Wuthering Waves First Impressions: Life in Solaris
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Last May 18th, my boss assigned with the task of gathering information on a certain Gacha game on the rise, Wuthering Waves by Kuro Games. This game has been in development since 2020 and has gone through large changes as a result of various feedback from their early access and beta testing. In fact, Wuthering Waves’ whole story got rewritten after the first Closed Beta Testing which happened from April 2023 to May of the same year. Wuthering Waves underwent a second Closed Beta Testing from February 19 to March 17 of 2024, featuring changed content which includes character redesigns and a new story.
Fast-forward to the 23rd of May in 2024 and Wuthering Waves has officially released. On one hand, I dreaded the day I had to play a Gacha game. On the other hand, I was going to welcome playing one if I was paid. Fortunately, the stars aligned and I have now been playing Wuthering Waves for about a week now. As such, I would like to share my first impressions of Wuthering Waves.
My Wuthering Waves First Impressions (Wuthering Waves Review)
Video by Kuro Games, from official Wuthering Waves Youtube Channel.
Wuthering Waves is a game designed similarly to Genshin Impact, Honkai Star Rail (HSR), and Tower of Fantasy (TOF). If you have been looking around social media and even just a little bit close to the community, you might have seen discussions about the game. Criticisms always go about how one is a copy of the other, how some would play TOF rather than Genshin, Wuthering Waves, or any alternatives, or pretty much how the game is just a cash grab.
Personally, I do not like the way these games are built to milk the players and purposely stunt their playtime using their energy system and such. However, I have to commend how the developers have successfully balanced out the right amount of frustration and enjoyment for players to stick around and for some to spend money on it.
Looking only at its microtransactions and Gacha system, it feels like gambling. But we also shouldn’t ignore the other parts of the game’s design beyond these systems.
Wuthering Waves Gameplay
The main gameplay loop of Wuthering Waves centers around its open-world exploration and action RPG design. You have a set of characters you can freely swap around, and you explore Solaris-3, the setting of Wuthering Waves while fighting (and catching) monsters.
Of course, there is a story that explains the entire setting of the game, the motivations of your main character, and also the NPCs. Much of the story, however, is shrouded in mystery and is kept as such to make sure the game continuously evolves and piques the interest of the players.
That is pretty much the basic gist of it, the game is truly similar to the titles I have previously mentioned. The difference lies in specific ways the game delivers its RPG experience such as how player equipment works, mini-games in the open world, how skills are acquired and used, as well as combat mechanics.
Equipment, skills, and combat, at least for me, are the biggest differences from its competitors. Let us go over them.
Equipment
Character equipment in Wuthering Waves are mainly the weapons and items called Echoes. Weapons are, well, the main weapons that the characters use. These can be Broad Swords, Katanas, Akimbos, Gauntlets, or a technology called Rectifier. Other item equipments are called Echoes which provide stat bonuses, an additional skill, and various boosts that can affect different combat mechanics such as increased healing, elemental damage, energy regeneration, and more. The various boosts are also called Sonata Effects in the game.
The main weapons are very straightforward, every character can only equip one type of weapon but can freely change it as there are different weapons of the same type that give different stat bonuses or effects. For example, you can have two weapons named Training Sword but one of them provides bonus Attack and HP while the other gives bonus Energy Regeneration and Defense.
Echo (Items and Monsters)
The same goes for Echoes where you can have more than one Echo of the same name that provides different bonuses, skills, and boosts. However, since Echoes have more to offer than just stat bonuses, they are a bit more complicated. You can acquire further boosts by equipping Echoes of the same element much like equipping armor from the same set in other games.
Echo skills are also given to the character if the Echo is equipped in the main equipment slot. Different Echoes provide different Echo skills which the player can then use in combat, adding to the fixed skillset of the character they are using.With the right Echo skill, combos can be extended, damage output can be increased, and healing capabilities are strengthened.
This is a very fun and unique aspect of the game, one which I found very important as the previous titles mentioned didn’t have such a mechanic. It is refreshing and enjoyable to play around with.
Furthermore, Echoes are also acquired by beating monsters in the open world. In fact, the monsters in the open world are also called Echo, and your character basically “absorbs” the soul of the monster for you to equip and use it enhance yourself.It is a bit morbid, but it is a fun mechanic creatively and cleverly weaved in both gameplay and lore.
However, Echoes (items) are dropped randomly so you may have to beat the same enemy more than once to acquire its Echo (item).
In some way, it is a bit like Pokémon or Palworld as you have to run around and “capture” monsters around the world. More than that, it puts an interesting twist on monster drops and provides a better purpose for beating monsters aside from getting experience and materials.
Echoes (monsters) themselves are also interesting and well-designed. Before I forget, using Echo skills will allow you to either transform or summon the Echo (monster) as well. This, personally, makes it incredibly rewarding to actually capture Echoes (monsters) in Solaris 3.
COMBAT
Wuthering Waves’ combat is mostly similar to its competitors in that it is mostly a hack and slash with skills and character combos mixed into it.
However, Wuthering Waves’ greatest addition to its gameplay are in its combat mechanics. These features are called the Echo skills, Perfect Dodging, Parrying, and Intro/Outro Skills. Echo skills have been explained so we can skip that one.
Perfect Dodging and Parrying are mechanics that can be compared to Final Fantasy XV. Perfect Dodge occurs when dodging at the right time and distance, allowing you to deal more damage when counter attacking. Parrying is attacking at the right time before an enemy attacks, allowing you to interrupt and stagger them while dealing damage to the enemy. These mechanics allow for a more engaging and faster paced combat than its competitors.
More than Perfect Dodging and Parrying, switching characters also allow you to use their Intro Skills and Outro Skills. These two skills add a little bit more flair to your combos and help you extend them at times. Perfect Dodges and Parries are perfect if you want to continuously deal damage, or maintain the pace of combat when switching characters.
GIMMICKS
There are so much more that I can point out in Wuthering Waves such as the mini-games, crafting, and cooking.
However, its last unique feature involves gimmicks in its storytelling. For example, a cutscene in one of the companion missions will have you move the character forward while the camera rotates, creating a loopy yet creative effect.
Another is when fighting a certain unique Echo during an exploration quest which will lead you to chasing down the Echo while you are also in Echo form. The game puts you in a situation where you are chasing down the Echo in the air, engaging in a dogfight (a modern terminology used to describe “air-to-air combat”).
There seems to be a lot of thought put into Wuthering Waves to try and make it stand out from its competitors. Albeit around 80% of its design is similar, there are stand-outs that should be pointed out. My biggest gripe, however, is its storytelling.
StoryTelling, Cutscenes, and Skip Button
I will keep this short, Wuthering Waves needs more cutscenes that has a skip button. Skip buttons are not present in all cutscenes, so sometimes you have to sit and watch for a long time while different characters walk around and talk, providing you all the exposition you need to know about what is happening in the world of Wuthering Waves.
While I think the story of Wuthering Waves is compelling and some of its characters’ backstory are interesting, the storytelling and writing is poorly done.
A lot of the emotional or tense moments tend to be lost in the pace of the story because so much of it is simply talked about or described by the characters. During moments where there are intense cutscenes, the player; mainly myself, would have been so bored from all the talking prior that I couldn’t care less about what was already happening.
Furthermore, main story cutscenes take so much time that it took me around two hours to progress two main story missions but not because it was hard or that the missions were necessarily long, but only because the cutscenes always took around 15 minutes of my time and I had to sit out and forget about the game until I remember I was playing it.
I swear to god this was the same when I briefly played Genshin Impact and I had to ask for a second opinion from my friends who then confirmed that it is a norm with these types of games.
Simply put, I absolutely abhor games that do not respect the players’ time by not putting skip buttons on cutscenes. While I understand that this is mostly not done with malicious content and that there may be skeptical responses about my concerns such as the player having short attention span and such, I think it is obvious that this is a problem in Wuthering Waves as there was a patch that added more Skip buttons on more missions.
Conclusion
Wuthering Waves is good and I like it. It is very similar to its competitors but its unique combat features allow for a much more engaging experience. Even better, the Echo system is a fun addition that should entertain those who love catching creatures just like in Pokémon and Palworld. Finally, these features make sense in both its story and gameplay which is something I really like.
As for the smaller details such as visuals, characters, and open-world exploration, they are what you would expect for a Gacha game released in 2024. Wuthering Waves looks amazing and the characters are pretty much a mixture of cute, beautiful, handsome, and whatnot. There are some optimization and text translation problems but Kuro Games has been doing their best to fix everything. So, expect constant updates and patch downloads every day for the next few weeks.
WUTHERING WAVES FAQs
Can you play Wuthering Waves now?
Yes.
What is Wuthering Waves’ release date?
Wuther Waves released on May 22, 2024 worldwide. Look for more updates in their X account.
Is Wuthering Waves on mobile?
Yes.
Is Wuthering Waves like Genshin Impact?
Pretty much but with more features.
Should I play TOF than Genshin or Wuthering Waves?
Who cares? Play whichever you want.
Is Wuthering Waves’ Story good?
It depends on who you ask but I like it. It’s a lot darker than I expected it to be and that is a refreshing take on these kinds of games.
Related Questions: Is Wuthering Waves a good game?, Is Wuthering Waves a gacha game?, Who created Wuthering Waves?, Where can you play Wuthering Waves?
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