Black Myth: Wukong review for PC, PS5

I should admit this right off the bat: I’m terrible at Soulslikes. I’ve said it before, repeatedly, but I feel like it bears repeating when writing about Black Myth: Wukong given that it is, broadly speaking, a Soulslike.

Yet, it isn’t – not quite. Admittedly, given my lack of skill I’m probably just about the last person qualified to judge what does or doesn’t count as a Soulslike, but when I compare Black Myth: Wukong to any of the other games from that genre that I’m familiar with, whether we’re talking Dark Souls, Bloodborne, Nioh, Wo Long, or whatever other touchpoint you want to use, it feels different enough that just labeling it a Soulslike and calling it a day seems insufficient.

The biggest reason for this is that there’s not a whole lot of parrying to be done here. Battles generally aren’t won or lost by how well you can time a block and react with a well-placed thrust of your sword. In fact, apart from boss fights, that’s not the name of the game at all – there are loads of enemies you can take out with a single swing of your staff, and you don’t even need to be that talented to pull it off (as evidenced by the fact that even I was able to get the hang of it pretty quickly).

Instead, Black Myth: Wukong is all about dodging and knowing when to run away, no matter how tough your opponent is. While you can charge up your staff for a one-hit kill on most of the lesser enemies (which means dodging and running is kind of useless, unless there are multiples), as soon as you start facing the tougher enemies, your success will be dictated by how well you can jump out of the way at the last second, land a hit or two, and then run off to wait for the next opportunity.

Of course, that’s easier said than done in lots of cases. The bosses in Black Myth: Wukong are generally very big and very hard to beat. Their attacks feel a lot more unpredictable, and if you get hit in the wrong way you may find yourself being the victim of a one-hit kill, rather than the one meting out such punishment.

The way to deal with these tough bosses is to take advantage of all those weaker between-boss enemies, since you earn focus points for every enemy you take out. Those points add up to give you sparks, which you then use to upgrade your abilities.

This, to me, is one of the problems with the game. Since so many of the non-boss enemies are so easy, it’s a challenge to build up your skills to a point where you can figure out how to take on the bosses. In a way, the gulf in enemy toughness kind of reminds me of God of War, pre-reboot, where you had all kinds of demons and monsters that could be dispatched with a single blow of your weapons, acting as fodder in between lengthy boss fights. It’s hardly a perfect comparison, since the boss fights here are tougher, but it feels apt to me.

Black Myth: Wukong’s other issue is that while its world looks absolutely gorgeous – and I’ll get back to that in a moment – it also feels empty and lifeless. Enemies respawn in the same place every time you rest at an altar or upgrade your sparks, so you quickly get a sense of what lies in wait for you at every turn (though that may just be me, seeing as I died and was sent back to altars many, many times).There’s not much room for exploration, either, since the game is constantly funneling you in a straight line towards the next boss. While you can play around with the linear nature of the game by sending yourself back to earlier altars to farm more focus points against weaker enemies before going up against a tougher boss, this doesn’t make the world any more interesting – you’ll just see the same things in the same locations almost every time.

That said, even if it’s a lifeless world, it’s still breathtaking. I played Black Myth: Wukong on my ROG Ally, and apart from a little choppiness and slowdowns whenever I first booted up the game, it ran fine. I have no doubt that it would’ve been even more impressive-looking on a more powerful PC, but it was still pretty impressive. In other words, if you watched those dazzling early trailers and were worried that the developers of Black Myth: Wukong were overpromising in the looks department, you can rest assured that those concerns are largely unfounded.

For that matter, I’d say that Black Myth: Wukong pretty much delivers on what it always promised: a gorgeous world where you get to battle crazy monsters and demons. It would be nice if there was a little more to do between the craziest monsters and demons, but if you want a game that will test you while giving you some nice scenery to look at, you’ll find it here.

GameScience provided us with a Black Myth: Wukong PC code for review purposes.