The Review
Black Myth: Wukong released in August 2024 to massive commercial success - it broke Steam concurrent player records on launch and introduced millions of Western players to Journey to the West mythology. You play as the Destined One, a monkey warrior retracing Sun Wukong's legend across six chapters of dense, visually spectacular environments. The Soulslike comparisons are inevitable but imprecise: this is less about exploration and more about spectacle and boss design.
The boss fights are the game. Game Science designed dozens of them, many with multiple phases and move sets that reward memorization. The staff combat - with light, heavy, and charged attacks feeding into transformation abilities that let you become enemy types - is intuitive but has real depth at harder difficulties. The visual design ranges from breathtaking (the Bamboo Grove and Black Wind Mountain) to some of the most impressive real-time rendering of natural materials seen in a game.
The game generated controversy beyond gameplay - sexist comments from the studio's founder resurfaced and were widely discussed. The narrative is dense with Chinese mythological references that Western players without background knowledge may find hard to follow without supplemental reading. The final chapters' difficulty spikes sharply, and the inventory/loot system is shallower than its Soulslike contemporaries. None of this diminishes how impressive it is as a debut.
