Hey, hey! Kyra Kyle here. I’m breaking away from Hoyoverse games with this week’s Gacha game review. Wuthering Waves (WuWa) by Kuro Games is a worthy challenger to Genshin Impact. But how does it stack up against our updated Gacha game review system? If you want to see how came up with the Gacha game review criteria, check out this older post (link here). Let’s see how WuWa fairs.

Mechanisms: 8/10

Unlike what Genshin Impact did with Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Wuthering Waves does more than just copy Genshin’s mechanisms. Sure, the core gameplay works similarly. A Genshin player won’t be confused moving around WuWa’s world. But movement may be the first improvement Wuthering Waves makes to Genshin’s formula.

Wuthering Waves adds two elements to its movement: a grappling hook and speed running up mountain faces. Genshin Impact has the occasional character that has a grappling hook ability, and Sumeru and the newly added Natlan have the occasional grappling areas. But WuWa gives each player access to a grappling hook. This may not seem like much, but it makes navigating the world a lot easier. And speed running up mountain faces is a blast. Naturally, you run out of stamina faster by running up mountain faces, but I don’t mind. Nothing beats Naruto running up a mountain.

Wuthering Waves even speeds up the glider. I’d like it if the glider were even faster but the fact that Kuro Games, Wuthering Waves’ publisher, listened to fans during their beta test phase and increased the glider’s speed from what it was is a step in the right direction.

Kuro Games has a knack for spicing up combat. Early reviews dubbed Wuthering Waves “Genshin Impact meets Dark Souls,” and that’s a bit much. Wuthering Waves has intricate combat, but it’s nowhere near as punishing as Dark Souls. The upper-level content does get close to Dark Souls level. One false move and you lose. Wuthering Waves certainly takes more skill to play than Genshin Impact. The big combat addition Kuro Games makes is intro and outro skills. Each character has one, so team synergy matters.

I’m saving the best for last. Instead of your standard equipment, Wuthering Waves uses an Echo system. Echoes are in-world creatures/entities you can hunt, absorb their essence, and then use them to power up your characters. The Echo system acts like a cross between Pokémon and Final Fantasy VIII’s Guardian Forces. Gotta catch ‘em all.

Above Image from GameDesigning.Org

Gameplay Loop: 9/10

The gameplay loop that makes Genshin Impact fun also makes Wuthering Waves fun. It doesn’t hurt that you can play WuWa longer each day than you can Genshin. But I mentioned what makes Wuthering Waves’ gameplay loop better in the previous segment: Gotta catch ‘em all. Echoes are fun to capture. At some point, they do become repetitive. WuWa hasn’t been released very long, so there aren’t as many Echoes to catch as I would like. But as soon as a patch drops, the addictiveness of collecting Pokémon transfers to Wuthering Wave and elevates its baseline gameplay loop.

This simple addition can sometimes make me forget about the grind needed to farm the Echo with the stats and substats I need. And if I get bored, I can hunt for shiny Echoes. Yes. WuWa has shiny Echoes that can spawn occasionally. I want—no need—all the shinies.

Respecting Time: 4/10

The other shoe has dropped. Wuthering Waves improved on some of Genshin’s shortcomings as it pertains to wasting time, but it doesn’t do enough. In other words, WuWa may be too close to Genshin Impact in this category.

The improvements: players auto collect all treasure and loot and faster movement. But players still need to fight domains to use their daily energy and collect leveling materials.  Wuthering Waves has no auto-finish capability. The game assumes a similar stance to Genshin Impact. They created a beautiful world and tasked the player with busy work that could’ve been a click of a button. But, hey, the world looks gorgeous. But I don’t want to fight the same low-level enemy fifty times to gain character upgrades.

Furthermore, some upgrade materials only be obtained by fighting overworld enemies. This becomes tedious. Fast. I also don’t like tracking an enemy to collect those five extra rings I need to ascend Calcharo’s abilities.

Can I include continued slow load times in this category? I will. Wuthering Waves’ launch was mired with crashes and slow load times. Kuro Games has improved WuWa since its launch, but it’s far from perfect. I can still do all my dailies for Honkai: Star Rail while I wait for Wuthering Waves to load its first screen. I’ve tried WuWa on my iPad recently, and I can say that the game still has crashing issues on mobile platforms. Good luck trying to play Wuthering Waves on anything but a PC. Granted, I do believe WuWa plays best on a PC, but I’d like the option.

Battle Pass: 4/10

Most Gacha games have awful battle passes. Sure, you can get some useful items, even some level items that could take you hours to collect in the overworld, but nothing stands out. The battle pass weapons are okay. I have the broadsword equipped to Calcharo. I even like the idea of bonus Echoes. But players get nothing unique from the Wuthering Waves’ battle pass.

Correction: you receive a specialty nameplate the first time you purchase the battle pass. Yeah, that’s not enough. I like getting more stuff, but most of WuWa’s battle pass gives you a reprieve from playing the tedious parts of the game. I’d like it more if Wuthering Waves eliminated more tedious gameplay and added more unique rewards for finishing a battle pass. This would be a great place to add alternate skins. Why don’t any of these AAA Gacha games include skins in their battle passes?

Furthermore, Wuthering Waves’ battle pass inherited Honkai: Star Rail’s battle pass issue. The last dozen or so levels offer the same rewards. Similarly, this makes finishing the battle pass less stressful. I don’t feel like I’m missing out if I don’t finish the final handful of battle pass levels. But it feels worse when you complete WuWa’s battle pass. You’re left with asking, Is that all there is?

True Cost: 8/10

Wuthering Waves’ Gacha system uses a similar structure to Hoyoverse’s Gacha system. 160 in-game currency gets a player 1 turn of the Gacha crank. But WuWa lowers the turns needed to get a guaranteed 5-Star from 100 to 80. This is a game-changer because Wuthering Waves has a similar flow of in-game currency as a Hoyoverse game, and Kuro Games hands out several free Gacha turns each patch. They’ve even given players a free 5-star, Xiangli Yao.

Furthermore, Wuthering Waves’ weapon banner guarantees the featured weapon on the banner. No more 50-50 chances. Not even a 75-25 chance like Honkai: Star Rail. There’s no need to cross your fingers that you’ll get the weapon on a banner. If you use enough Gacha crank turns (no more than 80), you WILL get the weapon pictured on the banner. WuWa continues this trend with the standard weapon banner. Players choose which weapon they want on the standard banner whenever they get a 5-Star. I’ve used this banner to round out the weapons I have in my inventory, because again, Kuro Games hands out a lot of Gacha turns. Some of these turns can be used for the featured banner, but some can only be used for the standard banners. I’ll use these standard banner turns on the weapons. No question.

Narrative: 5/10

No one plays Wuthering Waves for its story. That said, WuWa’s story has improved since the first chapter. That first chapter was brutal. The second chapter, which was also released at launch, elevated Wuthering Waves’ story to about a 3 or 4. Kuro Games has improved the story with each patch, raising the score to average. If things continue this way, WuWa could reach Hoyoverse narrative levels and hopefully beyond.

But that first chapter. I won’t sugarcoat it. You won’t be able to finish it fast enough.

Storytelling: 4/10

Wuthering Waves doesn’t struggle as much as Genshin Impact does with telling their story, but Honkai: Star Rail has a much better setup for a serialized story. WuWa marks time far too long before the story gets off the ground. I had to dock the storytelling quite a bit. The pacing leaves a lot to be desired. I believe there is a skip function; you may want to use that a lot in the early going.

While the story picks up as you get deeper into the narrative, Wuthering Waves hasn’t found its balance between providing beats that progress the story forward, character backstory, and reintroducing characters. I feel like I’m always meeting Chixia, Yangyang, and Baizhi for the first time, and not in a good way. Every time WuWa reintroduces a character, it plays out like an anime recap. Skip!

You could skip a story beat, but you may not know if you’ll miss something important. I tend not to skip, and I shouldn’t have to skip. Wuthering Waves needs to drop their recaps. I also worry that Abby, the potential WuWa mascot, could turn into another Paimon. I like Abby more than Paimon. That’s not hard to do. But I still worry that Wuthering Waves will push a somewhat obnoxious character. We were doing so well without one of these in the game. Note: Abby was introduced in the most recent chapter.

Presentation; User Interface: 8/10

Wuthering Waves continues the trend of good but could be improved user interfaces in Gacha games. It even has a quick radial menu like Honkai: Star Rail’s for its gadgets. It’s too bad WuWa doesn’t continue this with the rest of its menus like HSR does for theirs. I still gave Wuthering Waves an 8 for User Interface because it does a better job than Genshin Impact. The menus have fewer sub-subcategories than Genshin. That’s a huge plus. I’d like to see even fewer sub-subcategories.

I can’t imagine playing Wuthering Waves on a small screen. While the character portraits in the top right-hand corner work, they can get lost in a busy screen. PC players don’t have too much issue with this, and my iPad does well enough. A phone would be impossible—at least for me. I already keep the sound on so I can hear the chime that lets me know my other characters have their intro skills ready.

Presentation; Graphics and Audio: 8/10

Speaking of sound, that brings us to the audio and graphics. Wuthering Waves has superior graphics to Honkai: Star Rail, let alone Genshin Impact. But it scores lower because of its audio. While WuWa’s main theme does get stuck in my head, the rest of the music is mostly forgettable. The music is good, don’t get me wrong. But Kuro Games hasn’t reached the same level with their music storytelling as Hoyoverse either. I don’t think any Gacha game company will reach Hoyoverse’s music storytelling unless that company invests millions of dollars in the music alone. That could be the case for Kuro Games’ next release because Wuthering Waves has made a lot of money.

As I said, Wuthering Waves has superior graphics to Honkai: Star Rail. But the graphics alone don’t make up for Hoyoverse’s audio. And I’m a little weirded out by WuWa’s giggle physics. I get that giggling breasts act as fan service, but some character models like Zhezhi and Baizhi have breasts that never stop moving. What is this, Perpetual Motion Boobs? I can’t stop laughing at the absurdity. Every player obtains Baizhi. I challenge you to click on her character profile as if you were going to upgrade her abilities and start a stopwatch to see how long her breasts move. She’s not even moving. Perpetual Motion Boobs. PMB, y’all.

Aggregated Score: 6.44

Wuthering Waves is a worthy challenge to Genshin Impact. I call it the superior game, but I also get that Genshin has a loyal fanbase of several years. I don’t believe WuWa will ever reach Genshin levels of popularity. But it doesn’t need to. It can cater to the fans who like the flow of Genshin Impact but want more of a challenge.

Kuro Games has proven that they want to give their gamers the best experience they can. Wuthering Waves had a disastrous launch, and Kuro Games did everything they could to improve the game and listen to fans. You can tell Kuro Games cares about Wuthering Waves. And that’s refreshing. I can’t wait to see what Kuro Games plans to do in the future.