Black Myth: Wukong review

Our VerdictBlack Myth: Wukong blossoms with an eccentric cast of characters and expressive combat all wrapped up in the rich world of its source material.

Our Verdict

Black Myth: Wukong blossoms with an eccentric cast of characters and expressive combat all wrapped up in the rich world of its source material.

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Need to Know(Image credit: Game Science)What is it?A beautiful and challenging singleplayer action RPG based on a Journey to the West.Release dateAugust 20, 2024Expect to pay$60/£50DeveloperGameSciencePublisherGameScienceReviewed onRTX 4090, Intel Core i9 12900K, 16GB RAMMultiplayerNoSteam DeckN/ALinkSteam$32.23View at Walmart$49.59View at CDKeys$64.99View at AmazonSee all prices (7 found)

Need to Know

(Image credit: Game Science)What is it?A beautiful and challenging singleplayer action RPG based on a Journey to the West.Release dateAugust 20, 2024Expect to pay$60/£50DeveloperGameSciencePublisherGameScienceReviewed onRTX 4090, Intel Core i9 12900K, 16GB RAMMultiplayerNoSteam DeckN/ALinkSteam$32.23View at Walmart$49.59View at CDKeys$64.99View at AmazonSee all prices (7 found)

(Image credit: Game Science)

black myth: wukong

What is it?A beautiful and challenging singleplayer action RPG based on a Journey to the West.Release dateAugust 20, 2024Expect to pay$60/£50DeveloperGameSciencePublisherGameScienceReviewed onRTX 4090, Intel Core i9 12900K, 16GB RAMMultiplayerNoSteam DeckN/ALinkSteam

$32.23View at Walmart$49.59View at CDKeys$64.99View at AmazonSee all prices (7 found)

$32.23View at Walmart

$49.59View at CDKeys

$64.99View at Amazon

See all prices (7 found)

Dark Souls never let me stick my tongue out as a giant frog and slap my enemies around with it. It never let me create a posse of clones to punch an evil pile of rocks back into the ground either. If Dark Souls is a trial, Wukong is an adventure. Or if you want to be accurate about it, it’s a Journey to the West, but the animals have health bars. Wukong imagines a version of the classic Chinese story where a fox upgrades your healing potion. If anything about it is truly likeFromSoftware’s games, it’s how much it lets its rich world speak for itself.

Surprises like a gigantic frog leaping out of tall grass and a serpentine dragon clutching me in its teeth far above a frozen lake lured me forward—every level is a series of bizarre vignettes crash landing into a seemingly straightforward quest. Wukong is overflowing with boss fights, which isn’t actually as intimidating as it sounds. The difficulty of these encounters is so uneven that you never know what to expect. You might stumble into an oversized rat and come out unscathed, but need to fully lock-in to defeat a raging bear. Many of the bosses celebrate the spectacle rather than demanding your sharpest reflexes.

(Image credit: Tyler C. / GameScience)

Black Myth: Wukong game screenshot

Wukong gently pressures you to take side paths that lead to treasure or sidequests that will beef you up for what’s ahead.

A similar ethos applies to the sections between those big fights. Wukong’s level design begins extremely linear, almost to the point of constricting its combat into one big highway of enemies, but it gradually opens up after the first few hours. You go from bonking wolves in a forest to tiptoeing past skeletal snake men. In its second chapter, every kind of rat shows up to snipe you from rooftops or set you on fire with clouds of gunpowder. Wukong gently pressures you to take side paths that lead to treasure or sidequests that will beef you up for what’s ahead.

Instead of dropping you into a meat grinder of tricky enemy placements between each boss like so many soulslikes, Wukong lets these open sections breathe so you can soak up its world before moving into the next big battle.

(Image credit: Tyler C. / GameScience)

Black Myth: Wukong game screenshot

But doing so will rob you of the most satisfying elements of Wukong’s combat. Aside from some minor damage upgrades to your staff, you don’t have an inventory of weapons to choose from. You do, however, have an inventory of creatures to choose from. Special enemies found throughout the levels drop their spirits which can be equipped for a passive buff and a devastating signature attack, like morphing your head into a giant hammer or turning into a swordsman for one clean slash attack. Combat is largely about creating openings in an enemy’s attack patterns with your spells and buying time with dodges until they’re back online.

Most fights are a dance of cartwheels, somersaults, and puffs of smoke as your monkey man assumes the form of various beasts that you collect like Pokémon. Once you find the rhythm, you go from playing as a warrior to a magician.

A rough start

(Image credit: Tyler C. / GameScience)

Black Myth: Wukong game screenshot

The handful of deaths from the game’s poor performance couldn’t sour how impressive Wukong is as an action game that isn’t content with living in FromSoftware’s shadow. It may have a lot of the signifiers of a soulslike, but it wields its difficulty in a more playful, approachable way. Wukong shirks a lot of the punishing difficulty synonymous with the soulslike genre, positioning it as one of the best games to recommend to anyone who has avoided them or for those who aren’t fond of how grim they tend to be. Bosses that bookend each chapter are the closest mirrors to ones you’d find in Elden Ring, but you can skip usual moveset memorization and trial-and-error with patience, dodging around until you’re comfortable with going in. Checkpoints are never more than 30 seconds away from the bosses too. The rewards at the end of each chapter are striking little animations—one of which is a stop-motion parable about a man who saves an injured wolf—that make your effort worth it.

(Image credit: Tyler C. / GameScience)

Black Myth: Wukong game screenshot

Wukong is one of the most joyful action RPGs I’ve played simply for how lovingly it treats its world and characters.

Those scenes reinforce the exuberance with which the game’s developers drew from such an iconic work of folklore. GameScience has imbued Wukong with a staggering amount of creativity. Aside from the performance issues, the biggest disappointment comes from outside the game itself: Last year,an IGN reportdescribed in detail a history of sexist remarks from GameScience’s leaders. The studio has declined to acknowledge the allegations in recent interviews, and while I didn’t find anything within the game that reflects an extremely regressive view of women (although there just aren’t many in the game), the behavior tarnishes what would otherwise be an effortless recommendation.

Wukong is its own beast and if it has to be labeled a soulslike, then I think we’re going to have to come up with a new definition. There’s nothing else quite like it.

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The Verdict87Read our review policyBlack Myth: WukongBlack Myth: Wukong blossoms with an eccentric cast of characters and expressive combat all wrapped up in the rich world of its source material.

The Verdict

87Read our review policyBlack Myth: WukongBlack Myth: Wukong blossoms with an eccentric cast of characters and expressive combat all wrapped up in the rich world of its source material.

87Read our review policy

Black Myth: WukongBlack Myth: Wukong blossoms with an eccentric cast of characters and expressive combat all wrapped up in the rich world of its source material.

Black Myth: Wukong

Black Myth: Wukong blossoms with an eccentric cast of characters and expressive combat all wrapped up in the rich world of its source material.

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The 2024 Steam Awards give Game of the Year to Black Myth: Wukong

Black Myth: Wukong

Black Myth: Wukong’s care and attention to its setting made it one of my favorite gaming experiences of 2024

LatestToday’s Wordle answer for Friday, January 10See more latest►

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Our Verdict#

A rough start#

Our Verdict

A rough start