Online game "Wuthering Waves"

Genshin Impact, a conditional free-to-play gacha from Chinese studio miHoYo, released in 2020, blew up the industry and spawned a whole genre called "We want to make as much money as Genshin". There were many clones of this gacha, but so far the best way to copy it from miHoYo itself - we are talking about Honkai: Star Rail and Zenless Zone Zero. And among the third-party projects the closest to the original was Wuthering Waves from the Chinese (of course!) Kuro Games, which, although not achieving the same financial success, also brings millions of dollars in profit and has won a lot of fans in a short time.

Like Genshin Impact, Wuthering Waves is set in a fantasy world where anime-looking boys and girls get along with magic, technology, dragons and robots. Naturally, this world has experienced a terrible disaster - in this case called The Wailing - and now it is facing a new disaster. Likewise, the protagonist or heroine (choose the gender at the start) doesn't really understand how they got to this world and doesn't remember anything.

But it is they who will have to act as saviors of the world. They immediately make it clear that the protagonist is special, that he is somehow connected with everything that is going on and in general almost came from the prophecies. Moreover, as in Honkai Star Rail, we can absorb a certain malicious substance that periodically communicates with us. Thanks to this feature, we get a funny flying helper creature after a while, which partly resembles Paimon from Genshin Impact.

However, compared to miHoYo's game, Wuthering Waves has a darker style and a generally more mature, serious theme. This is a bit of a contrast to the numerous brightly colored girls who solo in the game - but that's just the way the style of such projects is.

Genshin Impact also has drama, but closer to the end of the current storyline, while in Wuthering Waves we are faced with quests in which someone dies, people experience the loss of loved ones, suffer from memories of the past, their family and so on. Especially often the theme of relationships in the family is raised. Thus, in one of the tasks we unravel the tangle of difficult relationships between brother and sister - the latter was even ready to sacrifice himself to prove something to her. One of the most interesting side quests tells about a sect that plays on the feelings of people who have lost loved ones and offers to resurrect them - but in fact people were slipped android dolls.

The story itself is also full of drama and adult themes. One of the brightest characters in the game is a Joker-like villain named Scar, who at some point very convincingly says that the main evil comes from the people themselves and even offers the heroine to join him. You can't choose such an option and in general the story is linear, but it is rich and interesting. And it is not finished yet. A couple of weeks after the release of the game there was a patch with the continuation of this difficult, epic story, where we go in search of the kidnapped god, trying to remember everything and find out how everything is connected with it.

What is especially pleasing - both story and side quests the authors try to build as diverse as possible, without falling into the usual scheme of "go, find, fetch, kill". Many quests are divided into several stages and continue after some time. In almost all battles are neighboring with puzzles and elements of other genres. The above-mentioned quest about the sect is especially revealing here. During its passage we have time to participate in fights, and to communicate, and to get captured, and to solve several puzzles, and to follow other characters, staying at a safe distance. At some point we can even control a robot to solve a couple of puzzles.

As in all such games, in addition to story and side quests in Wuthering Waves there are a lot of all kinds of trials and dungeons where we fight elite enemies and bosses for the sake of obtaining materials and resources needed to pump up characters and equipment. Among them are weekly challenges, "cleaning up the Tacet field", "tactical holograms", "trial of blacksmithing", "tactical simulation".

One of the most important modes is Tower of Adversity, where you have to defeat a group of enemies as quickly as possible. The tower is divided into several zones, they differ in difficulty level and the number of stages you need to pass to get the reward. Similar to Honkai Star Rail and Zenless Zone Zero, Wuthering Waves also has its own separate roguelike mode called Depths of Illusive Realm. Here we choose one character and go to participate in random battles, collecting our own set of improvements.

The cooperative mode compares to what we see in Genshin Impact: after reaching a certain level of player's development, he gets the opportunity to invite other players to his world or join them to fight bosses in dungeons and mine resources together. But you can't do quests together.

As it is supposed to be, to participate in many trials and receive rewards spends stamina, the amount of which is limited. But there are many ways to restore it.

However, we can say that the main mode in Wuthering Waves is an opportunity to explore the large open world, which here is full of beautiful landscapes, challenges and all sorts of activities. Running through your business, completing another quest, you are constantly distracted by something. We clear enemy camps, open chests, new locations and dungeons, activate towers, take part in random trials - and get rewards for everything.

There are a lot of chests scattered everywhere, but, as a rule, you can't get to them so easily - you need to solve a puzzle or pass a test. There are a lot of puzzles - somewhere we put the pieces together like in Tetris, somewhere we drag stones on the pressure platforms, somewhere we even manipulate time to, for example, go to the past and return the bridge to its place. The challenges are also fun and varied. You can, for example, turn into a fish or a bird to get to the right point in the allotted time and get a reward. Or change the genre of the game to platformer, so that again as quickly as possible to pass the location, full of not only enemies, but also traps.

However, the main thing we do in Wuthering Waves is pumping, socializing and battles. And in battles the game differs from Genshin Impact for the better. The principle itself is the same - one character participates in the battle at a time, but we are free to switch to another character at any time (there can be three characters in the current squad). Here there is not the same interaction of different elements that allow you to set wood on fire and freeze water, but there are their own chips. And in general, the battles in the game from Kuro Games are more dynamic and spectacular.

In them, everything is built on the fact that in time to switch between characters when a special scale fills up - this allows you to activate spectacular and effective techniques and combo attacks. There are other mechanics that activate special animated strikes. And most importantly - we can call to the battlefield as assistants those monsters, which previously defeated and whose "echo" copied into the data bank. Such captured monsters accumulate in the inventory a lot, and they can equip characters - it gives various bonuses and the ability to call "helpers" during the fight. The main thing is to take into account synergy, the relationship between different "echoes", as well as the characteristics of the fighter himself.

As in Genshin Impact and other similar games, all the characters are either obtained through the story, or fall out in the gacha roulette. The gacha mechanics itself is implemented according to all the traditions of the genre - you can spend your money trying to get the character you want, or you can just play and collect a lot of rewards for quests, achievements, challenges and battle passes to spin the roulette for free and guaranteed to get items of a certain rarity for a certain number of spins.

Either way, you'll always have a variety of different fighters available to you. All of them are not only divided into conventional shooters, warriors and mages of different ranks and stardom, have unique fighting styles, skills and weapons, but also belong to different elements. Many enemies also have resistance or vulnerability to certain types of damage, and dungeons and trials often have special conditions - the power of some elements is increased or decreased. All this must be taken into account when pumping and forming a squad. You can always create several groups in advance and freely switch between them depending on the situation.

Naturally, a lot of the game is based on and subordinated to pumping. To elevate the character, to increase his level, to upgrade weapons and numerous passive skills (no matter how they are called here, but the essence is the same) is spent not experience, but various materials - we spend the whole game mining them. But it's the experience that is needed to level up the player, which we get for quests and other activities. As it should be, the higher the level of the player - the more opportunities, tasks and modes are available to him. This also increases the maximum level of his characters.

At release, Wuthering Waves had some technical problems, for which the game got its dose of criticism, but they were quickly fixed. And now playing Wuthering Waves is a pleasure. A large and beautiful open world full of all kinds of activities and challenges, a fascinating dramatic story, spectacular dynamic battles, a lot of different quests, organically woven into the game elements of different genres, gorgeous graphics and cute character design - thanks to all this Wuthering Waves is firmly among the leaders in the gacha-market.

Zarium. August 2024