4/5 ★ – renatchein's review of Black Myth: Wukong.

Monkey not-souls Let's begin stating that I dropped this game for two months. After this retirement I finally got back to crush that filthy rat boss from the second chapter. The game doesn't care whether you feel it's balanced, polished, fair or not. You'll get rolled over many times until you find a way to dodge at the right time and use the scarce resources it provides you. It IS a difficult game, don't be fooled. With this out of the way, let's get to the parts this games does well: Graphic It's astonishing. They crafted a very realistic UE5 world that rarely stutters. Perfect motion capture and Raytracing. It really captures the essence of what Chinese landscapes and scenarios, even with the mystical ones. A complaint is there the scenarios became unremarkable for it's photorealistic construction. The parts that really struck as artistically made were few. The over 100 characters, NPCs and enemies on the other hand were really creative and we'll crafted. The armors and weapons have so many details it really impress. Sound/music Awesome. It really sound like an Hollywood epic with many music videos (with awesome animated tales). The sound design is really good as well, specially those related to elements: metal, rock, wind. Gameplay Controls do respond well but it's faulty sometimes in combat, like drinking the gourd, making varied combos and dodging attacks. It really pissed me off about the invisible walls that were supposed to be aligned with an element from the scene but were just the laziest restrictions I've seen recently. The movement in the scenario often fall short in fitting as well. Like being stuck in the geometry of a bush or a fallen tree. The slippery sand and ice too were no help as well. The thing that I thought was the worst decision was limit too much what you can do in combat. I'm ok with cooldowns, but: 1) attach heavy attack effectiveness with Focus points built on lazy repetitive light attacks; 2) mystic arts being limited to mana bar that doesn't regenerate and you must twist your whole build to get few drops back over the course of the fight; 3) seeing the bosses accomplish so many cool moves and you're just limited to choose 5 or 6 extremely limited ones it's just frustrating. [SPOILER] As seen at the final fight with Wukong.[/SPOILER] Story Very interesting characters and scenes that tell a grand tale with nuances and developments that, IF YOU KNOW the origin story, might impress you. Otherwise it's a bunch of inexplicable characters doing whatsoever for whatever reason. You can catch a glimpse of it during the game, but the portraits do a much better job of acquaintance to it all. It's a shame you only get to know it after the record get into your diary. VERY soulslike. It does get more comfortable during the game as you grow stronger and get more power ups. And there's a nice surprise in the final chapter for the fans of the original dragon ball.