Black Myth Wukong Gameplay Impressions & Reaction to the Unreal Engine 5 Trailer

In this article we’re gonna be talking about the Black Myth: Wukong trailer that was just published a few days ago and what our impressions are. If you haven’t seen it yet it’s absolutely outstanding. In this article/video, we’re going to go over what our thoughts are and give you guys a little bit of information about this game.

Black Myth Wukong Gameplay Impressions & Reaction to the Unreal Engine 5 Trailer

If you haven’t heard of Black Myth: Wukong before it is an Action-RPG that is loosely qualifies as a souls-like, that’s being developed by Game Science Interactive Technology, and it’s coming to Playstation 4, Playstation 5 Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One and Microsoft Windows.

What is Black Myth: Wukong?

I think the time frame is sometime in 2024 roughly and the game is running on the Unreal 5 Engine. This is actually the first game I’ve seen running on this engine and it absolutely looks stunning. The graphical detail, even through the compression on Youtube is some that I just absolutely haven’t seen, particularly when you’re looking at some of the statues and the intricate details.

It’s absolutely mind-blowing the level of detail and I think because the size of this studio is rather small, compared to some of these other game studios out there, that if this is what we can sort of expect from Unreal 5 moving forward with some of these other companies and their resources, I think we’re in for a real treat in the gaming industry in terms of what games are going to be made, and how they’re going to look.

Black Myth: Wukong Story Origin

Black Myth: Wukong is loosely based on the 16th-century Chinese novel “Journey to the West” which is largely regarded as one of the most prominent or popular novels to come out of Asia historically of all time. One of the main characters of that story is named Sun Wukong or the monkey king who is proficient in martial arts and gains immense power.

He has the ability to transform into various creatures which you can actually see in the gameplay trailer here, as he transforms into a bat in one scene it remains to be seen just how many creatures he’s going to be able to transform into because in the story there are 72 different shapes he can take. But it would be absolutely amazing if you could do all of them, though that is probably unlikely given that this is an indie developer.

Black Myth: Wukong Souslike Gameplay

Moving along to the combat a little bit, getting away from the story and the setting, you can see very clearly that the game is very souls inspired it has a stamina bar when attacking, dodging, running etc. It’s very minimal here, kind of reminds me of Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice in some ways because of the fact that he’s using one weapon the whole time which is the staff. But you’re going to have to manage that stamina when you’re fighting. You obviously have what looks like a resource there in order to use abilities. He even heals from like a healing gourd etc., kind of the way Sekiro does, so there is definitely that Asian influence to this game, that’s very clear.

Black Wukong Big Focus on Boss Fights

Another aspect of the combat besides the souls likeness to it, that I really locked on to from watching the trailer is the focus on boss fights or with mini-boss fights. We don’t really know exactly, some of them could be mini-bosses, it seems to be a huge part of this game. There are obviously enemies in between there that he’s fighting during certain aspects but they show a lot of bosses and mini boss-type enemies and there are a lot of them that are huge in stature, particularly the dragon fight. It really gives you a Monster Hunter World type feel where the focus is on these challenging huge epic encounters, rather than maybe specific you know level design and areas in between these encounters.

There could be a bigger focus on these fights rather than that, it’s very hard to tell based on the limited gameplay that we have that we’ve seen. We don’t have a great sense of the world, if it’s interconnected, how that all works, but it does feel like there is a very strong emphasis on these boss fights, and you know that could be something that separates it a little bit from the souls games. Obviously souls games have a huge focus on these but if the world is designed in such a way that you’re going from like boss encounter to boss encounter with maybe just a couple enemies in between, it could be different in that way.

Black Myth Wukong Main Concerns

Last-gen Consoles

With those things said, I think I really have three main concerns about this game. The first is how the hell is this game going to run on last gen, that means Xbox One and Playstation 4. Looking at these visuals and then there are some places if you’re really analyzing the trailer, really really closely there are frame drops. Even in this footage, I’m guessing this was played on a beastly computer, how is a Playstation 4 going to run it, or you know an Xbox One without serious reduction of quality of graphics.

I mean these platforms are how old at this point and by the time this game comes out next year, or the year after I think it’s slated for 2024 roughly, I just don’t see how they can possibly run it. I don’t know why they would even be aimed at it, at that point if it’s coming out that far down the road, and I honestly I just cannot see that working. I mean for all we know this game could have struggled playing on current gen, you might only be able to get 30 fps on Playstation 5 or Xbox Series X, on Unreal 5 at that quality of graphics, we just don’t know. It’s a real concern how this is gonna play because even on a beastly PC you’re seeing frame drops, it’s still early obviously but that’s one concern.

Combat and Weapons

Secondly the combat looks great, but you have what looks to be one weapon. I think if I had one complaint about Sekiro it would be that I used the same weapon the entire game. It would have been cool at least even to just get different swords, even if I’m still using a sword. We don’t know obviously how that’s going to work in this game, but if you’re using the same weapon, one has to worry that maybe the combat might get repetitive without you know a variety of different things you can do.

Obviously they can add skills and abilities to mix that up, which they do in the video but you’re wondering, can that carry it through the whole game? Or are you going to be sitting there wishing “man I just wish I had a few more weapons!” It’s a concern, it may not be a problem but it’s something I’m slightly worried about.

Small Development Studio vs Scope

Lastly, is just that this is an indie game, from an indie studio that doesn’t have a publisher or anything in the west. So even though it looks good, how is it going to play? Is it going to feel clunky? What’s the budget? How long is this game going to be? How much of the trailer is actually from the game? These things have yet to be answered. Sometimes when you see trailers like this, you know they could be showing a big part of the game because they just don’t have the budget or resources. There could be some disappointment in the general scope of the game if it’s doesn’t have a huge budget, so only time will tell.

Will Black Myth Wukong have Online Co-op?

There is the last thing I want to talk about before I end this article, and that is if this game may or may not have cooperative online play. We don’t know for sure that it has it and we don’t know for sure that it won’t have it. I feel like this is something that they’re going to try and do if they can, and won’t do if they can’t obviously. We won’t know for a while but the producer of the game is a fan of single-player experiences, that likes the online cooperative element to be included. That reminds us very much of souls obviously. So I’m going to guess that if they can get it into this game it will be, and obviously that’s a game changer. If this game goes from being singleplayer only, to being able to be cooperative, that’s going to be huge for this game. I think that would drastically increase sales, so I can’t wait to see if that gets added. We’ll obviously update you guys if that’s the case.

So what did you guys think about the trailer? Is Unreal Engine 5 absolutely amazing or what? I absolutely was just blown away by it. I can’t believe how good it looks. The detail is incredible. What did you guys like? What did you not like about the trailer? Is there anything you’re concerned about? Or are you pretty much just totally hyped for this game? Let us know in the comments.

For more game impressions be sure to check out our Mortal Shell The Virtuous Cycle DLC Hands-On Gameplay Impressions And Overview.