Black Myth: Wukong – Great, Except for the Last Chapter
God damn you, monke—I really didn't like Chapter 6
Black Myth: Wukong has been a wild fucking ride, from the original reveal that seemed a little too good to be true—to the actual game that came out, and by all metrics—is pretty damn good, and finally, the last chapter, which basically ruins the entire experience.
Naturally, expect there to be some spoilers in this, especially pertaining to bosses in the game, as well as the structure of the last act.
The shitty part is that I started out loving Wukong. Sure, it has its issues (egregious invisible walls being one of them and a ridiculous sharpening filter being another), but by the end of chapter 4, I was riding high, and at that point, if I were to slap a rating on the game, I’d have probably given it a 9/10.
Chapter 5 came along, and while it was a bit streamlined and shorter than the other chapters, I really had no real issues. It was over not long after it began.
Previous chapters were all mostly linear, with maybe some branching paths or nooks and crannies to find random treasure. But, for the most part, the game has you trudging from point A to point B, killing bosses along the way.
This is all well and good. Don’t really need much direction, don’t need a nap, you can just go where it leads you, and though you might miss stuff along the way, you probably aren’t missing out on much.
However, this game also hides stuff away, so if you’re not being thorough, you might miss a side quest here or there. Sometimes, those side quests provide additional Transformations or Spells, which kind of bites, but it also rewards you for being meticulous (or Googling stuff).
But then Chapter 6 came in and, I don’t know, decided to “do its own thing.” That thing, as it happens, is a giant open level, one that you earn a cloud to fly around on to explore. That sounds pretty neat in theory, but with no map, and no real direction, the entire area feels pretty aimless.
There are some key bosses in this area that you need to fight to progress, which is fine, since you can spot most of those from the air as you’re flying around. One of the bosses, in particular, is a giant grasshopper that sort of acts as Black Myth: Wukong’s “puzzle” boss; this fucker takes a little bit of time to figure out—and trial and error as you figure out exactly what the game is expecting you to do—but it’s pretty simple once you get it.
However, outside of these key bosses, there are loads of smaller bosses spread throughout the area. These guys, for the most part, don’t spawn unless you’re on the ground near them. After skimming the map for about an hour, looking for anything that remotely looked like a boss arena, I’d had quite enough of that shit.
I guess I could look up a map—or install a map mod since there’s one of those now, too—but I honestly couldn’t care less. So, I jumped into the last few boss fights.
After ending up in the belly of a pig fighting a surprisingly edgy mantis, the game eventually led you to a small body of water—the arena in which the last two main fights would take place. While there are some secret fights and an alternate ending, for all intents and purposes, this is the end of the game.
The first of these two fights, Stone Monkey, isn’t too bad, but it provides a good glimpse of what’s to come. What follows might be one of the most unfair, frustrating bullshit fights in all video game history. I sometimes get annoyed at video games, but I rarely rage. This fucker made me rage:
The Great Sage’s Broken Shell is one of the most broken fights I’ve ever encountered. This fucker will dodge most of your attacks, assuming you can get any off during its three-hour-long combos. He’ll also dodge or counter all of your Focus attacks.
So, he’s exceedingly hard to hit, just from how agile he is, and when you do hit him, he’ll probably just perfectly out of the way. Naturally, this is a 2-phase fight, and while phase 1 will maybe lead you to believe that this won’t be too bad. Phase 2 expels those notions quickly.
It’s not so much that this fight is difficult—I don’t mind difficult fights too much, and I did beat it after a few hours. It’s specifically the frustrating bullshit way in which the fight is designed. The Broken Shell will even interrupt your healing for an unskippable cutscene. Fortunately, though, I discovered that if you dodge right after drinking, you can avoid having to sit through this painful interaction.
So, yeah, with a bit of trial and error, you can get used to this amount of bullshit he’ll throw at you, but that doesn’t make the fight any more enjoyable. It just means you can finally get that last hit in and bellow a hearty, “Yeah, fuck you, buddy.”
After the final fight, there’s some post-game stuff to unlock the real ending, and I might still do that at some point, but after the last chapter, I feel like I’d rather take a break from the game, and maybe revisit it in a week or two.
And while it most definitely reads as though the end of Wukong left a pretty bad taste in my mouth—’cause it most definitely did—I still think that the bulk of the game is great, but never before have I experienced my opinion of a game drop so hard so fast. I’m still kinda feeling a bit of whiplash over it.
Granted, when all’s said and done, I still want to put it on my list to revisit—maybe even play again in NG+—once I get my hands on a 50 series video card from Nvidia sometime next year.
I guess I’m just a sucker for ray tracing.