Black Myth: Wukong

My first hour with Black Myth: Wukong ended with me replaying the opening cinematic just to watch Wukong fight the Heavenly Army again. That's the kind of spectacle Game Science leads with, and honestly, it's a promise the rest of the game mostly keeps - at least when your eyes are doing the work. At its core, this is a linear, chapter-based action RPG built almost entirely around boss encounters. The Destined One, a mute monkey heir to Sun Wukong's legacy, carries a single extendable staff through six chapters, each set in a distinct environment drawn from classical Chinese mythology. The combat loop is tighter than a FromSoftware disciple would expect: light and heavy attacks feed a focus meter, charged heavies hit hard, and a well-timed roll triggers a Perfect Dodge that floods that same meter. There is no parry, but the skill trees compensate with spells that freeze opponents in place, a mist-step that repositions and kicks on return, a Spell Binder mode that locks out magic entirely in exchange for raw combat stats, and transformations that reshape your moveset entirely after you defeat specific enemies. Free respecs at any shrine mean you can rebuild your Sparks loadout mid-chapter if a boss is eating you alive - a design call that keeps experimentation genuinely low-risk. The weakness is that all of this is melee; ranged or magic-primary builds are not really on the menu. The boss roster is the obvious selling point. With over 90 encounters ranging from optional minor bosses to multi-phase chapter climaxes, it reads like a boss rush game that occasionally lets you breathe between fights. Boss designs are steeped in Journey to the West lore, with in-journal paragraphs of mythology for each one if you care to read them - and as an RPG lore reader, I did, and they reward the curiosity. The story itself, however, is another matter. Newcomers to the 16th-century novel will float along on vibes, picking up fragments through cryptic NPC dialogue and item descriptions. It is atmospheric rather than narrative-forward, closer in storytelling style to classic action games than to Elden Ring's lore threading. Veterans of the source material will find layers; everyone else gets spectacle and just enough context to keep moving. The level design is a genuine frustration. The environments are some of the most visually detailed on PC - Unreal Engine 5 doing serious work on cloth, foliage, and lighting - but the world is riddled with invisible walls. Paths that look explorable are not, terrain that should be climbable is locked, and this pattern repeats across every chapter's forests, caves, and snow-fields. For an RPG player used to rewarded curiosity, that stings. Performance on PC at launch also carried stuttering and frame-drop issues at higher settings, though patches have improved stability since. Playing in Chinese audio with English subtitles is the right call; the performances carry the atmosphere better than the English dub. Black Myth: Wukong is built for players who want punishing, precise action combat dressed in genuinely gorgeous mythology, and who are happy to absorb worldbuilding through lore entries rather than dialogue trees. If your dopamine loop runs on boss pattern mastery and transformation unlocks, this delivers consistently. If you need a strong narrative throughline and open exploration to stay invested past chapter two, this will feel like a beautiful corridor that keeps slamming doors in your face.

Monika · Scout Team

RPGs

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