Black Myth: Wukong is a brilliant boss rush, but is it a Soulslike?
Ever since its reveal in 2020, fans have wondered if Black Myth: Wukong is truly a Soulslike. In part that’s due to the Soulsborne games overshadowing any and all action games these days, but the precise combat, elaborate bosses, and seemingly high difficulty of Wukong certainly looked to be aping FromSoftware.
Now I’ve had a proper hands-on preview of the game, beyond a relatively brief time at Gamescom last year, and I can tell you Wukong is not (really) a Soulslike.
Black Myth: Wukong
Publisher: Game ScienceDeveloper: Game ScienceAvailability: Out 20th August, 2024Platforms: PS5, Xbox Series X/S, PC (Steam)
That does, of course, depend on your definition of a Soulslike. It certainly has many of the hallmarks. Combat is all strikes and dodges managed with a stamina bar. Shrines are checkpoints to restore your health. And if you die you lose some experience, with enemies magically respawning too. Then again, you can also pause the game.
The game’s Chinese developer Game Science, though, doesn’t consider it a Soulslike, instead preferring the more generic term “action-RPG”. “In this game you can see there are a lot of spells and transformations,” a spokesperson from the studio told me, adding combat is varied for players to “create their own combos and to find their own style”. “This is a level of freedom we want to give to our players.”
That said, I wouldn’t expect the variety of character builds the Souls games offer. While experience gained in Wukong can be spent on a branching skill tree to expand combat options, it doesn’t appear to have the diversity of character customisation FromSoftware is known for.
There are two other key elements, the developer cites, that differ from Soulslikes: narrative and difficulty.
The game is based on the classic Chinese novel Journey to the West, first published in the 16th century during the Ming dynasty. It’s an exceptionally long story, with Sun Wukong – often known as the Monkey King – as one of its most prominent characters. It’s also proven immensely influential, spawning multiple TV adaptations, as well as inspiring Ninja Theory’s Enslaved: Odyssey to the West and, perhaps most famously, Akira Toriyama’s Dragon Ball manga.
