It’s not often that a game releases self-published by a developer that reaches such insane levels of word-of-mouth popularity as Black Myth Wukong has. Ambitiously designed, Black Myth Wukong is an action game among action games. With its deep connection to Chinese folklore, gorgeous visuals, and challenging boss fights with the bombastic spectacle you would expect from challenging gods of the celestial court, players are in for quite a fight. Is Black Myth Wukong capable of standing shoulder-to-shoulder with giants of the industry, or is this better left sealed in stone? Let’s find out.
Black Myth Wukong has a lot of different labeling going on, depending who you ask. There are some light Soulslike elements present- your healing is limited by your gourd, which is very similar to your Estus Flask in Dark Souls. You have shrines which fulfill the same basic game mechanic as bonfires, which let you buy and sell items, teleport among any discovered shrine, and set up which spells you’d like to use, among other features. Resting at a shrine resurrects respawning enemies in the world, as well, though thankfully some specific stumbling block enemies never respawn after killing them for the first time (usually archers positioned to shoot you as you navigate thin walkways over death pits).
There are some marked differences from the Souls titles, however. Black Myth Wukong doesn’t force you to do corpse runs to pick up anything after you die, so in effect, dying only sets you back the time lost on each attempt. Your currency is separate from the experience that levels you up, as well, so if you didn’t enjoy how you had to spend your souls or runes to both level up and buy items, you may be able to appreciate Black Myth Wukong’s systems instead. Wukong really is just about combat, and exploring to gather items to further facilitate more combat. There’s a focus on exploration and boss battles that is very similar to Sekiro or Nioh, but this title does enough of its own thing.
Black Myth Wukong’s story begins with Wukong rejecting Buddhahood, fighting the celestial court before being sealed in stone for hundreds of years. After the short introduction, you’ll pick up as a special monkey destined to inherit Wukong’s power, leaving to search the world for Wukong’s old relics, effectively retracing Wukong’s steps. Dark Souls isn’t exactly known for rubbing its story in your face, but a lot of Black Myth Wukong’s storytelling is referential in nature, as characters will appear, say cryptic lines referencing events from “Journey to the West,” which is noted to be one of the great classical novels of Chinese literature, and then either fight you or vanish. If you’re like me and read “Journey to the West” 20 some years ago because you watched shows like Dragon Ball Z or Saiyuki, don’t expect the story to be anything other than incomprehensible.
Combat in Black Myth Wukong starts off incredibly simple: You have light attacks, and you have a heavy attack. As you unlock more talents using the skill points you get on leveling up, you’ll soon have access to a bunch of additional attacks, buffs, and options available. For the most part, you use your light attack and dodge when necessary to build up Focus, and then you spend that on your Focus spenders to actually deal substantial damage. You’ll have access to a wide variety of different Focus spenders depending in which talents you invest your skill points.
There are many different progression systems in Black Myth Wukong. In fact, there’s so many it might actually be difficult to list them all. Killing enemies will cause you to level up, increasing your baseline stats and also gives you a single skill point per level. You spend your skill points in a large number of different skill trees, which can upgrade your stats, give you access to new fighting styles and techniques, make your magic spells or transformations stronger, and things of that sort. You find loads of different armor pieces that give you defense and resistances to ailments, but many provide powerful set bonuses and can even be upgraded for higher defense after you get far enough into the title. There are also Curios, which function like accessory slots, giving you even more passive bonuses that can help turn battles against 20ft tall spiders in your favor.
The best part about this system is that you can respec any time you find a shrine, so you can try numerous different builds if a skill you put points into isn’t working how you expected. If something isn’t working, you can just try something different. Not a fan of the Pillar Style you unlocked? Try Thrust Style and see if its moves are more your speed, or maybe you’d rather upgrade your spells instead because you just found a piece of armor that gives you a bonus when casting.
As you progress through Black Myth Wukong, you will find spirits that you can summon to do a single attack on a lengthy cooldown, as well as give you a buff for having the spirit equipped. Spirits can be found from tougher than usual enemies with blue auras, but you can also sometimes receive them from bosses you defeat, and whether you pick a spirit for its passive ability or its attack is entirely your choice. You’ll also unlock Transformations as you explore, many of them turning you into a completely different creature with a separate health bar, allowing you some (relatively) risk free damage on difficult bosses.
The Destined One’s gourd, your predominant healing source in between shrines, also has its own upgrades. You’ll find several different gourds that can provide different benefits, like healing slightly less in exchange for fire resistance or restores half as much health to boost your attack stat. There are a wide number of drinks that go in your gourd, each of which affects the amount healed or gives some kind of passive bonus, and then you have multiple soaks that can go in your gourd whose entire purpose is to provide even more benefits for a short time after taking a swig during combat.
This isn’t even all of the progression systems, either, as there’s an NPC who can craft pills for you that give you permanent buffs, which let you turn some of the items you find while exploring into resistances or more health, stamina, and mana. The relics you acquire throughout the story progression also let you choose from one of three passive buffs, and then there’s also Vessel items you can find in the first five chapters which help to counteract the chapter boss’s gimmick but also can do things like increase your critical hit chance and damage.
There are so many ways to customize the Destined One to help stack the deck in your favor when it comes to battling the celestial court, and this is a title that will be made significantly easier by a player who remembers and utilizes all of the game systems. Those who remember they have spells and transformations will fare better than those who try to play this exclusively like their ultra greatsword jump attack builds in Elden Ring.
The bosses in Black Myth Wukong are really the highlight of the adventure. You may encounter simple enemies that stand in your way while you explore, but there are nearly 20 bosses in every chapter, and it’s only by investigating absolutely everything will you find all of them. If you’re turning over every stone you encounter to find secrets, it will take you anywhere from 30-90 hours just to find all of the bosses and items- but bear in mind that some items, spirits, or bosses can be missed if you progress too far into an area. In each chapter, you’ll venture through a different environment, whether it’s a forest, desert, snowy mountain, or a horrible pit filled with spiders.
As for the bosses: many of them are an incredible spectacle, and they demand you show some form of understanding of the game’s systems in order to succeed. Black Myth Wukong is primarily a game where you dodge- you can use the Stoneskin spell to parry attacks, but sometimes that won’t work properly, more on that later. Anyone who has played Dark Souls II will be pretty familiar with the style of Black Myth Wukong’s bosses- they heavily track your position and will rampantly speed up and delay their own attacks in order to catch you during a mistimed dodge. That being said, however, most bosses aren’t overly tough if you remember fighting game basics, because when a boss is attacking, it’s their turn. Once their turn is over, you get a turn to attack- it may be short, but that’s what you have.
You’ll encounter everything in Black Myth Wukong, including wolves, snake people, and even giant spiders and dragons. The boss design, for the most part, is amazing. Every single boss you defeat will give you some kind of benefit, which ties into wanting to explore because every single hidden path will lead to a curio, soak, or even a new, powerful spirit to have at your disposal. The first few bosses are definitely among the hardest, and while the final bosses for chapters 2, 3, and 4 especially are cinematic and dangerous, the vessels located in their chapters help overcome them if you use them at the right time. There is also a super boss that you need to defeat in order to unlock the true ending, though he’s no Malenia, Blade of Miquella.
If there’s any one major issue I have with Black Myth Wukong, it’s that certain bosses just blatantly bypass parts of the Destined One’s kit with no rhyme, reason, or signposting that such a thing would happen. For example, you might put your skill points into the Immobilize spell, which can stop an enemy from attacking you for a short time and unlock a skill that makes it so the spell lasts longer if you cast the spell at the perfect moment when an enemy is attacking you. Unfortunately, bosses seem to have specific moments and attacks where they just cannot be interrupted, so the spell consumes your mana, goes on cooldown, and the boss hits you directly in the face for even thinking you had the ability to stop them for a second.
On top of this, there were even moments where specific techniques unlocked from the Destined One’s skills didn’t work against specific bosses. There are a few moves you can perform that let you dodge an attack, turn transparent, and the game specifically states that you’re invincible while you perform the counterattack. Imagine my surprise when I performed these moves properly on bosses in the third and fourth chapter, and then watched as they mashed a translucent monkey into the ground, losing a ton of health despite supposedly being invincible. I am unclear on why these techniques randomly just don’t work- it may have something to do with bosses having specific uninterruptible sequences or attacks where the developer didn’t intend for someone to try the Lucky Strike talent to avoid damage, but it was still annoying the few times it occurred. This was easy enough to adapt to and uninvesting into spells like Immobilize was easy enough due to the free skill point respec you can do at shrines.
The visual and environment design is absolutely gorgeous, and while the environments are quite pretty and are accompanied by luscious lighting effects, you should definitely focus on maintaining a stable frame rate when you’re in combat. There’s the typical shader stutter due to the title being compiled in Unreal Engine, which can really suck when a boss uses an attack with a new type of particle effect that hasn’t been cached yet after an update but thankfully that shouldn’t happen often. The music is no slouch either, using backing tracks that highlight the action, perfectly fitting the source material of this Chinese tale.
All in all, Black Myth Wukong is a great time. Outside of a few instances where spells or abilities I had unlocked just didn’t work, I found 99% of the bosses and attacks to be completely fair, and many of them were very challenging. There’s only one difficulty level, but you receive a lot of tools to help you fine tune Black Myth Wukong to a much easier experience than titles like Sekiro, for example. If you don’t like difficult games like Lies of P or Nioh, then this is one to stay away from, and there’s no shame in not playing a title you don’t think you’ll enjoy because of the heightened difficulty. However, if you’re a fan of difficult titles or Chinese folklore, Black Myth Wukong is probably a great way to spend a few dozen hours or more.