Review: Black Myth Wukong is a Gorgeous Chinese Epic

Black Myth Wukong is a game that garnered immediate attention from its first trailer — sharp, reactive combat and gorgeous visuals awed a captive audience. And as more information about Black Myth Wukong began to trickle out from developer GameScience, it became clear that this action RPG was everything that initial trailer promised it would be. Black Myth Wukong is an ambitious action RPG that embraces its roots, making for an interesting take on the tale of the Monkey King.

The story of the Destined One is told through a handful of chapters, each featuring a new location to explore and to uncover various secrets. I traversed through dark, wet caves and verdant green forests full of anthropomorphic wolves and snakes. I ventured to a burning temple, where a once-deceased monk transformed into a massive bear and proceeded to beat me to a pulp. I navigated through a dry desert where I was assailed by rat bandits and their king, only to be tangled in combat with a foul-mouthed tiger king moments later. Meditation spots you can find littered throughout these zones provide a brief reprieve, and allow you to take in just how gorgeous the scenery is.

The world of Black Myth Wukong is a rich one, as it pulls from Chinese mythology and keeps a lot of the aesthetic of traditional Chinese artwork that makes the game look and feel special despite it’s use of hyper realistic graphics. But everything about Black Myth Wukong pulls everything together, including its music. More somber tracks play as you plop down to view the scenery, whereas up-tempo music with drums and chanting accompanying some of the more fantastical boss fights. But one of my favorite things about the game were the portraits and other illustrations you unlock as you progress, as these illustrations are evocative of traditional, calligraphy artwork. And for those unfamiliar with the tale of the Monkey King, Black Myth Wukong does have a compendium of sorts that lays out the significance and backstory for characters after you’ve defeated them.

However, even with as powerful as my PC is, there were times when Black Myth Wukong would drop frames. And while the benchmark does give consumers a good idea of just how well the action RPG will run on their PCs, don’t expect it to be smooth sailing. An overabundance of red or fire on the screen can occasionally cause your game to lag, or frames to drop. Since Black Myth Wukong is an action RPG that is reliant on frame-based dodges to fully utilize specific skills, this is a shame. But for the purpose of the review, I dropped my settings down from High to Medium, which resolved most of my problems in that department. Because other than a few technical hiccups, Black Myth Wukong is a more than proficient action game.

The controls in Black Myth Wukong are extremely tight, with precise movement and dodging being one of the core strengths of the game. You can’t just dodge with reckless abandon, because while you are given more than enough stamina to spam your dodge, the Destined One will need to take a brief moment to recollect himself after every third flip or roll. I had to force myself to get out of the mindset of spamming my dodge after recently replaying Elden Ring, and had to come at Black Myth Wukong at a different angle. Combat is just as exciting, but feels more methodical and focused around the core mechanic of building up focus through light attacks to break through your opponents defense and stagger them.

Black Myth Wukong does have a skill tree, which does allow for you to upgrade your stamina, health, and unlock more attacks. While I did find a build that worked for me, I often went back and reallocated skill points if I felt I was starting to struggle against any one encounter. But for the most part, I relied heavily on building focus and landing those devastating heavy attacks while making use of the Immobilize spell. Your loadout in Black Myth Wukong is limited by comparison to games it shared a genre with, but that doesn’t make it any less effective. The skill tree allowed me to level up my Immobilize spell to empower it in such a way that when I would perfectly time a freeze, I would deal extra damage to my enemy.

The game expects you make use of all of the tools at your disposal, which includes spells, transformations, items, and other abilities that lend itself well to the overall feeling of the action RPG’s combat. This is the first time I’ve actually actively used items in an action RPG — for games like Nioh and anything in FromSoftware’s catalogue of similar titles I tend to face enemies and bosses head-one, slicing through them with whatever I have on hand. So much so that I even forgot about spells in Elden Ring. But Black Myth Wukong wants you to make use of your entire arsenal, and even expects it. You can, of course, go without using spells or the powerful art of Transformation (which allows you to assume the form of specific enemies you encounter), but it will make the game significantly more difficult. That said, I didn’t have too much of a problem fighting bosses or navigating through game’s varied chapters.

Once I had gotten in the groove of things, and stopped mashing my dodge, everything came together. I had to be patient. I had to be reactive, and I had to wait. Making use of those frame-perfect dodges felt good, and the slight slow-down effect that accompanied them always felt cool. Learning new techniques for my staff and weaving them into my combos felt extremely rewarding. And fighting enemies that don’t track your movements made encounters feel fair. I wasn’t frantically trying to get out of the way of anything, because I knew the direction hits were going to land. I understood where I was safe, and if I ended up losing a fight, why I lost in the first place. Death also isn’t something that really sets you back either. Shrines, locations where you level up and serve as soft checkpoints, are usually close to boss arenas, and whatever currency you’ve lost upon defeat can easily be regained by fighting through whatever enemies have respawned.

But if you’re really struggling, you can further help alleviate some of the difficulty of specific fights by crafting items that reduce the amount of damage taken, and upgrading your weapon or putting together new armor sets. Assembling matching pieces of armor does provide you with incremental stat boosts and some neat passives, but if you’re like me and like pressing your luck, you can absolutely beat Black Myth Wukong with armor you’ve obtained in the early hours of the game. You can also empower your healing gourd with additional effects too. Black Myth Wukong has a lot of different features to chew your teeth on, and allows for you to experiment with your style of play.

Do you want to deal poison damage to enemies? You can do that through summoning a poisoner to lay venomous snakes around the field that shoot poison at your target. Want to inflict burn damage on an enemy? You can do that through your Transformation skill. Or maybe you just want to focus on countering attacks with perfectly timed dodges and strikes. You can absolutely do that too.

Overall, Black Myth Wukong is a gorgeous game that has taken great efforts to make an interesting and exciting reimagining of one of East Asia’s most popular myths. The game is solid, and outside of frame drops, otherwise performs very well. And it’s probably one of the best action RPG I’ve played all year.

Black Myth: Wukong will release for PC via Steam and PS5 on August 20, 2024.