Black Myth: Wukong – The Mythical Action RPG That Conquered the World

I preordered Black Myth: Wukong on impulse after seeing one trailer. No research, no reviews, nothing. Just “monkey with a staff, China, pretty graphics, take my money.” This is not how I normally make purchasing decisions and I got extremely lucky because the game actually delivered. Like, really delivered. I’ve beaten it twice now and I’m thinking about a third run.

For context: I don’t care about Journey to the West. I haven’t read the novel. I watched the old TV show as a kid but mostly remember the theme song. So when the game starts dropping lore and references and Chinese mythological deep cuts, I was lost for most of it. And somehow that didn’t matter at all. The story still hit. The characters still worked. That’s good writing.

Let’s Talk About the Combat Because That’s the Whole Game

People keep calling this “Chinese Elden Ring” and that’s both accurate and misleading. It’s souls-like in the sense that bosses will kill you until you learn their patterns. But the combat loop feels different. You’ve got this staff that extends and shrinks and transforms, and the three stances completely change how you approach each fight.

I started with Thrust Stance because I’m a coward who likes keeping distance. Quick pokes, dodge out, repeat. It worked fine for the first chapter. Then I hit the Yellow Wind Sage and my little poke-and-run strategy got me destroyed about fifteen times. Had to actually learn Crushing Stance for crowd control and respect the stamina system. That moment — where your comfort zone stops working and the game forces you to adapt — that’s the whole appeal.

The staff mechanics are brilliant. Extending it mid-combo to catch a retreating enemy feels incredible. Shrinking it for rapid close-range hits when a boss gets in your face is a clutch move that saved me more times than I can count. And the transformations? Defeating a boss and then becoming that boss to fight the next one is the kind of power fantasy that makes you actually cackle out loud.

The Bosses Are Why You’re Here

80+ boss encounters. Not all of them are winners, but the highlights are some of the best boss fights I’ve ever played. Let me be specific:

The Yellow Wind Sage made me quit for two days. I came back, watched someone else fight him for like 30 seconds, immediately saw what I was doing wrong (I was greedy with attacks — classic mistake), and beat him on my second attempt. Sometimes the hardest part is just stopping and thinking.

Erlang Shen in Chapter 5 is the boss everyone talks about and yeah, he earned the hype. Three phases, relentless aggression, and the fight where you’re basically fighting yourself. Took me probably 40+ attempts. My roommate walked in during attempt 37 and just watched for ten minutes without saying anything. Then he said “you know you can just lower the difficulty, right?” I told him to leave.

The hidden bosses are a treat. Found the Stone Rat completely by accident while exploring a dead-end path I almost ignored. Fought it with no idea what was happening, barely survived, felt like a genius. That’s the exploration reward loop done right — not a chest with upgrade materials, but an entire secret encounter you stumbled into.

The final boss fight against Wukong himself is… I don’t want to spoil it. But it’s everything the game builds toward. Every mechanic you’ve learned, every transformation you’ve earned, all of it comes together. I actually stood up from my desk after beating it. Full stand-up. My chair rolled backwards into the wall.

The World Is Stupid Beautiful

Game Science scanned actual Chinese temples and landscapes with photogrammetry. The result is environments that don’t look “designed” — they look like real places that happen to be haunted by demons. Chapter 1’s Black Wind Mountain has this Buddhist temple surrounded by mist and I literally stopped playing to walk around and look at the architecture. In a game about hitting things with a stick. The art team deserves every award.

Each chapter has a completely different vibe. Chapter 1 is misty mountains and ancient temples. Chapter 2 is a dusty desert frontier that feels like something out of a wuxia film. Chapter 3 goes underground into this cave system full of fox spirits and it’s unsettling in a good way. Chapter 4 is where the game gets dark — the Spider Spirits’ pagoda gave me genuine discomfort. Chapter 5 underwater temple. Chapter 6 volcanic hellscape. Six chapters, six completely different visual identities. No other game this year does that.

The Things Nobody Mentions

The spells are more useful than you’d think. Cloud Step — the invisibility one — isn’t just a dodge. Certain boss attacks are basically undodgeable, and Cloud Step lets you phase right through them. I only figured this out around Chapter 4 because I’d been ignoring spells like an idiot. Don’t be me. Use your tools.

The spirit system (gourd-sucking defeated enemies) is weirdly addictive. Every time you beat a boss you can absorb their spirit and use a version of their attack. Some of them are borderline broken. I had one spirit that basically stun-locked a boss for like six seconds. Felt cheap but also felt earned because I had to beat that spirit’s owner first.

Performance on PC was rough at launch. I’ve got a decent rig and still had to tweak settings. The Unreal Engine 5 stuff is gorgeous but hungry. By the first major patch it was mostly sorted. If you’re playing on a mid-range setup, expect to compromise on settings. It’s worth it though.

Honest Problems

The equipment system is shallow. You find armor sets, upgrade them, move on. There’s no real build variety — you’re not making a “poison build” or a “critical build.” You’re just finding the set with the best defense and wearing it. Compared to the depth of the combat, the RPG layer feels like an afterthought.

Some bosses in the middle chapters feel like difficulty spikes without enough ramp-up. You’ll hit a wall and realize you need to be ten levels higher. The backtracking to farm XP isn’t fun. NG+ helps with this but shouldn’t be the solution for a first playthrough.

The camera in enclosed spaces is genuinely bad. There’s a boss fight in a cave where I died three times because the camera got stuck behind a rock and I couldn’t see the attack coming. That’s not difficulty, that’s poor design.

Final Thoughts

9/10. Would be higher if the equipment system had more depth and the camera didn’t hate me in caves. But the combat, the bosses, the world — that’s all elite tier stuff. Game Science’s first game outperforming studios with ten times the budget is wild. If this is their debut, I can’t wait to see what they do next.

Also yes, the GOTY win over Elden Ring was controversial and I have opinions about that but this isn’t the place. Play it and decide for yourself. Just don’t ignore your spells like I did.

Available on PS5, PC, and Xbox Series X|S.