In an era where Soulslike games are a dime a dozen, it's become increasingly difficult to stand out in the genre pioneered by From Software. Developer Game Science decided to take a more inspired approach to the genre with its latest action RPG, Black Myth: Wukong, delivering a wildly unique adventure based on the classic Chinese story of Journey to the West. While not without its flaws, Black Myth: Wukong excels in areas that are truly genre-defining, at least in terms of its flashy gameplay. It's unfortunate that the negatives still annoyingly persist in this otherwise terrific experience.

As mentioned, Black Myth: Wukong is mostly based on Journey to the West; the story of a stubborn monkey who ascends to power. He is quickly humbled and forced to go on a journey that truly tests his mettle as a warrior, working his way back up to take on ancient foes, deities and all manner of mythological Chinese creatures.



If you aren't familiar with Journey to the West, Black Myth: Wukong is not going to grab you with its storytelling. Most of the narrative is told through short cutscenes and item descriptions that will sound confusing due to the Chinese-to-English translation that's rather difficult to adapt for a Western audience, mainly due to the subtext and dialogue being hard in and of itself to fully comprehend. On that note, I would strongly suggest brushing up on Journey to the West's story before playing the game as it adds a lot more context to characters and events - things that the game sort of expects you to already know going in.

I would strongly suggest brushing up on Journey to the West's story before playing the game as it adds a lot more context to characters and events.

Ultimately, the focus of Black Myth: Wukong is its gameplay. While at its core there are some elements it borrows from Soulslike games - stamina management, resting at shrines to level up, respawning enemies - the gameplay is surprisingly action-heavy with lite RPG elements. If I had to make a comparison, I'd say it's closer to the action/adventure genre like Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice or the newer God of War games than any traditional Soulslike. Some might find the RPG elements lacking but the stylish combat more than makes up for some of its shortcomings.



Your main weapon for most of the game is a staff that can be upgraded and imbued with various buffs and helpful abilities. Stances change up the way you approach combat, offering light and heavy attacks that offer a wide variety of different chain combos and finishers. You'll have the option of the heavy-hitting Smash Stance, the flexible Pillar Stance or the Thrust Stance for keeping your distance - all can be upgraded on a fairly robust skill tree, though I stuck with the Smash Stance for the most part as its heavy attack is immensely satisfying to land. The gameplay is fast, fluid and unrelenting, forcing you to dodge and evade with precision while looking for openings to unleash a flurry of hits before finding your footing again. Combat is an intricate dance that rewards the attentive, especially against the game's tough boss fights which are just as fast and often hit harder than you do.

On that note, the gameplay isn't as challenging as other genre contemporaries like Lies of P or Dark Souls. Black Myth: Wukong places an emphasis on your limited resources such as healing gourds and other items that will probably benefit you more against bosses than minor enemies. Spells can also be learned to give you an advantage on the battlefield, but the long cooldown times and high mana consumption of these magical abilities means you'll have to choose when to use them wisely until you rest at a shrine to replenish your resources. Nonetheless, the spells are extremely effective against bosses, allowing you slot up to four at a time, mixing and matching your ideal build and playstyle.



Black Myth: Wukong might surprise you at how linear many of its early levels can be. Invisible walls constantly block exploration, forcing you on the path the game has laid of for you. It's disappointingly not as open as I would've liked, especially since most levels are created on quite a big scale with areas of interest that are blocked off. Later levels do eventually open up, creating interconnected zones, shortcut paths and plenty of awesome secret areas, though by the time you get to those more open levels, the game has already conditioned you to follow the straight path towards the next boss encounter.

Combat is an intricate dance that rewards the attentive, especially against the game's tough boss fights which are just as fast and often hit harder than you do.

Speaking of boss fights, Black Myth: Wukong has no shortage of truly spectacular, cinematic boss encounters lovingly recreated from Chinese mythology and the texts of Journey to the West. Again, these boss encounters are grand and often reminded me of God of War in many ways. Some are smaller, off-the-beaten-path encounters while others are incredibly built up. Make no mistake, Black Myth: Wukong is more of a boss rush game than it is an exploration-heavy adventure title, which brings me to one of my biggest complaints about the game.



While the boss fights are spectacles and terrific in their own right, everything you do in-between feels a little uninspired. You'll often run into mobs of enemies and tough mini-bosses on linear paths clearly guiding you towards boss areas. They're not that difficult to deal with but on repeated runs, they can be bothersome, especially if you're trying very hard to conserve your limited resources for the boss battles. It feels like the game couldn't just be a string of corridors leading to bosses, so they littered enemies around the areas to keep you occupied and give the illusion of having more to do and fight in these spaces. It's not very exciting after a while and I later kept wishing that I could just make a dash for the boss room at the end of each chapter.

While the boss fights are spectacles and terrific in their own right, everything you do in-between feels a little uninspired.

Where the level design stumbles, the art direction and visuals pick up the slack. Black Myth: Wukong is a gorgeous game, clearly sculpted by Game Science with passion and reverence for the great source material. It's one of the more impressive examples of Unreal Engine 5 games truly standing out thanks to their visuals alone, allowing the developers to craft detailed, exciting and larger-than-life cutscenes that look awe-inspiring - no better example than the first hour which is one of the best openings I've played in a video game all year. The Chinese voice acting is also terrific and I strongly recommend you play it this way.



Black Myth: Wukong isn't very consistent on a technical level, at least on PS5 which is what this review is based on. Anything other than Balanced Mode comes at the cost of frame rates, screen tearing and weird texture pop-ins. It's a bit jarring but honestly not enough to take away from the experience. Game Science still has time to fix these nagging issues with updates and iron out the creases. On Balanced Mode, it ran fairly well on PS5 with a mostly stable frame rate, but don't expect a smooth gameplay experience if you opt for Performance Mode, for some reason.

Black Myth: Wukong is a grand, visually spectacular action RPG that falls short of being as outstanding as it could've been. It's clearly made with a lot of love for the source material; narratively rich and detailed where it matters. The boss fights are exciting, memorable encounters that offer just enough challenge to never feel too easy, but once you get the hang of the stylish combat and use your skills wisely, you'll find it all very rewarding. It's a shame that the game's linearity in the first legs of the journey hold it back from reaching its full potential. If a sequel were to ever happen, the talents at Game Science have already proven that they have what it takes to make something remarkable based on these great foundations alone.