If Wuthering Waves stays this good, it should be the next open-world action RPG hit
235373 
SHOULD I PLAY WUTHERING WAVES?
Play it, especially if you like Genshin Impact, Honkai: Star Rail, or Tower of Fantasy. It’s almost hard for me to believe how far Wuthering Waves has come since its early days; I’m very impressed by the amount of improvement and care put into the development. This open-world game tackles a sci-fi story about mysterious powers nearly wiping out humanity. It includes incredible combat, great storytelling, a wide cast of lovable characters—basically everything I could ask for in a spectacular action RPG.
TIME PLAYED
I played Wuthering Waves for four hours. I’ve completed the tutorial, and prologue and I’m currently up to Chapter 1 Act 4 in the main storyline, but I still have to reach account level 14 to continue the quest. I’ve currently ascended three characters above level 20 and leveled one character to 40. I’ve also pulled fifty times in the gacha banner and acquired one four-star and one five-star character.
WHAT’S AWESOME ABOUT WUTHERING WAVES?
• It’s an entirely different game from the previous beta. When I first played Wuthering Waves early last year, I was shocked by how good it was, but I still knew that it had a long way to go. Fast-forward a year later and I’m absolutely blown away by the game’s improvement. Every major aspect of the early test version has received a significant upgrade, from combat to exploration to storytelling. Even issues that I expected not to be addressed until release, like poor translation and lack of difficulty, have been addressed. The developers have also switched around the environments in the world, tweaked the visuals, and generally made everything more seamless and dynamic. With Wuthering Waves already looking and feeling this spectacular before it’s ready to release, I have no doubt that it has all the pieces necessary to become an incredibly successful game when it launches.
• A more detailed but less overwhelming story. I struggled to get invested in the previous test version of Wuthering Waves, but the storyline in this version feels a lot more cohesive and entertaining. A slower pace made certain story details much easier to digest and gave me more time to get to know each character. And beyond that, the story flowed much more seamlessly without spending too much time expanding on in-game lore and jargon.
• Shooting monsters and slicing baddies. Fighting enemies in Wuthering Waves still feels phenomenal and complex. The game’s wide case of unique characters each employ different play styles. Utilizing various tactics and weaknesses, dodging perfectly, and experimenting with different builds and team compositions was a blast once again. It’s also much easier to find monsters now, so I spent more time battling and honing my skills.
• Exploring and scavenging for loot. Digging into every corner of Wuthering Waves’ massive world felt great, whether I was solving puzzles, hunting for hidden chests, or collecting cooking ingredients. I loved the distinct feel that different environments in the game have. It made visiting new areas all the more exciting.
• A new and improved look. Not only have the developers changed a bunch of environments, but they’ve improved the visual quality as well. In the previous test, the world of Wuthering Waves blended together into a gloomy, monotone mess of browns and grays. Now, though, it’s layered with so many different biomes and structures that give this world more texture, color, and life.
WHAT NEEDS IMPROVEMENT IN WUTHERING WAVES?
• Not much voice acting. Wuthering Waves still features little to no voice acting, which can make the storyline and characters feel disconnected and soulless. I’m assuming that the developers at Kuro Games are planning to add more fully voiced lines prior to launch, so I don’t consider this a major negative yet. But more extensive voice-over would definitely help pull me into the story and world to a greater degree.
• It’ll be a grind. Wuthering Waves is one of those gacha games where you probably won’t ever need to spend money, but opening up your wallet will almost certainly help with getting new characters or upgrading ones you’d already have. The game is structured in a similar manner to Genshin Impact: Players must grind storyline quests, daily commissions, chests, and other activities to earn a tiny amount of premium resources for free gacha pulls or purchasing resources.
Thankfully, the gacha system isn’t terribly greedy. In the current test, at least, every ten pulls guarantees a four-star character, and every eighty pulls guarantees a five-star character—again, basically the same system as Genshin Impact. There are certainly much more egregious examples of pay-to-win games that don’t offer nearly this amount or quality of playable content. Just be warned that if you plan to stick to playing free-to-play, you’ll need to keep up with the daily activity grind and save your resources for the characters or items you really want.
• Still a work in progress. No surprise here, but not everything is polished to perfection in this test version of Wuthering Waves. I encountered text errors, issues with tabs freezing, and moments where I got stuck on a loading screen. Hopefully these rough spots will get worked on before the final, full launch, which will hopefully be later this year.
PLATFORM TESTED
PC via game launcher.
Mentioned games
:strip_exif():background_color(white):format(jpeg):quality(40))
