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The Journey to the West, albeit an influential work of literature, has become less prominent in recent times. Sun Wukong, arguably the work's most popular character, has made appearances in all kinds of media as a guest character or a cameo. In Black Myth Wukong, the titular monkey god brings respect back to the name of The Journey to the West, as he stars in this brand-new epic game.
Black Myth Wukong is the debut game of Game Science, a Chinese video game development company founded in 2014 by industry veterans. You'd remember them at the forefront of news in the past year thanks to allegations of discrimination in the workplace, but those didn't dampen the game's steam, making Black Myth Wukong one of the most prominent releases of 2024.
Now, Black Myth Wukong has been released, four years to the day it was first announced, backed by positive reviews from games journalists and rapidly climbing the top of Steam's Charts, making it the most-played single-player game on the platform when it launched. You might be asking, is the game as good as advertised? Let's find out as we round up Black Myth Wukong's Review Scores.
Black Myth Wukong Review Scores: 82 on Metacritic
Black Myth Wukong debuted with a round of applause from game critics, scoring an aggregated score of 82 for PC on Metacritic. Interestingly, Game Science did not provide PS5 review copies to publications, so we don't know how the game performs on that platform, specifically. Meanwhile, the game is yet to release on the Xbox Series X as of press time, with no specified release date yet.
Reports on Black Myth Wukong's technical performance on the PC land on different parts of the spectrum. Some critics report FPS drops and slowdowns on some parts of the game, while others didn't experience any issues throughout their game coverage. It's worth noting, however, that the game has Denuvo, known for causing performance issues for some games.
It's also worth noting that majority of the game reviews are made playing on the game's pre-release build. There is a chance that any issues experienced during the review period have already been fixed with the game's Day 1 patch.
With the performance issues out of the way, let's talk about the game itself. What do critics and Black Myth Wukong's review scores say about the game?
Gamersky gives Black Myth Wukong a perfect Review Score
Call them biased all you want, but Gamersky likely won't change their Black Myth Wukong Review Score. The Chinese website gave the game a perfect score. A snippet of their review reads:
“Despite Black Myth: WuKong achieving world-class standards in art and presentation, with solid and engaging gameplay, rich content, and a narrative and artistic expression that is uniquely meaningful for East Asian players—especially those who grew up with Journey to the West—the game is not without its flaws.
The inexperience in level design and the drawbacks of excessive resource allocation have indeed impacted the overall experience…
As a Chinese player who grew up watching the Journey to the West cartoons and TV series, playing Black Myth: WuKong is an experience that deeply resonates with me. I appreciate the developers' unreserved presentation of Journey to the West culture, and I am in awe of the game's artistic presentation.
This profound cultural empathy has already made up for any shortcomings.”
To be fair, Gamersky isn't the only website that gave the game a perfect score. You also have the likes of GamingBolt, GamersRD, and God is a Geek giving Black Myth Wukong a perfect review score. God is a Geek's review is straightforward but tells you everything you need to know about the game at a glance:
“Hands down, one of this year's best action games – Black Myth: Wukong is a flurry of sublime combat and expert boss design.”
Screen Rant wasn't happy with the game's lack of “inclusivity and diversity”
Screen Rant gave Black Myth Wukong 3 Stars out of 5, with their review reading:
“While it has some exceptional features, including its visuals, combat design, and many extraordinarily exhilarating boss fights, as well as a compelling plot line, it is not enough to warrant a better score.
Given that most of its shortcomings lie in performance, diversity, and wasted environmental factors that would have transformed it into something great, these are integral features that, at a fundamental level, all RPGs, especially soulslike ones, should encompass in their content.”
This review in particular has drawn flack on social media for its controversial calling out of Game Science because the game was “Lacking in inclusivity and diversity,” in a game about a monkey god that's meant to highlight Chinese mythology and folklore. There is some merit here, to be fair, given that the source material had way more female representation.
Screen Rant's sister site Game Rant gave the game a similar score, with a review reading:
“Black Myth: Wukong is a game that shies away from the Soulslike label, yet it is clearly gunning for the Soulslike audience. It is far from the best in the genre, but it's also not the worst game that has followed in Dark Souls' footsteps.
If you go into it expecting a mostly standard Soulslike experience with some blood-boiling boss encounters mixed in with basic level design, you will have a better time than if you were going into it expecting it to be like a traditional character action game.
Black Myth: Wukong offers about 30 hours of gameplay for its first playthrough with a ton of side content to check out as well, but many will tire of the limited combat options long before they reach its dazzling yet equally aggravating final boss fight.”
Both websites lamented the game's performance lacking polish, with Game Rant's reviewer sharing their rig: Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080, 3.70 GHz AMD Ryzen 9 5900X 12-Core Processor, and 32.0 GB RAM. How this kind of setup would struggle to play a game is a wonder, which we guess may be because of some inefficiency in using the relatively new Unreal Engine 5.
Most of the game's review scores range between the 60-80 mark, which comprise of about three quarters of all reviews for Black Myth Wukong. Other publications that have a 60% or 3/5 score for the game include Eurogamer, whose review reads:
“Its dramatic and spectacular boss fights just about keep Black Myth: Wukong afloat, but behind all its glitz and glamour is a frustratingly hollow and rudderless action game.”
The Sixth Axis gave huge props to the game's graphics and presentation but still gave the game only 3 stars out of 5, with a review that reads:
“Black Myth: Wukong is a stunning game to look at, but the exploration is lacking, and the fighting is just sort of fine for the most part. It's just a bit uninspiring, and isn't a game that I'm expecting to stick with me for any length of time now that I'm done with it.”
Frustrations about the lack of exploration (which they did a lot in the source material, by the way) and on meeting invisible walls in video games of this magnitude in the year 2024 is also a recurring talking point among the different critic reviews we've seen.
No Review Scores for Consoles yet – and other Game Review Coverage Woes
Game Science apparently did not give publications and content creators review copies for the PS5, the lone console that the game launched on, so as of press time, there are no critic reviews for consoles yet. The game hasn't launched on the Xbox Series X yet as well, so there's that.
However, the lack of PS5 review copies is only one of the few issues and concerns that game journalists and content creators have brought up about Game Science's peculiar game review coverage guidelines.
As reported by IGN, Black Myth Wukong had some suspect coverage guidelines that somehow reflect the culture within the game developer's offices. Game Science reportedly asked reviewers and content creators to refrain from covering, among other things, “feminist propaganda,” and from saying anything bad or critical of China.
Those who are aware of the context would understand how the attempt at silencing “feminist propaganda” may be a reaction to the allegations leveled against the game dev over the past year. Meanwhile, it's not unusual for Chinese companies to shy away from angering the Chinese government or the CCP, so the second part isn't so surprising.
While these controversial coverage guidelines might bring to light some negative atmosphere around the game dev company itself, the fact remains that their debut game has been a success and that players appear to love the 30-40 hour Journey to the West.
Black Myth Wukong is now available on PC through Steam and the Epic Games Store, as well as on the PS5, with an Xbox Series X release coming at an unspecified future date, due to the game not meeting “quality standards” yet on the Microsoft console.
