensues mere minutes into the game, seemingly ending with Wukong’s demise. This section gives players access to many of Wukong’s abilities during the fight.

Afterward, we see a time skip with the Destined One back at his mountain with other monkeys, where he’s given his task to retrieve the relics. This is where the game begins, and players progress through it, gaining new abilities and collecting relics while meeting several characters and creatures threatening to halt their progress.

The opening prologue does an incredible job of hooking players in by showing them some of the game’s best features. Many of the skills and abilities given to the player from the start are amazing and breed excitement for what’s to come later.

Black Myth: Wukong excellently portrays Wukong’s path in the folklore and includes many elements fans will recognize, from simple things like the cloud that Wukong rides on at the start of the game to more important details like the many abilities he’s known to have and depictions of known characters seen in the folklore.

However, as most players will likely play this game without full knowledge of what Journey to the West is as a story, Black Myth: Wukong doesn’t do much to explain what is happening and what exactly happened to make Wukong rebel against the Celestials. Instead, we start following the Destined One as he begins his journey.

Players visit many locations and meet several characters and factions, but details about them are very sparse. It feels as if you are dropped into a world long established before you arrive, and you will not be brought up to speed at the start, so you have to fill in the details yourself as you progress the game. As such, players who don’t already know the source material will be at a disadvantage in trying to understand the story, at least from the start of the game. While there is an in-game glossary system called Portraits, which provides backgrounds to several characters, creatures, and locations, these details are only provided through short summary paragraphs.

Other than that, while there are several memorable moments in the story, the overarching narrative, unfortunately, isn’t all that interesting, and players will likely remember gameplay moments.

That said, it is worth noting that Black Myth: Wukong is still incredibly entertaining. Without revealing much, the game sports several memorable gameplay moments and incredible boss fights, all of which are fantastic in their own ways.

Like many Soulslike action RPGs, players fight various enemies using several abilities and skills. Your primary weapon is the Bo staff, and players will find many staff with different stats and looks. Abilities are limited from the start, as players only first start with the Immobilize ability that holds enemies in place. However, as they progress, they gain more abilities, such as turning invisible while leaving a copy behind to distract enemies, turning it into stone to block incoming attacks, creating offensive duplicates, and many more.

Unlike other Soulslikes, these abilities don’t just help to deal extra damage but give players options to strategize and find ways to defeat enemies constructively. As they progress through the game, players also get access to several Stances, which change up the attack type of the heavy bow attacks. There’s the standard Smash stance, which deals easily executable heavy bow attacks; the Pillar stance, which allows the player to stand on the bow to avoid damage below while charging up a heavy blow; and the Thrust stance, which deals quick successive attacks. However, while all stances are useful, most are only helpful in particular scenarios, and as such, the Smash stance will likely be the most used.

Other than weapons and abilities, players can also use Spirits of defeated enemies, which help in combat in several ways. This ranges from something simple as a heavy ground attack to poisoning enemies slowly. These spirits can also be upgraded and have their advantages and disadvantages. Unlike games like Elden Ring, these spirits only provide limited help to the player and mainly help with developing strategies.

Additionally, unlike in standard RPGs, leveling up doesn’t grant players stat upgrades, extra health, attack power, or stamina. Instead, defeating enemies grants a Spark, which can be used to expand the skill trees. These trees have several categories ranging from simple but limited health, stamina, and ability upgrades to more intricate enhancements like gaining more damage in specific circumstances, reducing stamina consumption and Qi cost for magic abilities, and more. Moreover, almost every skill in the skill tree can be Respecced at any time, adding another layer of strategy against particularly challenging foes.

However, while the combat system is highly versatile, it’s also noticeably limiting. To get stronger and gain the upper hand in combat, players can’t just grind, as leveling up only provides a skill point. Instead, they’ll need to find the very occasional stat upgrade items found in shrines, which are limited to about one or two in each chapter, craft stronger weapons that are equally as rare, and find or purchase items that will upgrade their other items like the restorative gourd, spirits, and more.

Because of this, conquering the game and all its challenging bosses will mostly depend on your skill level, how well you understand the boss’s patterns, and your ability to strategize. So, depending on the player, this may or may not be a negative aspect.

Speaking of bosses, Black Myth: Wukong features a surprising number of bosses. There are so many bosses, in fact, that players will spend more time fighting them than doing anything else in the game. While this makes the game incredibly engaging, it also means players have little reprieve between them. Most of these bosses are also tough as nails, so players will spend several minutes, if not hours, learning how to defeat each of them. However, it’d be a disservice not to point out that while most bosses are challenging but fair, some are notably unbalanced.

A particular boss worth highlighting can be found early in the game. Without revealing too much, the boss is unnaturally difficult as they not only have high defense, hit hard with wide swings, have a thick health bar, and heal themself, but they also can break free from  the player’s Immobilize ability and turn into a form that you can’t attack and is hard to avoid. While most bosses aren’t like this, the few like this are worth mentioning.

In terms of visuals, Black Myth: Wukong is a juggernaut. The game sports several picturesque environments and fantastic art direction with an aesthetic faithful to its fantastical folklore inspirations. The art direction can also be appreciated in-game through Meditations, allowing players to see their current position. The character designs are equally impressive. All notable characters and bosses sport intricately designed outfits, and each major monster fight is magnificently awe-inspiring.

However, Black Myth‘s performance on PC so far isn’t as impressive. While the game runs smoothly 80 percent of the time, several areas in the game triggered massive frame rate dips even when tested on medium and low settings. What’s worse is that the early build also had several but sparse crashes in random but highly inconvenient moments of the game, but hopefully, these will be ironed out in the full launch.

All in all, Black Myth: Wukong is an incredibly engaging and entertaining action RPG in many ways. While the overarching narrative leaves a lot to be desired, and the technical and balance issues can be a hindrance, the game still provides an epic, unforgettable gameplay and cinematic experience that not many games can rival.

Black Myth: Wukong will launch on August 20 for PlayStation 5 and PC via Steam and Epic Games Store.