Platform(s): Android, iOS, Microsoft Windows
Another competitor has entered the ring to challenge the extremely popular Genshin Impact for its throne as the most popular mobile action role-playing game. Developed by Kuro Games, “Wuthering Waves” (WuWa) was released on May 22 into a market full of similar-minded games and is said to be a direct competitor to Genshin Impact.
How does it stack up to its four-year-old predecessor? Is it able to stand on its own two feet? There is good news and, well, mostly bad news.
Deep gameplay as promised
During battle, I will swap from Calcharo to Chixia and then to Rover whenever their intro skills are ready (their portraits on the right start glowing).
Kuro Games has gone on record to say that WuWa will differentiate itself from its competitors by placing a greater emphasis on combat, and on that part, the game is excellent.
Characters are distinct and can do different things in combat, like how one character can activate a skill to fight by wearing a lion dance costume. They are further augmented by how WuWa has a “Pokemon”-like element to it, as enemies killed can sometimes be absorbed into a “data bank.”
The data of the slain can then be assigned to characters for stat increases and special effects, like the ability to transform into the enemy and use their attacks. This adds an added layer to how teams can be built, as there are only three playable characters that players can seamlessly swap between during fights per team.
Each character has one individual element: Fusion (fire), Glacio (ice), Aero (air), Electro (electric), Spectro (light), and Havoc (chaos), and these influence their basic and heavy attacks, their skills, and their resonance abilities.
They also each use one of five weapon types in the game, like the short sword and broadsword and gauntlets for characters that fight up close and personal, pistols for those that fight from a medium-large distance, and rectifiers used by magic users.
During the early game, it is fun mixing and matching the characters to see who works best with each other. Focused team compositions, like having a main damage dealer and two characters on healing and spell-strengthening duty, will play an integral part in the deeper players get into the game.
I used Calcharo as my heavy hitter and supported him with Baizhi and Verina. Swapping between the characters and using their skills, and then going back to Calcharo and unleashing his most powerful skills, melts most enemies.
As a gacha-style game, players will need luck when they do their pulls or lucky draws to get new characters, and like other gacha games, WuWa will have more characters later in its life, presumably after Kuro Games is done fixing the problems in the game. Speaking of that…
Hit that “skip.”
The combat and gameplay are so good that players will often be looking out for the “Skip” option to appear at the top left corner of the screen during story and dialogue scenes just to get it over with so that they can get back to murdering monsters.
This is because WuWa’s story is extremely dull, and it makes me wonder if Kuro Games used AI to write it, and if they did, just how much of the nonsense was AI-generated. The game’s story begins with players picking either a male or female Rover (their unnamed main character), and then they are dropped on a planet being ravaged by monsters.
The Rover is the stereotypical “chosen one,” who can do everything flawlessly and has characters gawk at how amazing they are. At the same time, they are mute for 60% of the time during the story and in scenes with dialogue.
Sometimes, the player’s automaton Rover with zero personality will speak full sentences, and the rest of the time, they will just stare blankly while supporting characters engage in 10-minute-long monotonous conversations.
Did I mention the Rover is also amnesiac? Circling back to my suspicions of AI usage is how WuWa has a lot of jargon, made-up words, and technobabble that is shoved into every conversation to describe the fictional things in the game’s world.
For a taste, these are some of the words the game drops on players within the first hour and expects them to know what the hell any of it means: Lament, Tacet Fields, Tacet Discord, Etheric Sea, Retroact Rain, and Waveworn Phenomenon It does not help that most of the English voice acting is flat and directionless for the majority of the characters.
For example, in scenes of distress or panic, the voice actors sound like they’re reading their characters’ lines while enjoying a soothing cup of mint tea during a quiet afternoon.
Waves of problems
As smooth as the combat is, WuWa’s standard movements during gameplay are as clumsy as a baby trying to stand up for the first time.
Basic actions like trying to climb a ladder or climb up any object will often send you flying forward with the moment of a train being derailed. The actions are also simplified enough that all players need to do is move forward and press the run button to get across everything.
The exploration is very watered down in terms of options. Some may like it, and some may not. Another issue with the exploration is the lack of monsters outside of the game’s central cities and friendly zones. Players often find 3 to 5 enemies grouped together and then spend 5 to 10 minutes running around looking for another mob of enemies to fight. If they are lucky, they will encounter a secluded cave or something with nice treasure, and even these will have sparse enemies.
During the game’s launch, it was plagued with connectivity issues. Every few minutes, my game lagged or my connection would briefly cut out. Normally, these would be fine, but WuWa is an always-online game. What that means is that if there are connectivity issues while players are fighting enemies, their characters just freeze in place while the enemies continue moving and attacking them.
That said, by May 30, I only encountered this issue once after several hours of playing, as opposed to how it would happen 10+ times in an hour a week ago. Kuro Games has been hard at work fixing the game’s issues, and it will take a while before everything is ironed out, but certain aspects like the story and voice acting are irreversible.
If this review can recommend one thing for the studio to implement, it is how Kuro Games should make the skip option permanent for every scene and dialogue. Either do that, or players will skip “Wuthering Waves” in droves of their own volition.
