Right from the start, Wuthering Waves’ odd mix of swords, guns, and spirits caught my eye, somehow combining disparate ideas into a combat spectacle. This story-driven gacha RPG will have you spinning like a ballerina to dodge attacks before passing the baton to a teammate that slams the enemy with a fish-like dragon. I still have a lot left to play, including digging into its endgame, but so far these flashy abilities have only deepened my appreciation for its Devil May Cry-style combat and parkour-like movement that enables exploration – unfortunately, it's also failed to impress in a few other key areas, including a lackluster story that tempts me to use the skip button.
Wuthering Waves is all about action, whether that’s through combat or exploration. Every character you unlock has an element and weapon associated with them, as well as individual skills that you can level up. However, how you use those characters isn’t quite a copy-paste of similar mobile action-RPGs like Genshin Impact. That’s thanks in part to the intro and outro skills that can be used when you swap between them, which activate cool special attacks like triggering a fire-infused shootout. You’ll need to charge up a gauge by dishing out damage or successfully dodging and parrying enemy attacks in order to use them, but these skills add an extra layer of strategy to how you build your three-person party and when exactly to change teammates.
Characters also have unique combos you can activate during combat, all of which you can practice in dedicated tutorials for each one. To use them, you might need to press the same button four times, press and hold a button after performing a different attack, or jump in the air for an aerial attack before activating an alternate combo. It can take a bit to memorize those inputs, but doing so for your favorite fighters makes using them even more satisfying. It’s nice that Wuthering Waves encourages you to try them all out at least once, too, even offering some small rewards for your trouble.
Rather than using traditional equipment like helmets and gloves, you strengthen your characters with Echoes: animal-like companions you can equip to increase their attack, elemental damage, and so on. The buffs depend on how many of the same type you equip at once, a limit that increases as you level up. The best part about Echoes is how they tie in with the environment. As you fight enemies and bosses, they will sometimes leave behind ghost-like shells of themselves for you to absorb and convert into Echoes. I felt more compelled to explore because finding different types of monsters could mean getting access to Echoes with new effects. Not only does this system reward me with interesting gear for my characters, it encourages me to fill out my map as I go.
Echoes reward you with interesting gear and also encourage exploration.
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However, I do worry that this structure could eventually get repetitive once I hit the late-game, when I’ve already explored everything there is to see. So far everything has stayed satisfying while it’s all still shiny and new, but I’ve only played around 15 hours of Wuthering Waves as of this review and have lots more to go. On the bright side, capturing Echoes also gets you points in a collection tracking guidebook as well as a battle pass full of rewards, so there are reasons to hunt them beyond just upping your stats. Gotta catch ‘em all!
One part that has already fallen flat, however, is the story. Developer Kuro Games has openly spoken about how it had to revamp the entire story ahead of launch, and it pains me to say it that the version we ultimately got still falls short, with uneven pacing and too much exposition. The beginning is full of unnatural, lengthy conversations that use cryptic terminology you need to look up in encyclopedias and loading screens to actually understand
Your protagonist seemingly appears out of nowhere, and from there the story revolves around the secret of their past – but that setup feels confusing and undeserved because of all the history and jargon being thrown at you without any explanation as to how all of it connects. The few side quests I’ve completed haven’t done much to endear me to the other characters or the setting, either. Small things, like the very few moments when your hero suddenly speaks despite otherwise being largely silent, also seem jarring. At some points, I even preferred to mash buttons to quickly skip through a tedious conversation or leave a scene on autoplay so I could just listen without reading all that text.
The story missions don't have me perched on the edge of my seat.
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I just started Huanglong Chapter 1: Act 5, the fifth of six total acts, so I’m almost done with the main story that’s currently available. However, I’m also only rank 22 when the cap is 80, so I’m not quite at the endgame yet. At this point, I’m more compelled to play through the story missions out of curiosity to see if they will somehow improve overall, not because I’m perched on the edge of my seat waiting for some big reveal.
The rewards for climbing the ranks have also encouraged me to dig deeper on their own. Gacha games have fail-safes called “pity systems” to make sure players eventually get a high-quality reward for their randomized banner pulls, the system where you can trade in-game currency for characters and weapons. For what it’s worth, Wuthering Waves has been more generous with its pity system than many other games in this genre, only taking 80 gacha pulls to get to a guaranteed 5-star character or item versus the 90+ pulls I’m used to seeing. It also offers tons of resources during the initial honeymoon phase, handing out dozens of pulls for whenever you climb 10 or so ranks, along with other systems that make them particularly easy to earn at the beginning.
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You’re guaranteed to get at least one random 5-star character early on, plus another of your choice. And on top of that, Wuthering Waves handed out a free pass around launch that was good for another 5-star character, which means you can get at least two top-tier characters within the first few hours of playing and a third if you stick around for a couple more. You’re still at the luck of the draw beyond that, but it feels generous out of the gate, especially for any gacha game fans burnt out on bad pulls elsewhere.
So far, the dynamic combat means I’m enjoying Wuthering Waves a lot, even if it’s not the story that’s pulling me forward. I still have to beat the campaign and dig into the endgame before I can put a final score on it, and we’ll have to see if its hunt for Echoes holds up once I’ve explored the whole map – but right now I can’t wait to play more.
