As a long-time player of Genshin Impact (going on three and a half years), I’ve impatiently waited for a worthy competitor to steal the spotlight from HoYoverse’s multi-billion dollar game. A live service game doesn’t grow without healthy competition — and it so happens that Genshin Impact has remained largely uncontested (outside of Honkai: Star Rail, HoYoverse’s turn-based title) as the king. Now, we have Kuro’s answer to Genshin Impact’s enormous monopolization of the open-world gacha game space with Wuthering Waves (announced two years ago on May 23rd), maintained and developed by the Punishing: Gray Raven creators. After two beta tests and a private localization check, the game is finally out. We are here to give you the full scoop. Is it just a worse Genshin Impact, or do we finally have a solid competitor on our hands?
Wuthering Waves’ performance
It’s a mixed bag, but overall disappointing
Your mileage with Wuthering Waves performance will vary. The game crashed on me twice within the first hour, and each crash would reset my settings. I also experienced rubber banding. Others report that Wuthering Waves plays fine on mobile, but clips of Rover T-posing across the screen appear to refute this claim. The inattention to the mobile version’s performance is inexcusable, especially when Kuro started strong with Punishing: Gray Raven (PGR). My biggest qualm is the lack of controller support on Android; there’s far too much going on Wuthering Waves to solely play without one.
Above is a 30-minute video containing footage of what I experienced during the first hour of launch. Cutscenes would awkwardly transition in and out, and the server connection remained unstable. The constant rubber banding made exploration unappealing, coupled with how sluggish and slow it is to change the camera’s angle in the midst of moving around the map. Simply put, the game is nowhere near ready for even powerful Android devices like a Redmagic.
Wuthering Waves’ combat
It has buttery smooth combat, and that’s all it has
Wuthering Waves builds on quick time events with parrying and dodging; the game lets you deploy up to three characters, in which switching between them activates special abilities, “Intro” and “Outro” skills. Characters have a preferable range and elements that can make or break your strategy. Wuthering Wave’s combat is the high point, but unfortunately, it is also the only saving grace the game currently has.
We know Kuro is no stranger to developing complex (but enjoyable) battle systems. Punishing: Gray Raven is renowned for its combat. PGR utilizes a 3-ping system to activate a character’s core passives, enabling players to string together complex and carefully timed combos. Wuthering Waves adopts a similar concept but incorporates a more simplified approach to its combat.
In an open-world game, you’ll encounter many enemies on the map, but you don’t want to think about every run-in you have. Instead, it’s better to quickly dispose of the monsters, collect your Echoes, and move on to the next section. This is precisely how Wuthering Waves does it. It strikes a balance. Wuthering Waves allows players to play casually while leaving the more hardcore mechanics for boss fights, where parrying and dodging become a factor. For a game to craft itself well for the general player base (especially if you’re trying to leech off Genshin’s), you need to find a compromise between that, and that’s what Kuro has done with Wuthering Waves.
Wuthering Waves’ open-world exploration
It borrows a lot from its competitors, but improves things along the way
Wuthering Waves’ open-world exploration isn’t bad. It does re-hash the same formula as its rival competitor; you’re collecting material, crafting, finding chests, discovering warp points, and unlocking sections of the map. Exploration becomes the key to earning achievements and getting the much-needed gacha currency.
However, it does a bit more than copy Genshin’s formula. It introduces grappling and wall-climbing, which I greatly appreciate. Tower of Fantasy’s (another open-world gacha game) gadget system felt limiting, but its implementation of the grappling hook is one of the few gadgets I regularly use. It is nice to see Wuthering Waves borrowing ideas from its competitors while improving them.
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Wuthering Waves’ localization
Wuthering Waves needs more time in the oven; it’s not ready
I needed to write a dedicated section on the localization because, man, this is bad; I’m talking like, “I’ll wait another six months to play Wuthering Waves,” bad. There’s a lot wrong. It starts with the awful voice acting — monotone voicing of characters in the first hour (sorry, YangYang). The delivery is stilted, and the dialogue texts are constantly being cut off (even without auto-advance). It’s a complete disaster. I’m so spoiled by Genshin’s and Honkai: Star Rail’s localization quality. You don’t realize when you’ve got something good until it’s gone.
Don’t get me wrong, Wuthering Waves does look gorgeous (created in Unreal Engine 4), and the combat feels great (though do yourself a favor and immediately turn off motion blurring in the Graphics setting). But we need more than that to keep a game going longterm. Hopefully, as it ages, the budget also improves, giving the much-needed quality of life the game needs to succeed; especially in the VA department, Kuro needs to hire better VAs to fix the immersion and have their VAs work on their voice-line delivery. Otherwise, it’s better to hit that skip button as fast as you possibly can. I am saddened to see how this part of the game is so weak since there’s only so much a title’s combat and graphics can do to tide players over before they move on. An ARPG is a dime a dozen in 2024, and Wuthering Waves being a gacha doesn’t make it any better.
Also, there’s no controller support on Android, which felt worse than I expected. I was not too fond of parrying and timing dodges on a touchscreen. The icons are far too small, and sometimes my fingers would miss and land on another button; the UI is too cluttered, and my fingers are small. Too much is going and it only gets worse when you equip Echoes. After playing Wuthering Waves on my Android phone, I test-drove it on my computer (from Kuro’s official website), and the PC version offers controller support. It felt miles better to play with a controller. Being immediately hampered on mobile just doesn’t sit well with the longevity of wanting to play (which is disappointing when mobile gaming offers so much more freedom compared to playing on my desktop).
Overall, this game went from an A to a B based on the poor localization quality alone. Kuro doesn’t have that much experience with English localization, but if they want to actually play ball with HoYoverse, they better learn quickly. After all, this lack of polish will get players migrating to other games once they’ve had their two weeks of fun.
First impressions are everything expected from a gacha
Wuthering Waves is perfectly average. It has a great, buttery-smooth combat system, and the game looks absolutely gorgeous, even with its darker undertones. But it lacks an identity; the localization is awful, performance on mobile suffers, and the game is buggy. First impressions are everything in a gacha game; most games see their biggest revenue from the first month. That’s the honeymoon period. But if Kuro doesn’t figure out a direction soon, other, more polished, long-standing titles will re-latch the unhappy players. Zenless Zone Zero is around the corner, and I can see that stealing combat-enthused players away from Kuro’s open-world title. Otherwise, being average isn’t the worst thing. There’s still hope for a game to recover — just remember that Genshin Impact once had a shakey launch, too.
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