It’s the 90s, a time where kids coming home from school would rush to the TVs to catch the afternoon programming on the ABC channel. There were the usual animation shows, many of which I credit for our collective pro-environment standpoints today, but sprinkled in between them were other older TV shows that were obviously quite cheap license. Monkey is perhaps the most memorable one for many of my generation, the catchy opening credits tune getting a good rinsing on the playground as we recreated the adventures of Sun Wukong and his band of miscreants that we’d seen on TV the previous day. So, you can imagine then that when I saw Black Myth Wukong announced some 4 years ago I was hooked, that 8 year old boy in me finally getting to live out the dream of being Monkey. What Game Science has created is nothing short of incredible and has me kicking myself for not knowing more about the source material before jumping in.
Sun Wukong has completed his quest to retrieve all sutras as part of his journey to the west and is thus allowed to ascend to Buddhahood. However life in the celestial court isn’t for him and he instead returns to his home in Mount Huaguo which angers the other gods to no ends. So they send in Erlang Shen to force him to submit and, after a mighty duel, Wukong is only brought to heel when the circlet is bound to his head. He is then entombed in stone atop his mountain and his six senses scattered across the mortal realm, ensuring that he will never be able to return. Over the next few centuries though the monkeys send out young warriors to retrieve the senses, hoping to bring back Wukong from his grave. You are the Destined One, the latest monkey to set out on this path.
There is simply no denying just how gorgeous Wukong looks in every respect. The environments have been well crafted, from the wide open vistas to the tight caverns and caves that you’ll find yourself exploring. Like many games these days the environments appear much more expansive than they really are with invisible walls and walled off areas penning you in. The levels are quite dense though, with many secret areas that are accessed if you know where to look or how particular mechanics interact with each other. The music is also very well done, a credit to 8085Audio who did the composition. Performance remains good throughout too, even in the more intense boss fights. Overall it’s a thoroughly impressive game from a craftsmanship perspective, something you wouldn’t expect from a first time AAA dev.
The inevitable comparisons of Wukong to Elden Ring and other soulslikes won’t stop here as they share similar heritage in the main combat and progression mechanics. The combat is the tried and true telegraph/react/punish/repeat loop that we’re all familiar with now although it’s a little more focused in terms of ancillary mechanics than Elden Ring is. Progression comes in a couple different varieties including the standard talent tree, upgrading/acquiring new gear, using medicines to buff certain attributes and acquiring new variants of your core ability set. All of this can be switched up at will too, giving you a kind of respec freedom that you really haven’t had in this kind of game before. The game is also quite a bit more linear in its opening and closing moments, something which you will either like or hate depending on what kind of player you tend to be. So whilst a lot of the game’s tropes are going to feel familiar when they’re all put together it’s nothing like the soulsbornes of years gone by.
Combat is distinctly boss heavy, something which can prove to be a bit exhausting early on when you’re still grappling with the game’s base mechanics. The game tries to mitigate this somewhat by limiting the amount of things you have access to which, whilst workable, does have the effect of making a large chunk of the game feel like an extended tutorial. Once you’ve got your preferred rhythm down though you’ll likely come across a good number of bosses that you’ll 1 or 2 shot as there’s a good number of them that aren’t really meant to be gear or skill checks, just another spectacle for you to enjoy. Of course this can also lull you into a false sense of security and it’s quite easy to find yourself up against a brick wall after breezing through a number of bosses.
The good news is that this is somewhat in your control given a few mechanics that the game has but won’t introduce you to. The first of which is the vessels which are rare items that can only be gained by getting access to each of the chapter’s secret areas. Whilst the base stats they provide are amazing just by themselves, the active ability will nullify many bosses’ second phases or certain abilities making them much more approachable. Further to that it is entirely possible to over-level yourself for any given area so that you can mostly breeze through it. It’s not on the same level as what you can do in other soulsborne games, but if you’re feeling like you’re up against a challenge that’s way more punishing than it feels like it should be then it’s still a viable option rather than beating your head against a wall for hours on end.
Progression feels rapid although in reality it’s not as big of a difference in the early days as you might think. As you’d expect the key thing here is options as the more of them you have at your disposal the greater the chance is that you’ll have something in the kit bag to address the challenge you’re currently facing. Now Wukong does allow you to basically respec everything (sans equipment and spirit upgrades) whenever you want which does also mean there’s a good number of boss encounters which are built with that in mind. So whilst you can (as I did) use basically the same build throughout the game you will find that there are certain “easy” enemies that are super hard and vice versa. I, for instance, only ever used the smash stance so I’m completely unaware of how the other 2 stances could be used to breeze through certain encounters, of which I’m sure there’s plenty.
This is also one of the reasons which led to the game’s pacing feeling a little off at times, starting off with fast paced, focused action in the opening chapters whilst then slowing right down in chapters 3 and 4 before ramping right up again in the final 2. Granted chapters 3 and 4 are the ones where you have the greatest opportunity to explore, refine your build and generally just muck about but it does mean that the overarching narrative takes a bit of a backseat while you do. Combine that with a perceived boss difficulty that’s all over the place (due to the aforementioned ability to respec at will, meaning there’s always a “perfect” boss build available) and the game can feel like a slog at times.
I will also mention that I, out of nothing but sheer laziness, used basically no consumables throughout my playthrough. It was mostly because I didn’t want to get into the loop of relying on them, running out during a particularly challenging boss fight and then having to go and spend more time farming materials in order to use them again. To be sure there’s probably dozens of deaths with bosses I could’ve turned into victories if I was just 10% more effective overall but I just abhor farming in single player games. I would, however, be more inclined to use them if they were say limited use like the gourd and required a bit more materials to initially craft them.
Wukong’s story is most certainly a deep and complex one, drawing on a deep set of lore from the original Journey to the West novels. The challenge here though is the level of assumed knowledge that’s needed to really understand what the hell is going on as the story really wastes no time on exposition or filling in the blanks for some of the game’s more interesting characters. To be sure the in-chapter story arcs are fleshed out enough to make sense as standalone story arcs, but many of the major characters are simply introduced to you as if you already understand their place in the world. Of course given this is such a well known story in China that kind of assumption is probably OK to make but I’m sure there are many like me who could’ve used the additional exposition.
All that being said though there’s enough there to make the end to end journey very compelling. The recurring characters have more than enough time to develop their backstory, making even the upgrade NPCs incredibly interesting characters in their own right. The final chapter is a great summation of everything that came before you, culminating in a fight that is honestly one of the most challenging ones I’ve done to date. That was probably the only time I reworked my build significantly for that fight, managing to beat it without using more than a couple gourd charges and minimal ability uses (for those who’ve done it, you know why).
Black Myth: Wukong delivers on the promises it made all those years ago, delivering us a truly epic world where you can live out your dreams as the Monkey King, Sun Wukong. The visuals are generation defining, showcasing the breadth and depth of what the Unreal 5 engine is capable of when it’s backed by incredible artists. The combat is challenging and satisfying, beckoning you to change and adapt whilst punishing you when you don’t. The pacing feels a little off and the heavy reliance on assumed knowledge to do the work for the narrative does make some of the more interesting parts of the story more confusing than anything else. That being said though the narrative that you do pick up on throughout Black Myth: Wukong pays off in spades making the experience something definitely worth your attention.
Rating: 9.25/10
Black Myth: Wukong is available on PC, Playstation 5 and Xbox Series X/S right now for $89.95. Game was played on the PC with a total of 29.7 hours playtime and 49% of the achievements unlocked.
