I came into this game blind, not knowing anything or what it was about. In fact, I've never played a game made by Kuro Games before, so I was a little apprehensive about trying this. I've played several gacha games, with my main ones being Genshin Impact and Honkai: Star Rail, so those were my expectations when coming into this game.
I have to say that launch was extremely disappointing. My first impression was a laggy launcher and a laggy intro screen that kept me on a loading screen for 10 minutes. Turns out that I accidentally downloaded the game into the wrong drive, and that's why it was lagging (so not really the games fault but I did not enjoy having to redownload the game for 30 minutes). When I got into the game, I didn't know what I was doing. It took a bit to get used to the gameplay but I can say that this game has peak combat mechanics and will probably be the reason why I start to get into more action-based combat games. That aside, I need to talk about a lot of the faults. The voice acting is not great. There are some characters that are great, but then you have characters that sound terrible. It also doesn't help that for some of the characters, you can hear their British accents coming out, even when the VAs aren't using their accents. The story, I will say that the first like hour is a whole lot to dump onto a new player, especially one that came in blind and had no idea what was happening. I'll say after like the first two or three story quests, I think it got waaaay better, but it was truly a slog to get to that point (but I'm used to that at this point). I haven't experienced any major bugs like a lot of people have, only a few minor texture and background bugs. Though, I feel like the game should've been left baking in the oven for a couple more months to address these bugs, instead of releasing a half-finished game.
Also, I feel like I need to address how the core functions of the game are almost identical to Genshin Impact. The UI, some of the events, like it's glaringly obvious. Although it doesn't really affect my overall enjoyment of the game, I thought I'd just mention it because it's extremely noticeable.
One big big big positive I will give the game is the world and the exploration. I'm a sucker for exploration and Wuthering Waves just has everything that I love. The world looks great, and I love how some of the areas look really monotone, it's great. Exploration I love, I always get sidetracked with exploration when I'm trying to do story.
The Echo System. Honestly, I find it fun how you essentially have your little own Pokedex, and you can absorb the enemies you kill and use them in combat. But of course, this is a gacha game, and the fact that these Echo's can have 13 DIFFERENT SUBSTATS makes me scared for my mental health. Overall, I really like the system though. Also love how you can absorb bosses.
This game is not polished. They shouldn't have released it in this state, but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't enjoying my time with it. I'll stay F2P for now, but if the games quality increases and I don't get burnout, then I guess I could throw a few bucks. Honestly, the rating will probably increase/decrease depending on what they do with future updates, so I'll just leave the original star rating here (3/5). You can try the game if you want, but if you're not a fan of Genshin Impact, and terrible voiceovers, either don't play the game or switch to a different voice over language.
UPDATE: Depths of the Illusive Realm is peak and this game got an entire star increase because of how addicting it is. The echo grind will be pain but only time will tell.
UPDATE 2: Game increased from 3/5 to 4/5. Game has got me really addicted, and now begins the grind. I actually like the grind in gacha games, even though they're torturous, I love building different characters. I went back to playing Genshin and I literally could not for the life of me play properly because I was trying to evade and parry. My brain is now Wuthering Waves coded and I am officially a Jiyan main. The last two story acts are great and Aalto is now my favourite character, great job Kuro Games, you got another person addicted!
UID [SEA Server]: 900718005
I have to say that launch was extremely disappointing. My first impression was a laggy launcher and a laggy intro screen that kept me on a loading screen for 10 minutes. Turns out that I accidentally downloaded the game into the wrong drive, and that's why it was lagging (so not really the games fault but I did not enjoy having to redownload the game for 30 minutes). When I got into the game, I didn't know what I was doing. It took a bit to get used to the gameplay but I can say that this game has peak combat mechanics and will probably be the reason why I start to get into more action-based combat games. That aside, I need to talk about a lot of the faults. The voice acting is not great. There are some characters that are great, but then you have characters that sound terrible. It also doesn't help that for some of the characters, you can hear their British accents coming out, even when the VAs aren't using their accents. The story, I will say that the first like hour is a whole lot to dump onto a new player, especially one that came in blind and had no idea what was happening. I'll say after like the first two or three story quests, I think it got waaaay better, but it was truly a slog to get to that point (but I'm used to that at this point). I haven't experienced any major bugs like a lot of people have, only a few minor texture and background bugs. Though, I feel like the game should've been left baking in the oven for a couple more months to address these bugs, instead of releasing a half-finished game.
Also, I feel like I need to address how the core functions of the game are almost identical to Genshin Impact. The UI, some of the events, like it's glaringly obvious. Although it doesn't really affect my overall enjoyment of the game, I thought I'd just mention it because it's extremely noticeable.
One big big big positive I will give the game is the world and the exploration. I'm a sucker for exploration and Wuthering Waves just has everything that I love. The world looks great, and I love how some of the areas look really monotone, it's great. Exploration I love, I always get sidetracked with exploration when I'm trying to do story.
The Echo System. Honestly, I find it fun how you essentially have your little own Pokedex, and you can absorb the enemies you kill and use them in combat. But of course, this is a gacha game, and the fact that these Echo's can have 13 DIFFERENT SUBSTATS makes me scared for my mental health. Overall, I really like the system though. Also love how you can absorb bosses.
This game is not polished. They shouldn't have released it in this state, but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't enjoying my time with it. I'll stay F2P for now, but if the games quality increases and I don't get burnout, then I guess I could throw a few bucks. Honestly, the rating will probably increase/decrease depending on what they do with future updates, so I'll just leave the original star rating here (3/5). You can try the game if you want, but if you're not a fan of Genshin Impact, and terrible voiceovers, either don't play the game or switch to a different voice over language.
UPDATE: Depths of the Illusive Realm is peak and this game got an entire star increase because of how addicting it is. The echo grind will be pain but only time will tell.
UPDATE 2: Game increased from 3/5 to 4/5. Game has got me really addicted, and now begins the grind. I actually like the grind in gacha games, even though they're torturous, I love building different characters. I went back to playing Genshin and I literally could not for the life of me play properly because I was trying to evade and parry. My brain is now Wuthering Waves coded and I am officially a Jiyan main. The last two story acts are great and Aalto is now my favourite character, great job Kuro Games, you got another person addicted!
UID [SEA Server]: 900718005