Black Myth: Wukong wastes no time in throwing you into the action as you take control of Sun Wokung, the Monkey King rebelling against the celestial court. Here you get a small window into all the powers you'll eventually obtain throughout the game. After the duel with Erlang seems to conclude, the time of Sun Wukung ends and after ages pass, a nameless monkey rises to the task of re-obtaining the powers of the Monkey King to finish what he started.

As the nameless monkey (aka The Destined One), you start with nothing more than the martial prowess to hit things with a staff & the power to perpetually re-spawn at the last shrine you've visited. Granted you'll get a few new tricks early on but like any Souls-like, you're own familiarity with combat moves/timing of both you & your enemies will be a required skill throughout this journey. Dodging & to a lesser extent stamina use will also serve you well despite any new powers or combat stance you may want to try out. This may sound like a lot and it kind of is, but the game eases you in to each new power & you're encouraged to respec as it's free to do at any shrine so experiment as needed.

Enemy variety is a highlight in this game with each area showcasing threats that thematically match what's around you. In a creepy forest? Expect bug assassins waiting to drop from the treetops to attack. Near a volcano? Here's a few fire mages to rain fire from above. Typical From Software stuff but impressive to see with a new studio. Most bosses & sub-bosses are enjoyable to tackle with unique dialogue at times depending on your actions & some really cool bombastic attacks for even the more obscure encounters. Fights never feel truly unfair & can be overcome to some extent with some extra leveling.

Map/level design is fantastic, each area has a great sense of history & what's happened in the wake from the end of Sun Wukong's rebellion. Abandoned temples, crumbing kingdoms or ruins partially consumed by nature. References by enemies & various destruction in environments also lend to world-building. Each side path or side quest is all designed with purpose with an optional boss battle or secret area to be reached. Note that there is a significant amount of easily missable side content, and while there's new game+ available, I do recommend reading some kind of guide if you want to see everything. (I'm serious on that last sentence, there is literally content that would be nearly impossible to find on your own.)

Soundtrack is really good, it gives a sense of adventure, excitement, & grand scale if that makes sense. Sort of reminds me of something like Lord of the Rings. Voice acting (at least for English) was far better than I was expecting, there really was an effort made to match the dialogue to lip sync and the actors did a great job all around. I would imagine Chinese would also be very good with subtitles to add to the experience. Graphical fidelity also looks exceptional with a very high level of detail even with common enemies or random objects littered throughout the map.

Naturally all this comes with a performance price but the use of Unreal Engine here does allow for good scalability, you aren't really losing much even at the low preset. Although I can't say this will entirely eliminate any kind of UE stuttering during traversal. For those using NVIDIA GPUs, you will need to replace the DLSS DLL file as it's outdated which you can do fairly easily by downloading the newest version online or using DLSS Swapper. NVMe drive over a SATA SSD as the installation location is also something I recommended to ensure sufficient data streaming especially in the later chapters. Note that any NVIDIA driver update seems to also require a rebuild of the shader cache which takes a few minutes to wait for.

This game can easily be anyone's personal GOTY & may also be mine (we'll see with Silent Hill 2 out now). The fact that a new studio in China spent years accomplishing this AAA single player experience is incredible, especially when considering how focused most Chinese gaming companies are on the mobile market. If you're a fan of Souls-likes or character action games, you really owe it to yourself to play this.

This review is provided by the 𝓕𝓾𝓷𝓴𝔂 𝓙𝓪𝓵𝓪𝓹𝓮𝓷𝓸𝓼 (Curation Page | Steam Group) and the support of readers like you, thank you.

[h1][b]Rise, Destined One & become God Monke[/b][/h1] Black Myth: Wukong wastes no time in throwing you into the action as you take control of Sun Wokung, the Monkey King rebelling against the celestial court. Here you get a small window into all the powers you'll eventually obtain throughout the game. After the duel with Erlang seems to conclude, the time of Sun Wukung ends and after ages pass, a nameless monkey rises to the task of re-obtaining the powers of the Monkey King to finish what he started. As the nameless monkey (aka The Destined One), you start with nothing more than the martial prowess to hit things with a staff & the power to perpetually re-spawn at the last shrine you've visited. Granted you'll get a few new tricks early on but like any Souls-like, you're own familiarity with combat moves/timing of both you & your enemies will be a required skill throughout this journey. Dodging & to a lesser extent stamina use will also serve you well despite any new powers or combat stance you may want to try out. This may sound like a lot and it kind of is, but the game eases you in to each new power & you're encouraged to respec as it's free to do at any shrine so experiment as needed. Enemy variety is a highlight in this game with each area showcasing threats that thematically match what's around you. In a creepy forest? Expect bug assassins waiting to drop from the treetops to attack. Near a volcano? Here's a few fire mages to rain fire from above. Typical From Software stuff but impressive to see with a new studio. Most bosses & sub-bosses are enjoyable to tackle with unique dialogue at times depending on your actions & some really cool bombastic attacks for even the more obscure encounters. Fights never feel truly unfair & can be overcome to some extent with some extra leveling. Map/level design is fantastic, each area has a great sense of history & what's happened in the wake from the end of Sun Wukong's rebellion. Abandoned temples, crumbing kingdoms or ruins partially consumed by nature. References by enemies & various destruction in environments also lend to world-building. Each side path or side quest is all designed with purpose with an optional boss battle or secret area to be reached. Note that there is a significant amount of easily missable side content, and while there's new game+ available, I do recommend reading some kind of guide if you want to see everything. (I'm serious on that last sentence, there is literally content that would be nearly impossible to find on your own.) Soundtrack is really good, it gives a sense of adventure, excitement, & grand scale if that makes sense. Sort of reminds me of something like Lord of the Rings. Voice acting (at least for English) was far better than I was expecting, there really was an effort made to match the dialogue to lip sync and the actors did a great job all around. I would imagine Chinese would also be very good with subtitles to add to the experience. Graphical fidelity also looks exceptional with a very high level of detail even with common enemies or random objects littered throughout the map. Naturally all this comes with a performance price but the use of Unreal Engine here does allow for good scalability, you aren't really losing much even at the low preset. Although I can't say this will entirely eliminate any kind of UE stuttering during traversal. For those using NVIDIA GPUs, you will need to replace the DLSS DLL file as it's outdated which you can do fairly easily by downloading the newest version online or using DLSS Swapper. NVMe drive over a SATA SSD as the installation location is also something I recommended to ensure sufficient data streaming especially in the later chapters. Note that any NVIDIA driver update seems to also require a rebuild of the shader cache which takes a few minutes to wait for. This game can easily be anyone's personal GOTY & may also be mine (we'll see with Silent Hill 2 out now). The fact that a new studio in China spent years accomplishing this AAA single player experience is incredible, especially when considering how focused most Chinese gaming companies are on the mobile market. If you're a fan of Souls-likes or character action games, you really owe it to yourself to play this. [quote][i]This review is provided by the 𝓕𝓾𝓷𝓴𝔂 𝓙𝓪𝓵𝓪𝓹𝓮𝓷𝓸𝓼 [/i]([url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/27264611/][b]Curation Page[/b] [/url] | [url=https://steamcommunity.com/groups/FunkyJalapenos] [b]Steam Group[/b][/url]) [I]and the support of readers like you, thank you.[/i][/quote]