Wuthering Waves Review - Copy of a Copy

In the very early section of the main quest of Wuthering Waves I was tasked with following an NPC that moved slower than my run speed and faster than my walk speed. This cardinal sin of game development put me in a bad mood immediately. Wuthering Waves is a free-to-play open world action RPG Gacha game. The keyword here is Gacha. It’s a gambling mechanic popular in some parts of Asia where you put money into slot machines and are guaranteed to get a certain reward after a certain amount of currency is spent. It is an extremely predatory game mechanic that basically turns kids and young people into gambling addicts. On the other hand, what are lootboxes if not gacha?

Also, Kuro Games, who are a small Chinese game developer with Wuthering Waves being their first major global release, decided to create a carbon copy of Genshin Impact, a globally popular free-to-play open world action RPG Gacha game. They’ve copied the aesthetics, storytelling mechanics, game mechanics and even copied what Genshin Impact copied from games like Zelda. Characters are new, combat moves are a bit different and feel a bit more action-y, but that first meeting when they decided to make this game had only one sentence as conclusion: “Make a carbon copy of Genshin”.

Things are not all gloom and doom though. Wuthering Waves is a beautiful looking game with fun to play combat and itemization that lets you build perfectly optimized characters. Story cinematics sometimes feel like you’re watching a high quality anime and the gacha system feels much more generous than Genshin Impact did. Exploring the open world can often leave you breathless with beauty and the amount of little puzzles and things to do is in such abundance that you’ll always have something fun to do while running around.

People that don’t mind gacha mechanics eagerly waited for Wuthering Waves and it is going to fulfill all of their desires. Everyone else be aware of what I’ll write about in this review before going in.

Let’s See if Something is Foreshadowed in the Journal

The game puts you in a world where special people called Resonators have the ability to observe and manipulate frequencies of life. This gives them superhuman abilities to help combat monsters made out of various frequencies called Tacet Discords. You are the chosen one that materializes out of nowhere and are there to find out about your past and face the immediate dangers threatening the city of Jinzhou.

Being made by Chinese game developers I was looking forward to getting into rich Chinese way of storytelling and folklore that was bound to be woven into the story. And yes, there are dragons and human stories filled with Chinese culture flavor with emphasis that seems to be on you always helping some old person or giving respect to the People’s Liberation Army … I mean the soldiers in the game protecting the people from monsters …

Unfortunately, most of it is spoiled by horrible localization. Translation into English suffers from incomprehensible and unnatural linguistic constructions like the one that is the headline of this sub-section.

Combine that with voice acting that can be outright bad at times and constant exposition with tons of text that no one wants to read, and you get a game where the best part of storytelling is the skip button.

Casual Hardcore

This is a shame really, because the game is filled with beautiful cutscenes that remind of the highest quality anime. This visual bonanza spreads throughout the open world you’ll be exploring. World is filled with small puzzles and things for you to find and just running around, exploring and collecting is very satisfying and reminds of Zelda BOTW quality open world.

Along the way you’ll fight numerous enemies as a team of three resonators. Each resonator specializes in a certain element. Switching between characters will unleash powerful intro and outro buffs and skills that will help you defeat even the hardest enemies.

Combat is action filled with animations that will fill your screen with flashy moves and explosions of special effects that make the whole experience almost never boring. The most interesting aspect is the fact that you can do combat casually and even on your phone against 90% of monsters in the game. Combat is easy enough to grasp even for casuals.

Those that decide to push to the maximum of character optimization and master the art of dodging and using their character’s skills will be able to face some very tough bosses in the Tower of Adversity or Tactical Hologram challenges. These fights are very well designed and executed and some of them take practice and planning on the level of Dark Souls bosses.

Pokémon Echo

Every enemy in the game can also drop their echo. These are special items you can slot on your character to further enhance their stats. Echo slotted in the primary slot also provides you with a special move unique to that echo. They can vary in quality from regular green to gold you’ll be getting in end-game.

This system is a copy of the Genshin Impact’s artifact system. You’ll get echoes with random stats on them and by combining them the right way and farming for the right stats you’ll be able to considerably enhance your combat abilities. This game of collecting creatures where each has its own special move, look, animation and stats brings a Pokémon like aspect to the boring gear hunting of other similar games and is a fun, albeit grindy, mechanic.

Got Ya

As you explore the world you’ll be rewarded for every puzzle you solve, chest you find, collectible you pick up, main or side quest you complete or boss and challenge you defeat. These rewards consist of materials used for leveling up your characters, weapons and echoes as well as the premium currency called Astrite.

Astrite is used to gamble in these special events called Convenes. 160 Astrite gives you a chance to pull (or wish or summon or however you want to call it) one time from the event and each event has a chance to reward you with one special five star character or weapon.

Gacha system guarantees, most of the time, that you’ll get one five star reward within 80 pulls. It can be on the first pull or on the eightieth. After you explore everything and collect everything you’ll have enough Astrite for free to do about 160 pulls.

Wuthering Waves is rather generous in the Gatcha genre. As a free to play player you can equip and setup your team with high power characters without investing a dime.

If you reach the end game you will notice that the game is really designed to block your character development and leveling as well as your team building unless you spend Astrite and all of a sudden those 25000 Astrite you got for free will seem but a trifle. There are not enough upgrade materials for all of your characters or weapons or echoes. You’ll have to grind them, but you can grind them a very limited amount per day. If you want to get more you will have to spend Astrite.

This is where the desire to use your credit card to top up on Astrite and get that new character or weapon becomes very strong. It is further empowered by the fact that new characters and weapons will be released every month or so and soon you will be forced to spend money again or wait for weeks or months until you’ve collected enough to get a new addition to your perfect team.

Just Say No

Wuthering Waves is a beautiful looking game with fun to explore open world, excellent combat mechanics and fun gameplay suited for both casual players and those looking for a challenge. It provides some 50 hours of content in its 1.0 version. As a Gatcha game it is very generous and for fans of the genre it is certainly an 8/10 game.

Its horrible storytelling and localization combined with game systems that require obnoxious amounts of grinding and strictly restrict your progress unless you grind for weeks or use your credit card make this a very dangerous game for those prone to gambling addictions. The fact that its most original section is this rogue-lite, limited time, mode called Depths of Illusive Realm, that might not even be in the game in a few weeks, tells volumes.

It’s a fun game to play as long as you are capable of controlling your impulses and saying no whenever you think you should pay to gamble for new characters. Sure, Kuro Games deserves some compensation, if you’re having fun with the game, but everything beyond $20 is overkill and is better spent on a lot of other games.

Review platform: PC

Developed by: Kuro Games

Published by: Kuro Games

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