Black Myth: Wukong gameplay; I don't get the hype?

Jun 11, 2023
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Oh shit. I didn't know that. That's not fair.
Yeah they only give an hour to edit or delete posts. Sucks because sometimes I want to add something the next day or delete something like the above but can’t because this place is like purgatory now with no support.
 

FakeSympathy

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I am finally done with chapter 3, and I feel all my hype and energy has been drained.

The prison escape part was frustrating, but doable. It's everything that comes after that really made me tired. I appreciate each chapter having different biome, but if you are gonna make each area big, the least you can do is make the navigation not an absolute hell.

The snow-covered mountain was beautiful to explore at first, but there was no clear landmark or indication of where I was going. This isn't necessarily a bad thing per se, but some of the branching paths just kept going, making me think this was the main path, only to find out it's a dead end. Other times I thought I was going somewhere, only to find I was going in circles.

Not all games need maps, especially in souls games. But with Fromsoft, they at least made all paths fairly linear with some connections here and there. Also, there was a clear environmental ques and landmarks to tell you where you were at and was heading. BM: W truly made me feel lost.

I also realized just how many invisible walls this game has. It keeps tricking me into think that I can go there, and I end up jumping against an invisible wall. I think this really goes against having big open areas; why give players false sense of freedom of exploration? Why have big open areas if you are gonna force them to follow very specific paths? Don't even get me started on the temple area near the end; It this deceptively small despite the large amount of grounds you have to cover.

Every boss in this level was pain; A dragon that loves to stay in air with a fucked-up hitbox? A miniboss that constantly freezes you? The final boss of this chapter finally broke me and I used cheats; I simply didn't care anymore.

I do have to say I enjoyed the cinematics after each chapter; all of them are in different styles and are really well-made. But with how drained I feel, I am not sure if I want to keep going with chapter 4 and beyond
 
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Dreiko

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I am finally done with chapter 3, and I feel all my hype and energy has been drained.

The prison escape part was frustrating, but doable. It's everything that comes after that really made me tired. I appreciate each chapter having different biome, but if you are gonna make each area big, the least you can do is make the navigation not an absolute hell.

The snow-covered mountain was beautiful to explore at first, but there was no clear landmark or indication of where I was going. This isn't necessarily a bad thing per se, but some of the branching paths just kept going, making me think this was the main path, only to find out it's a dead end. Other times I thought I was going somewhere, only to find I was going in circles.

Not all games need maps, especially in souls games. But with Fromsoft, they at least made all paths fairly linear with some connections here and there. Also, there was a clear environmental ques and landmarks to tell you where you were at and was heading. BM: W truly made me feel lost.

I also realized just how many invisible walls this game has. It keeps tricking me into think that I can go there, and I end up jumping against an invisible wall. I think this really goes against having big open areas; why give players false sense of freedom of exploration? Why have big open areas if you are gonna force them to follow very specific paths? Don't even get me started on the temple area near the end; It this deceptively small despite the large amount of grounds you have to cover.

Every boss his this level was path; A dragon that loves to stay in air with a fucked-up hitbox? A miniboss that constantly freezes you? The final boss of this chapter finally broke me and I used cheats; I simply didn't care anymore.

I do have to say I enjoyed the cinematics after each chapter; all of them are in different styles and are really well-made. But with how drained I feel, I am not sure if I want to keep going with chapter 4 and beyond
The navigation for me was fun but I kinda did chapter 3's second bit (the part after the turtle) all in a single gaming session so I kinda had it fresh in my mind, I can see it being confusing if you come back to the chapter multiple times. But yeah basically I did the thing where you just set forth in a cardinal direction from a shrine and keep going and going lol.

Usually there's never a useless dead end. You always find a secret boss or a new gourd or some spirit. There's always something even if it's not the main story boss. And as a completionist that speaks to me.

As for the freezing, you're meant to use the fire ring spell, it negates freezing completely while you're inside it. Basically after you get that spell you wanna transfer all your sparks from immobilize to it and go ham with it for the rest of the chapter. Did you perhaps try to stick with immobilize? I can see that making it harder. As for Yellowbrow, he's tough yeah, but mainly cause he uses your spells against you. You gotta beat him fair and square, no cheap stuff, he's always gonna be cheaper XD. I think it took me a good 5-10 tries.
 
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Dreiko

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Oh right also, and this is a big thing, make sure you've unlocked the blacksmith tiger by fighting that old dragon boss and then giving him a medicine from the wolf doctor in the second chapter. The blacksmith makes your old armor sets viable so you can switch around armor passives on the fly and come up with a wider array of tactics without losing out or static defense.
 
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I'm with @FakeSympathy at this point. The combat is just nonsense and doesn't work for me. I'm gonna use Wemod just to see the end credits and move on with my life.
I am finally done with chapter 3, and I feel all my hype and energy has been drained.

The prison escape part was frustrating, but doable. It's everything that comes after that really made me tired. I appreciate each chapter having different biome, but if you are gonna make each area big, the least you can do is make the navigation not an absolute hell.

The snow-covered mountain was beautiful to explore at first, but there was no clear landmark or indication of where I was going. This isn't necessarily a bad thing per se, but some of the branching paths just kept going, making me think this was the main path, only to find out it's a dead end. Other times I thought I was going somewhere, only to find I was going in circles.

Not all games need maps, especially in souls games. But with Fromsoft, they at least made all paths fairly linear with some connections here and there. Also, there was a clear environmental ques and landmarks to tell you where you were at and was heading. BM: W truly made me feel lost.

I also realized just how many invisible walls this game has. It keeps tricking me into think that I can go there, and I end up jumping against an invisible wall. I think this really goes against having big open areas; why give players false sense of freedom of exploration? Why have big open areas if you are gonna force them to follow very specific paths? Don't even get me started on the temple area near the end; It this deceptively small despite the large amount of grounds you have to cover.

Every boss his this level was path; A dragon that loves to stay in air with a fucked-up hitbox? A miniboss that constantly freezes you? The final boss of this chapter finally broke me and I used cheats; I simply didn't care anymore.

I do have to say I enjoyed the cinematics after each chapter; all of them are in different styles and are really well-made. But with how drained I feel, I am not sure if I want to keep going with chapter 4 and beyond

Now imagine if the controller turned into a Chinese Finger cuff trap once you started playing, and it wouldn’t unlock until you beat it fair and square!
 

BrawlMan

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Yeah, I'm going to be playing other things. October is crowded this season. Is it going to be the new nNovember now?

I'll also just wait for Phantom Blade 0. Looks way more straightforward.
 

FakeSympathy

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The navigation for me was fun but I kinda did chapter 3's second bit (the part after the turtle) all in a single gaming session so I kinda had it fresh in my mind, I can see it being confusing if you come back to the chapter multiple times. But yeah basically I did the thing where you just set forth in a cardinal direction from a shrine and keep going and going lol.

Usually there's never a useless dead end. You always find a secret boss or a new gourd or some spirit. There's always something even if it's not the main story boss. And as a completionist that speaks to me.
That's just it, the game forces you to check out every corner because there is always something interesting to discover. It can be argued reaching those dead ends and finding what's there is a reward, but my issue is it feels way too stretched out. Which is made worse because of those specific paths you have to follow.

As for the freezing, you're meant to use the fire ring spell, it negates freezing completely while you're inside it. Basically after you get that spell you wanna transfer all your sparks from immobilize to it and go ham with it for the rest of the chapter. Did you perhaps try to stick with immobilize? I can see that making it harder. As for Yellowbrow, he's tough yeah, but mainly cause he uses your spells against you. You gotta beat him fair and square, no cheap stuff, he's always gonna be cheaper XD. I think it took me a good 5-10 tries.
Okay, fair points on that. But I do think some of these spells do get very situational, as in next time I'll probably start using a different spell and never look back
 
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Dreiko

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Yeah, I'm going to be playing other things. October is crowded this season. Is it going to be the new nNovember now?

I'll also just wait for Phantom Blade 0. Looks way more straightforward.
Wukong does the sekiro thing where it gives you a batman toolbelt of various stuff that is very situational, that all solves certain fights, and you gotta either experiment or deduce which is the solution. You can freely respec your abilities any number of times so the game basically wants you to experiment with various approaches to fights and be creative in coming up with different playstyles.

But you can always just roll through everything and see through every hit too and beat it that way , so if that's more your speed you definitely can play it that way. That part honestly is if anything simpler than Phantom's footage shows that one to be cause resource management in Wukon is infinitely more forgiving.




That's just it, the game forces you to check out every corner because there is always something interesting to discover. It can be argued reaching those dead ends and finding what's there is a reward, but my issue is it feels way too stretched out. Which is made worse because of those specific paths you have to follow.




Okay, fair points on that. But I do think some of these spells do get very situational, as in next time I'll probably start using a different spell and never look back
The stretched out bit just made the game feel epic and full of content for me. Like they put in a lot of effort in filling the game with stuff.


Spells are totally situational. Like for example if you use the hair clones on yellowbrow (not sure if you did) he takes them over and they start attacking you instead lmao. That's prolly the worst spell to use.

My approach is basically, when you're given a new spell/form/whatever, switch to it asap. The game likes to throw training-wheel-bosses at you when you get big new tools, but those bosses can be a huge pain if you don't use the right situational loadout at the same time. Like that freezing boss I beat in 1 try, but the lake dragon took me a few cause I was trying to fight with the fire wolf form cause the rock form is lame, but it made all the difference. Rock form tanking is super strong, despite feeling lame.
 
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Wukong does the sekiro thing where it gives you a batman toolbelt of various stuff that is very situational, that all solves certain fights, and you gotta either experiment or deduce which is the solution. You can freely respec your abilities any number of time so the game basically wants you to experiment with various approaches to fights and be creative in coming up with different playstyles.

But you can always just roll through everything and see through every hit too and beat it that way , so if that's more your speed you definitely can play it that way. That part honestly is if anything simpler than Phantom's footage shows that one to be cause resource management in Wukon is infinitely more forgiving.
Thank you for the heads up, but like I said before, I'm just gonna get something else. I already had some games planned out beforehand.
 

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So I am now in Chapter 5. I missed a ton of stuff in Chapter 4 because it seemed to have a lot of twists and turns in it, but the level design really struggles here with it being a cave and every passage looking the fucking same. Even though I am using cheats I am still trying to fight the bosses normally, I usually give them a couple of attempts to see if i can figure them out, then I turn infinite HP on and move on. Even some of the normal enemies suck now and there are a lot of ambush spots here where they expect you to just die I guess. There is no fucking way you are dealing with 6-8 enemies at once, so I dunno what the intent there is.

I'm just irritated now. I think I'm losing my gaming powers or something because I while Wukong has issues, the lack of understanding of the combat is on me. Oh well.
 
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Dreiko

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So I am now in Chapter 5. I missed a ton of stuff in Chapter 4 because it seemed to have a lot of twists and turns in it, but the level design really struggles here with it being a cave and every passage looking the fucking same. Even though I am using cheats I am still trying to fight the bosses normally, I usually give them a couple of attempts to see if i can figure them out, then I turn infinite HP on and move on. Even some of the normal enemies suck now and there are a lot of ambush spots here where they expect you to just die I guess. There is no fucking way you are dealing with 6-8 enemies at once, so I dunno what the intent there is.

I'm just irritated now. I think I'm losing my gaming powers or something because I while Wukong has issues, the lack of understanding of the combat is on me. Oh well.
When you're getting crowded, the pillar stance is the way to go, the move were you spin around clears the area very well.
 

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When you're getting crowded, the pillar stance is the way to go, the move were you spin around clears the area very well.
I didn't spec into that. The idea that there are intended playstyles for given chapters doesn't sit will with me either. Because the systems are obtuse and I don't like the game secretly going "Should'a respecced idiot!"
 
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Dreiko

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I didn't spec into that. The idea that there are intended playstyles for given chapters doesn't sit will with me either. Because the systems are obtuse and I don't like the game secretly going "Should'a respecced idiot!"
It's more specific enemies than whole entire chapters. But yeah basically the idea is the brawler stance is good for charging heavy while on the move and has fast counters, the pillar stance is good against hordes and for when you wanna avoid unavoidable ground attacks, and also for safe heals while standing atop the staff, and thrust is good against chars with a lot of openings cause it increases your crit rate to something huge and for focus generation, cause you can see through moves with the backdash without spending any focus unlike in Brawler, making it easier to get 4 stocks of focus.

So what I do is categorize enemies based on these available tactics.


Though that being said, if you're already in chapter 5 you should definitely have all stances leveled to a minimum degree so you can do all the unique actions, so you can have the widest available move pool. If you don't know what to respec I'd just port over any points you put on the stats like health or stamina, those are very negligible. I took em all out and noticed no difference in chapter 3. And any spell you're not currently using, might as well refund all those sparks too.
 

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I think there's a difference between conniving pandering done to manipulate, and just having an identity. I think BG3 panders to the people who made BG3, their tastes and the things they love in games and role playing and so on, you can see it oozing that love from every pore. It wasn't trying to artificially contain those traits to trick people into playing it when it normally doesn't deserve their attention.

So at the end of the day what we really want is integrity and authenticity. If you like certain things then adding em to your game is great but just doing so to fill a checklist so you can virtue signal just comes off as fake and manipulative.
And which games are those, the ones that DON'T do it with integrity and authenticity? Very few if any games within the AAA space do anything with integrity or authenticity. I can tell you with great assurance that none of the Call of Duty games present the military or war with integrity or authenticity, yet those games never cause a massive shitstorm online claiming it's trying to sell a false view of the military (which it is). Nobody cares about the pandering, the checklists, or the virtue signaling in those cases. It's only when it's "woke" pandering that it's apparently fake and manipulative.

Don't try to play this off as 'we just want authenticity regardless'. No, you (or certainly the people making this claim) don't, you just don't want to see gay people in what you deem your games.

Also, "conniving pandering done to manipulate"? Again, which games do that? I'm just going to assume this is about "wokeness" again, so which games have included "conniving pandering"?
 

Dreiko

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And which games are those, the ones that DON'T do it with integrity and authenticity? Very few if any games within the AAA space do anything with integrity or authenticity. I can tell you with great assurance that none of the Call of Duty games present the military or war with integrity or authenticity, yet those games never cause a massive shitstorm online claiming it's trying to sell a false view of the military (which it is). Nobody cares about the pandering, the checklists, or the virtue signaling in those cases. It's only when it's "woke" pandering that it's apparently fake and manipulative.

Don't try to play this off as 'we just want authenticity regardless'. No, you (or certainly the people making this claim) don't, you just don't want to see gay people in what you deem your games.

Also, "conniving pandering done to manipulate"? Again, which games do that? I'm just going to assume this is about "wokeness" again, so which games have included "conniving pandering"?
Oh don't get me started about Call of Duty, that series is confirmed to have CIA ties and at least in the past had been used to recruit for the military. This is MGS4 tier evil shit lol. I'll let you know I've never bought a game from that series in my entire life, in fact.

I wasn't talking about AAA games in particular, though in fact most lower A games tend to do this more, because they have less of a hook to rely on. At least AAA can have top tier graphics or famous actors or a beloved IP do a lot of the heavy lifting so they often instead of pandering, deliver a bland enough experience so as to not offend anyone but also one that is nobody's favorite.

And no it's not just gay people lol. I'll give you one from my side of the spectrum. Take that Duke Nukem forever game, the 3D one for I think the ps3 era consoles. That one was using sex to pander cause it had no value as a real game. That's the kind of thing I'm talking about. Not sure how many As it was but yeah that kinda thing.


And on the contrary, the Senran Kagura series, one with a lot of gay women in it, is CLEARLY made by someone who loves sexual comedy and entertainment, so in that case the sex appeal is authentically included and isn't part of pandering, and there being gay people in the content has had 0 impact in my perception of it. This was because the story was more soulful than anyone would expect (legit makes you tear up in bits), the gameplay was prolly the best iteration of Dynasty Warriors style arena brawlers, and you could even use the DS microphone to blow at it and have an effect on the clothing of the characters, which is about the most innovative thing I've seen since no more heroes used the wiimote as a cellphone.


Oh and wokeness is oldfag speak, now the kids call it DEI I believe.
 

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I wasn't talking about AAA games in particular, though in fact most lower A games tend to do this more, because they have less of a hook to rely on. At least AAA can have top tier graphics or famous actors or a beloved IP do a lot of the heavy lifting so they often instead of pandering, deliver a bland enough experience so as to not offend anyone but also one that is nobody's favorite.

And no it's not just gay people lol. I'll give you one from my side of the spectrum. Take that Duke Nukem forever game, the 3D one for I think the ps3 era consoles. That one was using sex to pander cause it had no value as a real game. That's the kind of thing I'm talking about. Not sure how many As it was but yeah that kinda thing.


And on the contrary, the Senran Kagura series, one with a lot of gay women in it, is CLEARLY made by someone who loves sexual comedy and entertainment, so in that case the sex appeal is authentically included and isn't part of pandering, and there being gay people in the content has had 0 impact in my perception of it. This was because the story was more soulful than anyone would expect (legit makes you tear up in bits), the gameplay was prolly the best iteration of Dynasty Warriors style arena brawlers, and you could even use the DS microphone to blow at it and have an effect on the clothing of the characters, which is about the most innovative thing I've seen since no more heroes used the wiimote as a cellphone.
Then why are we bringing it up in regards to Black Myth: Wukong? I can hazard a guess, but seeing as you brought up "conniving pandering" compared to "authenticity and integrity" in this Black Myth: Wukong thread I'd like to hear it from you.

Oh and wokeness is oldfag speak, now the kids call it DEI I believe.
And it's just as laced in bigotry and racism.
 
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