Video Gamers Podcast - [Deep Dive] Black Myth: Wukong - Gaming Podcast

Episode Date: September 2, 2024

Gaming Hosts Paul, Ryan and Josh are bringing you our full Black Myth: Wukong deep dive in this awesome gaming episode. Long awaited and super hyped (by Josh at least), it’s time to see what we thought about one of 2024’s most anticipated video games. Does it live up to the gaming hype and what’s it all about? We break down gameplay, story, graphics and more in this incredible episode. Where it falls on our leaderboards might just surprise you! It’s another awesome video game deep dive from your favorite gaming podcast!  Thanks to our LEGENDARY Supporter: Ole Jake (and to everyone who supports this podcast) Connect with the show: Support us on Patreon: patreon.com/videogamerspod Join our Gaming Discord: https://discord.gg/Dsx2rgEEbz Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/videogamerspod/  Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/VideoGamersPod  Subscribe to us on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCU12YOMnAQwqFZEdfXv9c3Q   Visit us on the web: https://videogamerspod.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello, Video gamers. Welcome to the Video Gamers Podcast. The day has arrived. One of our most anticipated games of the entire year, Black Myth Wukong, has released. We are here to break down this game with one of our classic deep dives. I am your host, Paul, and joining me, I've been so curious to hear his thoughts. I don't know anything about what he thinks about Black Myth yet. He was by far the most hyped out of the three of us. It's Josh. You know, I might have the belly of a Buddha, but I've got the temperament of a dragon, Paul. Okay. All right. All right. Very nice. I like it. Can you tell I made that up right on the spot? Oh, yeah. Sure. Yeah. I don't know if it's your best work, but I'll take it.

Dang it. And then joining Josh and me, he famously hates Souls-likes. In a few minutes, we can debate whether or not this game even qualifies as that. But either way, I'm sure he's been dodging like a fool. It's Ryan. Death can have me when it... Death can have... Death can have me when it or death can death can have me

that was me dying in case you guys didn't know yeah this is gonna be an interesting episode this is usually there's like maybe we leave a couple hints in our discord messages to each other or maybe we have some guesses this is one where where, especially Josh, I have not a single idea. So, very curious to hear about this. Before we jump into our deep dive, though, we do have a couple of important announcements. Ryan, do you want to tell the people a little bit about Patreon support? Absolutely. So, this amazing pod that you guys are listening to right now, made by us, we're just three kind of dads that love to play video games. So, we thought, why not get on here and talk about it?

If you like what we do and would like us to continue, please consider supporting us. Lots of cool perks, early access, Discord, stuff like that. You can start as low as $5 a month. And then you can just hop on to MultiplayerSquad.com and help us out. We'd really appreciate it. Yeah, absolutely. And then we do have another announcement. This one's, out. We'd really appreciate it. Yeah, absolutely. And then we do have another announcement. This one's,

I guess, not quite as fun. And we did announce this on discord. So some of our listeners already know, but we know there's a lot of listeners out there that aren't part of the discord community. So unfortunately I do have to announce that my time with the video gamers podcast is very soon coming to an end.

I know sad day. that my time with the Video Gamers podcast is very soon coming to an end. Magoo! I know, sad day. No! No! I did want to give you guys a little bit of an explanation as to why. Obviously, I love recording with Josh and Ryan. We've had so much fun running this podcast.

They are still going to be continuing to run it. I hope everyone will, of course, still continue to support the show. Unfortunately, in my case, my wife, Nikki, she has had some very serious medical and mental health issues going back the last few years. And unfortunately, she has to step down from work. Her and I founded a foster care and adoption agency that are our day jobs and our main source of income. And since she is no longer able to work because of medical reasons, I am going to have to basically do the job of two people, which means I'm not going to have enough time to game and do these deep dives and do the recording and all the prep work.

So unfortunately, I will have to be stepping down. Obviously, we have this episode. I will be here for This Week in Gaming on Thursday and on Monday for a bonus round. But then that will be my last regular episode right now. I did tell the guys, however, that I do want to come back for the end of year awards because I've already got some candidates written down. I definitely want to be a part of that. I love recapping the year. So it's not the last time that you'll hear me, but it will not be on the regular. If the guys ever need me for like a three person draft or something, obviously I'm available here or there, but just won't be a regular part of it. So do you guys want to share a little bit about what's going to happen here moving forward?

Because obviously you're still going to be releasing episodes. Yes. I decided we're not going to record that bonus round. So then you can't ever leave. Yeah. I know what's going to happen. I don't know if that solves the problem. I know what's going to happen, Paul, is we're going to miss you, man.

Yeah. Yeah. This was just so people know. I mean, this was not an easy decision for Paul. I know it was honestly something that he felt really bad about and was kind of struggling with. But we've always said, family first. We're a family-friendly podcast. We're all dads. We have kids. We have wives. It's something that always is our top priority. And this is your top priority, Paul. And as much

as we absolutely love the podcast, and we know that you have been here since episode one, which nobody will ever hear. Yeah, no, no one will. I mean, it is on YouTube, but hopefully not many people are listening. Anyway, don't go back that far. But yeah, I mean, it's a sad day. We hope that you will join us for some future episodes.

Honestly, I'm already really looking forward to the end of year one. So we'll have you back on the show. Um, some guest ones here and there, but, uh, it just, it sucks, but it's the right thing to do. You know what I mean? I know Ryan and I have kind of chatted off to the side and we, we support you in it. We hate that you're leaving. Um, I know the listeners, if they weren't on the Discord server, are like, yo, what? But it's not something that you decided lightly. You've been thinking about this for a while, and it's definitely

what's right for your family as well. We're all very good friends in real life, and so it's one of those things where, as much as it sucks, Ryan and I both know it's the right decision for you to take care of Nikki and your and you know you can't fault anybody for that yeah no i mean that's that's uh a pretty big thing that shows you know paul and his character too to to give up something that's such a big part of his life and that's fun to do not fun

foster care work stuff that he has to like you know do spreadsheets i'd rather do this exactly like to give that up man it's just props to you for for being a grown-up and taking care of what you need to and the only thing i'm worried about is who the heck's going to take care of me and josh because we definitely need parental supervision yeah i don't know what we're gonna we're just gonna we're just gonna paste a picture of of Paul looking at us whenever we record. So it'll be like he's watching over us. And then Ryan and I don't get off on a tangent or anything like that. Or I step off my soapbox sometimes. So for people that are wondering, we are continuing the podcast.

Ryan and I are going to soldier on as much as we hate to do that without Paul. But we love this podcast. We love the community. We love talking video games. So we're going to figure it out. I'm not a good host. We have always said Paul is an incredible host, and his absence will definitely be felt. But we are gamers. We love what we do with this, and we're just going to keep doing it. So things will probably change a little bit. I think for the short term, we're going to probably drop down to one episode a week until

we can kind of figure out the flow and how we're going to go about things and stuff like that. But we're going to keep it fun. We're going to keep it gaming. It's going to be great. It's just going to be a little bit different for a little while. And I'm not concerned about the quality of the show. The show is going to be great. I mean, there might be some initial hiccups figuring out the flow and whatnot, but it's going to be fantastic. So I'm not worried. There's probably going to be a few more shenanigans happening too. There probably will be. I was going to say the face of Paul just needs to have voice lines, which is, did you check the calendar? And can you please mark your news articles? Joshosh it's on the

schedule why are you asking me for the 10th time it's already on the calendar yeah i was gonna say are you guys gonna like uh arm wrestle for hosting duties or you know or or is it arm wrestling to not host let's solve this right here hey more to not host ryan do you want to host nope yeah ask me if i want to host josh you want to host no oh boy but. Ask me if I want to host. Josh, do you want to host? No. Oh boy. But I will. What a guy. Oh, and I do feel bad.

And Nikki feels really bad. Like when she told me. Oh yeah, don't. When Nikki said, I'm not going to be able to work. And I hate saying that. I think, and I already kind of knew that's where we were going. And Nikki said, I think we both have known for a long time. I just can't work anymore. And I said, it's fine.

Don't let it stress you out. I'll have to quit the pod, but that's fine. But we did feel bad leaving you guys. But don't feel bad. The show will continue. It's just the end of this era. We had the Todd era, the Michael era, the Paul era. All things are still going to continue.

So it'll still be great. All right. So let's go ahead and move into our deep dive. I am so excited to talk about Black Myth. Ryan said he's really excited. I'm very thrilled that we can finally talk about this. I don't know that I've ever seen Ryan so hyped to talk about a game, to be honest. Bro, I am ready.

Yeah. That's all he kept saying is, I can't wait to talk about it. I can't wait to talk about this game is all we heard. Yes. All right. So we have our staffs in hand. Our stamina and manometers are full. Let's head out in our journey to the West and deep dive Black Myth Wukong.

All right. Steam describes the game as an action RPG rooted in Chinese mythology. You shall set out as the destined one to venture into the challenges and marvels ahead to uncover the obscured truth beneath the veil of a glorious legend from the past. All right, so when the game first released, we did cover on the show that it released to pretty mid-critical reviews. I think we were all pretty shocked. I did check on Metacritic, and it is sitting at an 81 on PC, and it's actually a very low 72 on console. So yeah, very low. Gamers, on the other hand, seem pretty infatuated on the whole. It's got a 95% rating on Steam with

over half a million ratings, and that includes a fair amount of review bombing for various reasons that we won't get into on our show. So the fact that it still has a 95 is rather remarkable. The highest Steam concurrent user peaked at 2.4 million, which is the second highest of all time. It only did not pass PUBG. That means it beat out Palworld, Counter-Strike, Lost Ark, Elden Ring, even Banana. All of those games it beat out. So needless to say,

it's one of the biggest releases of the year. And I also want to say that I don't think this game's very spoilable. I mean, we're not going to talk about late game story content, but we are going to talk about various abilities that you unlock over the course of the game. But I don't think it's going to ruin anyone's experience if you haven't played quite yet all right so josh i'm gonna toss this here to you first you were the one that was so hyped i looked back in our discord and you of course linked the announcement trailer right away todd and i didn't care we did not even cover it in this week in gaming because todd and i were like we were pretty dismissive at the time you You've been talking about this for years. Why were you so hyped leading up to Black Myth? I've made no...

Oh, here we go again. Dang it, I don't know the phrase! What is the phrase? How are you going to do that back to back, man? Is it qualms? I hate this. I don't know. I think so.

God, so stupid. English is hard, man. All right. I've made no qualms. I don't even know what a qualm is. What the heck is a qualm? Oh, man, we're in trouble. Anyway, I have not hidden my love of this game. I love, absolutely love Dark Souls games. I love good combat. I like being in control of my character. I love a challenge. And when I saw Black Myth Wukong, it was like somebody took Dark Souls and put it into Chinese mythology, which I think is super cool. I've always loved samurai and ninjas and Chinese deities and things like that. So this was just right up my alley. The trailer that came out when they announced this

looked incredible. And I have just been following this ever since. And so it's one of those games where instantly it kind of had me excited. And then every time I saw something about this, I got more excited. It just seemed like a good mix. It looked beautiful. The animations and fluidity of the gameplay and the combat really stood out to me. Incredible looking boss fights. I mean, it was everything. It was like they just said, hey, Josh, we made this game for you. And I went, I accept this awesome gift. Ryan, were you as hyped? Because I feel like this sure looked Souls adjacent, if nothing else. So were you excited to jump in or were you kind of rolling your eyes just game. It didn't look as Souls-like, if you will, which did pique my interest. It's definitely the most of this type of game

I've ever been anticipating. So yeah, I was kind of half excited for it, really. I hear you. I'm down to do this if neither of you guys want to, but does anyone understand the setting of the story? We don't have to get into all the details, just the very beginning and the overall structure. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. We didn't hear about Paul's hype level on this game. Yeah. I mean, I was a little bit mid on it.

Yeah, I know. I knew you were mid. I just wanted to hear you say it. Yeah. Yeah. I knew we had to cover it for the show. I think for a lot of people, it was most people's most anticipated. Beginning of the year, Josh, we both said, we're pretty sure Black Myth is going to be a Game of the Year contender. Right. And so we knew we were going to have to cover it for the show. I was just hoping that it was not going to be incredibly difficult. And so when IGN's review came out and said, this is harder than Shadow of the Erdtree, that was for me kind of like the valley of my

excitement. I was like, oh no, is it really going to be that hard? And then I was like, I don't even know if I want to play it at this point. And my life was kind of crazy. The first 24 hours, I didn't get to play it at all. I finally got to jump in after. But yeah, I would say like the day before it released, I was not very excited. All right. So talking about the setup for the story, do either of you guys want to try to tackle this like the overall structure of the game? There's a story. There's a story.

There's a story. There's a story. There's a story. Yeah. I don't know i saw some really really cool opening sequence with sun wu kong fighting these celestial god things which was really cool looking and then you got a monkey voice what's that can you do the monkey voice no i can't do brian you're our impressionist right right no his voice drove me crazy but it did make me laugh. Yeah. The opening of the game was awesome.

I mean, it was this epic clash between these two characters. You see this battle in the celestial court. I mean, it was a wow moment for me in that regard. There's something about Sun Wukong is somebody, and then he gets in a fight with somebody. And then instead of losing the fight, he breaks into six pieces or the six relics and scatters them to the winds. And then there's another guy that looks exactly like him that I thought was

him, but maybe isn't him and fights really good. Kind of like the other guy did and then he's looking for the relics because he's the destined one and once he gets all the relics he becomes sun wukong resurrects sun wukong uh i don't know but that's all i know oh boy you should write cliff notes and call him josh notes all right ryan you explain the story then i could not elaborate any further than you you uh you couldn't elaborate anywhere near what i did i watched the intro too what do you mean okay all right that's good yeah i think the key

thing is there are the six relics and you're trying to hunt them down and the game is in six chapters. So that's basically the overall structure of the game as you go through it here. Now, we are recording this only 10 days after release of the game, and it's a pretty long game. So none of the three of us have beaten it quite yet. It also came in the unfortunate timing where both of you had trips out of town. So we've had a very truncated schedule. It also came in the unfortunate timing where both of you had trips out of town. So we've had a very truncated schedule. I am in the middle of Chapter 5. So I am pretty close to the end.

I know I've been able to play it the most. How far in did you guys make it? I am at the end of Chapter 3. Okay. And so I'm a little bit more than halfway through the game. But yeah, I mean, we're always completely honest with our play times on stuff people know i don't beat most of these games we talk about anyway um but yeah i i'm i'm a little bit past the halfway point um and then ryan i think you're a little bit behind me you were out of town for almost a week

i was only out of town for like three days so i know you were kind of the most under the gun as far as play time on this yeah i was yeah i was out of town definitely almost a week i was only out of town for like three days so i know you were kind of the most under the gun as far as play time on this yeah i was yeah i was out of town definitely around a week and then before prepping to leave i was so busy with work you know in the beginning of the release it was really hard to get in but um so for for how far we got are we talking like attempts deaths time played uh or the most important part how far did we get in the story there's a story i guess two chapters chapter sure yeah i think which chapters probably most yeah i uh i finished um playing after my 400th attempt on the uh yellow wind guy oh the the final boss of chapter two yes i was just chilling there okay and gotcha and chilling and chilling that guy was tough

honestly that guy was hard so i don't very erratic yeah i don't blame you for getting stuck there interesting all right so we do have to talk a little bit about the graphics now i don't know about you guys i think that this game has the best graphics i've ever seen and i don't even think it's close i think this game is absolutely gorgeous. I never take screenshots and share them. And I was doing that in our Phoenix gaming discord with our, you know, in real life friends. Did you guys think this game looks as beautiful as I do? I think it looks phenomenal, dude. I mean, you can tell this is Unreal Engine 5. There's something like, it's just, you can tell. I don't know if it's like the resolution of like the landscape or something, but I don't know.

It's got this distinct quality to it that I really enjoy. But yeah, this game is beautiful. I mean, from the opening cinematic with that like almost anime clash of these celestial characters and the grand size of them to the different environments. So in each chapter, at least that I've gotten to, you're kind of in a different biome almost,

where it's like you're in a forest and then you're in a desert, and now you're in this snowy, mountainous area and stuff like that too. So absolutely gorgeous game. The water, the waterfalls, the foliage. I mean, it is a looker. Yeah. It was absolutely beautiful. The movement, too, just like you can kind of tell in Unreal,

just how detailed all of that was with the blades of grass and sand and wind blowing in the background with all these crazy textures and effects going on. I was very, very impressed with the way the game looked and the graphics, the depth of it throughout the gameplay. It was awesome. It's little details too. In the desert level or the snow level, if you're running, it leaves the trail for your guy, his footsteps in the sand. And then the snow level, it's funny because I jumped at one point and my staff hit the ground

and the staff left like an imprint in the snow. And that's when I was like, okay, that's pretty cool, man. Like that they went to that level of detail in the snow fights. If you're fighting and you're spinning around, you're doing all this stuff, your dude gets covered in snow. You know, and it was like those little touches. I was just like, this is really neat. As you power up a thing or an ability or a fight, the ends of the staff start glowing,

but then they cool down after a little while and stuff like that. So there's lots of those little touches that really help to just elevate the graphics even more. Totally agree. And the different biomes really get to show it off. Because as beautiful as the forest looks with all the leaves and the grass, the other ones are just as beautiful. It's a gorgeous game. And there are a lot of elemental abilities as well, whether it's like lightning or fire or like poisonous venom being sprayed everywhere. And all that stuff looks great as well.

Josh, I wrote down the same thing that you mentioned, the staff dragging. You can see that they put an awful lot of care into how those graphics come across in the game. And man, it really elevates the experience. All right. You guys know I'm a graphics snob, right? You know I love good graphics in a video game. But part of that is when you take the time to make a game look that good, it's generally just a good sign that there was care, that there was thought put into the development of the game. And listen, I get that not every developer out there has the money or the time to develop good graphics, and that's fine, because there's a ton of phenomenal games where the graphics are terrible. But it is one of those things where

it just shows, like you said, Paul, that level of care and that level of detail that is just a little bit reassuring when you see it to kind of go like, oh, okay, they really kind of cared about this game. Yeah. You're not going to put that much time into all the graphics and then just kind of go half on everything else. So yeah, good sign. Yeah. It's a very good indicator. I remember once hearing a chef say if a restaurant puts care into the bread, which is like free and everyone gets it, that's a really good sign that the rest of the menu is going to be really good. If you can tell they just buy pre-made loaves and just put them out on the table, you can tell that they're kind of cutting corners and it may not be quite the passion

of someone who's going to make their own bread in-house. All right, well, let's go ahead and take just a short break and then we'll come back and start talking about gameplay. or remove unwanted noise and relive your favorite moments without the distractions. And that's not all. New Galaxy AI features like NowBrief will give you personalized insights based on your day schedule so that you're prepared no matter what. Buy the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra now at Samsung.com. All right, let's talk a little bit about gameplay, guys. So Blackm myth wukong is certainly an action rpg and josh you are the expert with souls games because you have played them a lot more than me or i'm an expert now yeah compared to me sure yeah i mean i've played bloodborne anybody's ever called me an elder ring yeah yeah you've you've definitely played more than me so you know settle the

debate for us do you consider this to be a Souls-like kind of compare and contrast this game to Souls? I don't think it's a Souls-like game. I mean, you could say it has a few little things that maybe are Souls-like adjacent, but when I am talking about Souls-like games, I would not throw Black Myth Wukong into that conversation. This is an action combat game, but it's not a Souls-like in my opinion. I totally agree. What about you, Ryan? Yeah, I mean, I obviously definitely

haven't come close to the amount of Souls time, but I did play Bloodborne. I played that one quite a bit. And I don't know, just are the Souls games a little bit slower, but like more heavier attacks? So that's, yeah, that's the feeling. This is definitely faster paced, quicker movements, which is what enticed me when I saw, you know, kind of the build up to the game.

I'm like, okay, maybe I will like this. So yeah, it's definitely not the same, but does have some elements that were equally as frustrating in Souls games. So yeah, I would say you're definitely dodging a lot. And you do have like really big, sometimes prolonged boss fights. In that sense, it's a little bit like Souls. But yeah, it's so much more action oriented. And I don't know about how you guys feel. But I feel like this game was a lot easier than Souls games. I mean, there were a couple fights in particular that had me kind of pulling my hair out. But on the whole, I thought it was a lot easier. What did you guys think about the difficulty of Black Myth Wukong? Too hard? Too easy? Right in the middle? Perfect? What do

you guys think? I'm grinning right now because this is crazy for me, right? Dude, I beat Melenia in Elden Ring. I love Souls games. I love a challenge. I'm pretty darn good at Elden Ring. I mean, I've beaten all of the bosses and everything in that game. I don't know what it was, but I struggled with this game for the first probably two chapters, to be honest. I could not get into the rhythm. I could not figure it out. And I remember getting like super frustrated within the first, like, I don't know, probably 10 hours. Eh, maybe not quite that long. But like, there was a point where I was like,

I'm not having fun. I don't like this game. All of my hype is for nothing, man. Like, what the heck? I can't, like, it's too hard. And so it's funny because when the IGN guy said this game's harder than shadow of the earth tree i went there's no way dude that dlc is hard man like hard um but i think it's because

i had played so many souls like games you know and it's just a different style like souls like games you have to be very intentional it's it's um like pattern based and stuff like that uh this game is much more fast combat and almost button mashy in a way but you do still have to dodge like the big attacks and stuff like that but they give you these abilities which we'll get into in a little bit that i think it's very important that you use those abilities at the right time during a boss fight and stuff too. But I'm not going to lie, man. I struggled at first. And then it started to click for me. And I will say that's probably right at the end of chapter two, Ryan, the boss that you fought. I remember fighting him a bunch. And then I think it was right after that where it just

clicked. And I went, okay, I think I'm figuring this out. And then I've been rolling after that where it kind of just clicked and I went, okay, I think I'm figuring this out. And then I've been kind of rolling after that. It's not to say that I haven't died a lot, but it's just the frustration started to go away for me at that point because I think my brain adjusted from a Souls-like game to this action, fast-paced combat type game. It was hard because I would walk through all these other bosses and mini-bosses, and then I'd get stuck with one where I just could not pick up. The big word, I think, is timing. It's just all of it together with the dodges and then the attacks and then their attacks back.

Sometimes they weren't the same pattern. Sometimes they were a little janky or weird kind of feints, and then you'd do a roll, and you'd roll right into an attack. So it was picking up just the right timing for this type of game for whatever this you know wants out of you as the player um i i thought it was it was not that bad until i got to this last one and this is one problem i have with these types of games is i just i know that if i went back and got that wind vessel or whatever i needed i probably could have done okay with this boss that I got stuck on.

I don't want to go back, travel through all this area, get lost for three hours trying to find this other guy so I can kill him, and then get that, then go back and try to beat this boss. That's just, that's not fun to me. That's not why I play video games. So it's just, yeah, that part was a little difficult for me. But other than that, most of it wasn't crazy hard. Yeah, because this game has something like 95 bosses.

And I would say a good 70 of them, I beat the first or second attempt. But then you do hit the bosses that are a lot harder. So the way that this game tends to work is as you're working through a chapter, you've got several bosses that you're going to fight. You'll get through them pretty quick. There's usually like one boss midway through that's a required boss. That's definitely a step up. And it's a little bit of like a gate check before you move on. And then there's always an end of chapter boss that is very difficult. But like you mentioned, Ryan, there are these quest lines that you can run that give you an item like a vessel that do make those end of chapter bosses easier. So I think if you are enjoying the game and you

like going down every path and fighting every boss and getting every item, it does make the game a little bit easier. I'm kind of shocked to hear that both of you guys kind of like struggled that much with the difficulty. I think it's spot on in this game and you know me i am mr casual game and i beat all the bosses after one or two attempts i can't believe you guys struggled with this game are you okay are you losing your edge on gaming i have always said the perfect number of attempts on a boss fight is like eight to 12. And that is exactly where I was at with like the Crouching Tiger Temple boss. That was like 10 attempts for me. The final boss in chapter two, I did have the item. I think I actually got that one like on my fourth attempt. It was very rare that I felt like the game was too hard. There were two bosses that did that to me,

and my goodness, one is the Scorpion Lord. That's probably the hardest boss I've ever fought in any game ever. I legit think that one probably took me about 60 attempts. I was kind of beating my head against a wall. That's all I did two days ago, was fight the Scorpion Lord until I finally beat him. One thing that really threw me off, because I try not to look at any guides while playing these games, I did finally watch a video on the Scorpion Lord. And one thing that finally clicked is in the Souls games, and maybe I'm wrong. You can correct me if I'm wrong, Josh. If you do a dodge, you're invulnerable during that dodge roll.

And in Black Myth, that's not the case. And you can't just immediately dodge in the same direction. Like if they're shooting projectiles at you, sometimes you have to stagger. So you have to roll left, then roll right, then roll left. If all you do is roll left, left, left, the projectiles hit you. And so once that kind of clicked for me, a lot of those bosses became easier when I realized, oh, you can't just dodge in any direction. And that was part of figuring out the timing, not just when to hit it, but do I dodge into the boss? Do I just back out? Do I go at an angle? And that can be pretty tough, and you have to definitely pay a lot of attention in those fights. All right, so let's talk about the actual combat itself. I think this is the

meat and potatoes of the game. There's, of course, on top of the combat, there is material gathering, crafting, maybe a sprinkle of exploration. But most of the time in this game, you are fighting, and you are usually fighting bosses. In the actual combat, if you don't like the combat, you're not going to like the game. I think that's fair to say. Yeah. The combat is mostly done by balancing several resources all at the same time. So I'll try to explain this pretty quick and then you guys can give me your thoughts if it's fun or not. You've got a health meter, a mana meter, and a stamina meter doing things like swinging your weapon, running, jumping,

and dodging all use stamina. As you are attacking an enemy, you can chain together combos and consecutive hits build up focus, and then you can unleash your focus doing these very powerful heavy attacks. You also have three different stances you can swap between. You also have a gourd that has a certain number of charges, which heals you. And you have different spells that you can swap between that require mana to cast. Additionally, on top of all this, you've got transformations where you turn into a different character. They have their own health meter. You get to fight as them until you run out of health or might, which is the resource that they use. And then, you know, you also have one vessel and you have one spirit equipped. Those give you active

abilities when you build up enough ki. So, like, talking about all this, like, my goodness, this is an awful lot to manage all at the same time. Let's just talk kind of like the basic combat, using your staff building combos did you guys find that to actually be fun or is it not intuitive i i did and um i i thought man if they were to make this game to where you got to do just a lot of more of the basic combat throughout and then go fight a big boss a lot of you know clearing going through the world maybe some some little bit more of a story and then fight a boss you know i think it would have been good because i really enjoyed the combat part when i was exploring just working on my light attack you know combos and doing things like that um it is enjoyable and how how awesome

and satisfying is that dodge sound when you get the perfect dodge? Oh, yeah. It is so good. And it leaves a shadow. He leaves an image of himself. Yeah, like an afterimage. And when a boss does a multi-attack and you dodge all three, you're like, oh, that's right, brother. So, yeah, I did really enjoy the combat aspect of combat aspect of it i liked i thought it flowed

well i thought the abilities were neat and cool so overall it it did vibe well with me as far as um just kind of basic combat did you guys pick up on it fast or did it take you a while because i was doing nothing but light combos for like all of chapter one and halfway through chapter two. It took me a while because I was so focused on my spells and trying to land the combos and when to heal. I didn't even play around with stances or stuff like that until a little bit later in the game. I do feel like it has a very high learning curve,

but once it clicks, there is so much to do in that fight that like you kind of think, well, I only have three spells that have a long cooldown and I there is so much to do in that fight that you kind of think, well, I only have three spells that have a long cooldown and I only have so much mana. But there's so much that you're doing all together. I found it to be really riveting. I love the combat. I will say I really enjoy the combat, thankfully, because it's a huge portion of this game. It's a little weird to me, man.

This is probably the first negative thing that I'll say about this game, but it's almost a little simple in a way. I don't know what it is. And I'm with you, Paul. I'm doing the light attack combo, and the game doesn't really do a good job of teaching you stuff. It'll just say, all of a sudden, you get this skill where you can put a skill point in and it's like varied combos do more damage i'm like what the heck is a varied combo you know and then it's like i don't know what this is but apparently it's something because i can like put skill points in it and it's like a varied combo is when you're doing a light attack combo and then you throw a heavy attack in there and it's like oh okay well that's. Cause then he does this big overhead smash thing, but then that's kind of it, you know?

And it's like, it's hard to describe, but I almost feel like, I guess the best way to say it is I wish that there were more moves to be done in the combat. Like a lot of games that I have played that are action combat games. You know, if you type light, if you hit light attack, light attack, heavy attack, light attack, heavy attack, you'll do some, you know, flourish of a combo. And then if you do heavy attack, light attack, light attack, heavy attack, that's a different combo too. Right. And you can kind of do different things with them, maybe one stuns or whatever. And like with black myth, it is light attack, light attack, light attack. Maybe you throw in one heavy attack and then light attack, light attack, light attack, light attack, light attack. And I feel like that's, and then

roll, roll, roll. Like I legitimately feel like that is 99% of the combat. Now I'd love the spells, you know, in the fact that you can weave in this immobilize or this cloud step or you know transformation or something like that is really cool but the base combat feels just so simple to me like it's a little it's almost a little off-putting in a way you know and it's like i like the i like the combat i like the game but like this is a big criticism for me where I feel like I, I have worn out my a button on my controller because that is the button that I'm hitting 99% of the time in every fight that I'm in. Really?

Yeah. Like, and I think you and I play this very differently. Maybe. And it's like, I have all three stances, you know, and we can talk about the stances in a little bit where it's like,

Hey, you can go up to the top of your staff and kind of sit up there and heal or something that one seems worthless to me what no pillar stance is the bomb dude i don't know i don't like pillar stance and then there's the thrust stance which thrust stance is cool because it kind of actually gives you a little bit of range but you know what doesn't change all of the light attacks they're still the same like could you not have given me light attacks that were different when i'm in different stances well okay there's there's there's a few things here that i would want to point out when you use your transformation that does change your

combos like for example you're a new creature now at that point you build yeah like you build your focus meter and then if you do a successful dodge and immediately hit heavy attack you do a special move so there are there are some things like that that are built in um i do think it's fun to swap between the stances as needed because when you're in smash stance as you if you put points into these things you can charge your heavy attack while sprinting so there is an element of like well now instead of doing light light light, light, light, light, I am pressing and holding the Y button while sprinting. And if I let go at the right time, I can try to get a big attack on the boss that might actually stagger it as well. And I found myself swapping back and forth depending on the boss fight. If the boss was doing slow moves, I'm more likely to do thrust and I can hit them from range and I can stand still

and charge it. If it's a boss that is more quick, then that's where I'm doing more of the light attack and working in the dodging and stuff like that. I will say the pillar stance is funny because the longer you hold it, your staff keeps magically growing taller while you just stand on it. And then as soon as you let go, you do a massive attack on the boss but it does drain your stamina while you're standing up there and if a person is hitting you it drains the stamina instead of your health so there are like certain boss fights where pillar stance is definitely the way to go sometimes you got to swap back and forth i i liked it quite a bit well the thing they did that was cool is you can get down like a technique and a pattern on how you want to fight. And you're like, okay.

You walk through like two or three mini bosses or a big boss. Then the next boss doesn't work at all. You have to completely reset how you approach it. And you're like, okay, none of that worked. Now I got to try this now. And you kind of switch it up, which is pretty cool for me. But yeah, I loved Pillar Stance.'s like uh your grown-up uh goku yeah yeah that's exactly what it is and everything yeah it was always satisfying to switch and get those combos and light the boss on fire you know

and get to watch that or you know whatever you were doing yeah uh we should spend just a second on spells i know that we're already like 40 minutes in on this episode. I think the spells are so much fun. This is where I put pretty much all my points until I was able to start diversifying. So, once you hit level 45 in particular, if you can max out a pluck of many, I think it's like one of my favorite abilities of all time. That's awesome. So, the destined one plucks a hair out of his head, blows on it, and then it turns into like eight replicants of yourself, and you're all running and going ham on the boss. But what's funny is once you max it out, your duplicates will now cast their own spells.

So I might cast immobilize, which freezes the boss. And now we're all wailing on him. And then as soon as he comes to, he gets off one hit. But then one of the duplicants freezes him. And I just thought it was so funny to watch that. As soon as I unlocked that early on, there were some bosses that I could just cast a plug of many, freeze the boss and just sit back. And they would take some bosses out by themselves. Yeah, they'll wreck, dude. And you can buff them up too.

The spells in this game are what make the combat for me. I mean, you know, and I know I'm being nitpicky with the light combo stuff, but, you know, the combat is super fun in this game, but the spells are what differentiate this, in my opinion. You learn them throughout the game, and I think the game does a phenomenal

job of kind of pacing like as they give you something new you know and they they are different enough that they can like fit your play style like you get one where you turn to stone for a second but if you time it right when the boss like when something is about to hit you it's kind of it's kind of like ryan said where it's just this super satisfying sound like the perfect dodge where it just bangs off of your body because you've turned to stone for a second and it's just like oh yeah

that felt great and the boss kind of ricochets back too which is nice and you can break enemy shields so if they go to hit you and you do that the shield will shatter and now they no longer have their defense and then you come out of it and you start kicking their butt and stuff like that so like this the stone stance one is good the immobilized to me is one of the most handy spells in the game it's one of the first ones you get and i i still have

never taken that off my my skill bar as far as that goes pluck of many is weird because it's like i almost feel like it's like a cheat code. It's situational. It is. It has a very high mana cost. That's the thing. And I think that's why I don't use it very much is because if you use Pluck of Many,

which is where you summon all your clones, you're not going to get to use very many other spells in that fight. But that spell does a ton of damage. But again, like you said, Paul, if you're fighting a boss that does a lot of AoE damage, he'll just wreck all your clones. And now you're out of mana.

And so you do have to kind of be smart in how you approach these boss fights with these different abilities. Have any of you... Ryan, you may not be far enough, but Paul, the ring of fire thing, have you used that at all? Yes. Really?

I've used it a lot. I tried it and I'm like, what's the point of this? I Have you, have you used that like at all? Really? Cause I've used it a lot. I tried it and I'm like, what's the point of this? Like I have to stand in this thing. Like it doesn't make any sense to me. Well, here's the thing. So one thing that we should mention is at any point you can reclaim all of

your stat tree points. I don't remember exactly what they call them. Sparks. The sparks. Yeah. Anytime you give me a skill tree, give me the ability to just change it when I want, man. Yep. Usually when I would have to respec is like, oh, here's a fun boss. Let me summon Pluck of Many. And for example, the Scorpion Lord, the second you cast that spell, he goes straight

into AoE and it completely neutralizes that spell entirely. So right away, it's like, okay, I'm probably going to die, but I immediately know I'm going to go respec. I'm going to take all my points out of that. There are some where the ring of fire is incredibly useful because it does heal you when you stand inside it. And there are some boss fights, especially later that are more of like spongeses for damage which i know you always hate josh and sometimes it's more of like attrition who's gonna run out of health and the ring of fire almost gives you like an extra four or five charges of your gourd where you need it um but at the same time most of the time I was using immobilize.

And by the way, you do unlock where it becomes an AOE immobilized and chapter five, you are fighting groups of like eight enemies and being able to freeze all of them at once is so satisfying. All right. Well, let's go ahead and take a short break and then we'll come right back. All right, guys, we should talk a little bit about the level and the map design. I feel like the closest thing that I would compare this to is like God of War or like Resident Evil. This game is certainly not open world, although each chapter is more or less

open chapter, if that makes sense. You don't always know the direct path to get to a boss, and sometimes you'll reach forks in the road. And if I turn left, maybe now I reach another fork. And so there's a lot of areas to explore in the game. Usually, if you take a side path, you're going to find a treasure chest or two. Maybe you find a boss that's going to give you a new spell or a new transformation or a new spirit. I think God of War is the first thing that came to mind for me. I loved going down those branches. However, at the same time, probably my biggest complaint about this game is that there's no map. And so you don't always know where you've gone and you don't exactly know where to backtrack.

And it's not always obvious where to go or where you've been. We joked with Paul when the game first released because Paul notoriously has a bad sense of direction in video games. And so Ryan and I were like, Paul, are you okay? Are you lost in the woods? Do we need to come find you? But I will say it is weird to have a game that does not have any sense of directional indicator at all. And I have a very good sense of direction. And I can't tell you, I literally was playing earlier today in the snow level where you said, Paul, it's like a branch and then another branch and then that path branches off and i spent 20 minutes just exploring and i wound right back where i started yeah and they don't always and they don't always give you like a sense of okay well i know i'm heading toward that mountain and so that's like the main path. So if this one goes the other way, that's a side path.

There's nothing like that in this game. The forest, you're in like tight corridors and you're turning right and right and left. And then it goes around. And then by the time you hit a branch, it's like, I have no clue which way this is headed. So it can be frustrating. Yeah, you talked about that forest.

I got lost in there too. Cause you walk in and it's this deep, dark forest, headed so it can be frustrating yeah you talked about that forest i got lost in there too because you walk in and it's this deep dark forest not a lot of light a lot of characters and then every time you rest they all respawn so if you get a little further and you respond or you rest and then all the characters are back there you're like wait which way do i go to get out or to get to the next area and then the same thing in uh in chapter two i was fighting the stone mother or whatever i went and i was like oh that was a cool battle i died i'm like oh i want to go do that again i couldn't find it it took me like 20 minutes to find it again because i'm circling around

finding all these other things i'm like no dang it i want to go back to that section no clue where it was it took me forever and then finally i was like okay this is the way back through this little corridor and then i can find it again. So I just – I like to – I love having side quests. I love going off the beaten path, but I need to know where the path is. So I'm like, okay, that's the right way to go. That's if I want to progress through the actual campaign, if you will. Now I can go have fun over here, and I know where to go when I want to get further, you know? So I just, yeah, the no map and the difficulty trying to kind of find my way through the map, the areas is what was frustrating.

It's just to be clear for people that are listening and being like, you guys are idiots, man. How hard is it to find your way through a video game? Well, we're still idiots. Well, I mean, that's true, but it's like you, but Paul said, like when you're in the forest, it's not like you're in, it's a thick forest you know with like little trails and stuff like i mean it it really is a little bit disorienting i can't tell you how many times i've gone down a path and then been like oh wait a minute this is the wrong direction because you don't because of the way that the levels are set up in the graphics in the game in the environments like you said paul you don't have some giant mountain off in the

distance that's easily visible that you can use as like a point of reference. There's no compass, there's no nothing. So that part definitely took some getting used to, but at the same time, you're rewarded so much in this game for looking around and exploring a little bit that it kind of works at the same time. It's a minor complaint, but at the same time like it's it's a it's a minor complaint but like at the same time it's like oh i totally got lost and i wound up what's this guy like and then fighting that guy and then getting something cool out of it so not always though because i was going through i had beaten a boss i was going to the next section i found a bunch of other guys before i found like uh an incense shrine to heal up and and stuff and i had like

no health left and i'm going and I'm trying to find it. I'm being very careful with these other guys I find. And then I'm like, oh, there's a resource. I'm going to go pick this mushroom. And I picked it. And then it was a decoy.

And some guy jumped out, hit me and killed me. I'm like, oh, come on. I do love that. They'll fake you out with that. Oh,

they got me. There are minor indicators where you can see like part of a shoulder sticking out of the dirt. But if you don't know to look for that. Oh, I wasn't paying attention at all. I was just already lost. And then I picked this mushroom and I die. I'm like, oh, come on, man. And for better or worse, you can kind of steal rising this kind of stuff.

Like Josh and I, when we did the deep dive of steel rising, you can kind of like just run past enemies and get to other checkpoints. You can do that in Black Myth if you really want to. So if you're just trying to get back to a certain area, you can do it. I will say, I love the fact that they give you the shrines right next to the bosses. It's very rare that you're running a long distance to get back to somewhere. And I do like that they give you a little bit of quality of life there. Yeah. All right. So, moving on, I want to talk a little bit about the transition between chapters. So, basically, anytime you finish a chapter, you get like a three to five minute animation video that is fleshing out some of the story. And I thought that these were incredible.

This reminded me a little bit of Persona 5, where they added in these long videos and these anime cutscenes and things like that. This is Black Myth's version, but they use different animation styles. So sometimes it looks like anime. Sometimes it's claymation. I love that they went back and forth. And I thought that this was very neat. The main storyline is not very emotionally affecting. It's these cut scenes between the chapters that provide that emotional input into the game. I mean, do you guys feel the same way or am I crazy? It's really weird because the first time you see one, you're like, oh, this is kind of neat. And it goes into this whole animated cutscene sequence type thing. And it's very stylistic. And you're

like, oh, that's kind of cool. And then when you beat the next chapter and it goes into one, and you realize it's in a completely different style, like you said, like claymation or something like that. You're like, oh, like that's when you realize like they're really mixing this up. And it's like, okay, this is really neat. It just, it really serves to up the kind of creativity to the game and the art style to the game to say, hey, listen, we made this beautiful looking game, high-end graphics, fun combat. But now we're going to kind of give you a little bit of that kind of just artistic flair in it as well. And I agree with you.

I think they're a very nice touch to the game and really kind of just serve as that kind of flavor to say, hey, look, not everything is just fighting and moves and bosses and stuff too. So I really thought that was a neat touch. It's neat when they put in that just extra wrinkle of they could have just made it all same nice, beautiful graphics, same style throughout. Having that change is what makes it pop in kind of your mind. Whoa, this is cool. And then you pay a little bit more attention. Paul, after you sent like, hey,

I don't know if you guys saw it, but at the end of chapter three, it's really, really awesome. I went and I watched it. Oh, did you watch it? Yeah, because I went and I watched a bunch of the boss fights, but I hadn't watched the cut scene in between yet. And I went and watched after chapter three.

And that was, it was cool, man. Is that cool? That was so cool. It was definitely. I haven't seen that one yet. I'm right at the end of chapter three, man. Yeah, yeah, dude. Once you beat it. Yeah, I won't spoil it but it's it's really really cool and it's and it's deep and yeah there was a

lot of cool stuff in it and so and then again different art style looked like kind of uh anime looking you know style um but yeah it was it was something just that little difference is what made it i like well and not only that i made it. I like the reward. Well, and not only that. I was going to say, I like the reward for it. I feel like that's what it is for beating a chapter and getting past, because there's always a chapter boss. This is kind of like the, oh, cool, you did it. Here, have something kind of neat and sit back and enjoy.

Oh, absolutely. And they are done in very creative ways. So the one at the end of chapter three that Ryan referenced, it's completely silent until like the final 30 seconds. And it's like this Chinese, like a Chinese parable, if you will. And I won't do any spoilers, but it was just so neat to see this story play out completely silently. And then you get some commentary at the end. And it is asking deep philosophical questions about the nature of man. And I really loved that

one in particular. And there's also some other very cool animations in the rest of Black Myth also. And I love the fact that they're all just a little bit different. Again, it kind of just goes to the care and the passion. This feels like a passion project when you play it it is not it's not necessarily like inventing a bunch of new things but you can tell how much they loved creating it and trying to provide something that's like genuine and authentic and actually artistic uh all right we're not going to talk much about crafting. It's pretty stripped down, but it's in there. There's inventory and armor and weapons.

Yeah, but the arm, it's like God of War. It's a very, actually, I think it's even less like fleshed out than God of War, to be honest. I mean, I still haven't figured out,

like you beat a boss, you get some kind of material, and then now you can craft new armor. But it's like, you know, graphically, it does change the way your guy looks. You get some higher defense. All the armor comes with set bonuses. So you have to actually make like all the pieces in a set to get some bonus.

They're very negligible as far as what they do. So yeah, I really felt like the crafting in this game was very underdone, you know, which I'm not much of a crafterfter so it doesn't really bother me in that regard but this is probably one of the weaker spots in the game in my opinion and the progression of it too is all right i beat this now i craft the next set of armor it's better and there wasn't like much option or choice there it was just like okay here's your materials and then this is armor you're supposed to make and that was pretty much it yeah absolutely this is not here's a set of armor so you can play the game one way here's a set of armor if you want to play the game a

different way yeah exactly this is just nope you're getting stronger here's the next set there actually is a little bit of that later because you start getting sets that will change poison damage or change thunder damage and so it does encourage you to play a slightly different style but again it's pretty minor i mean you also in order to unlock weapons you have to go do certain things and fight certain secret bosses and that stuff's not always obvious i had the basic staff for a very long time because you can just upgrade it and it changes but you can also find brand new weapons and it is exciting when you find stuff like that uh but at the same time yeah the crafting is super stripped down same with consumables it's like

eat this and you do more damage for a moderate amount of time i never use this i never use those dude and i know that it's like a thing where it's like you can do more damage or you're tougher and so i just it's like if i can't beat this boss with just like my skill, I don't know that drinking a potion is going to help me a whole lot. Yeah, I totally agree. And you don't get it back when you die. Right. So it's like, well, if I'm not doing well on this boss, I don't want to waste the consumable. But then by the time you do learn the fight, you're going to beat it anyway.

Right. So it's almost like, I don't even know why it's in there. Maybe, you know, maybe like at the end of chapter six, I would start using consumables. But up to this point, I haven't even know why it's in there. Maybe at the end of chapter six, I would start using consumables. But up to this point, I haven't used hardly any. And then is there anything we want to mention by way of bosses? Were there any boss fights in particular that you enjoyed? Any of that stand out? Anything to mention? I don't want to spoil any of the bosses for people. I will say that they do a good job of mixing like mini bosses that you will fight one time and probably kill, but they'll,

they'll almost kill you kind of thing, but you'll, you'll one shot them. There's slightly tougher bosses where it's like, you might die once or twice. And then there's some pretty hard bosses where it's like, okay, I'm going to,

I'm going to die 10 times to this guy. So I do like that mix of them. Um, I feel like they do a really good job of the variety too. Some are really fast. Some hit like trucks, but they're really slow. So you better hit your dodge when you need to, because if you don't, it's going to hurt real bad. My biggest complaint with the bosses is just how long some of them take. And this is again, the difference between Elden Ring and Black Myth Wukong is I feel like

Black Myth Wukong, you get your moment to attack and you go through your whole light combo flourish with your heavy attack mixed in kind of thing. And then the big overhead smash that every combo ends with. And then it took off two millimeters of the boss's health. So it's like Elden Ring, when you get your chance to attack, you can get your attacks in. And a lot of times you can take a big chunk out of that boss's health. You know, they'll kill you a lot faster if they hit you too,

but you're much more rewarded for like getting your attacks in. And in black myth, I feel like you have to pull off 20 combos, you know, before you're that boss's health is down. Like sometimes I almost felt like they were a little too prolonged, in my opinion. Yeah, it's because you weren't drinking those consumables, bro.

I mean, maybe, you know. You need those tiger pellets. You know, it is one of those things where that is one of those things that felt very different to me, like when we compare it to a Souls-like game, is sometimes I'm like, I got to hit this guy 5,000 times, man, before he's going to die. Where Elden Ring, it's like, dude, if I can get in 30 hits, this boss is dead. One thing that is different with Black Myth is it's the combo finishers and heavy attacks. The light attacks basically bounce off enemies and they almost don't even matter. So it's a matter of putting stat points into where perfect dodges keep my combos going.

And now as I'm playing, being able to finish those combo sets, and that's what will take off that minor chunk. The regular hits do pretty much nothing. So a lot of the game is also trying to manage that in a way where you're always landing the combo finishers or like running around charging your heavy attacks and trying to pull those off. What about you, Ryan? Any bosses that kind of stood out or anything to mention? Probably the biggest is what was the one, the electric boss with the dragon?

Yeah, I think so. No, I think that's in uh chapter three anyways that one was was pretty cool i did like i was beating my head i'm like oh man because it was what you talked about paul where you have to dodge back and forth to miss those pulses because you can't just jump over them because then he changes his like kind of pattern and that bunch come and then i realized you can jump on the rock and so i just jumped on the rock and then you know then you just avoid it all but uh there was there was a lot of cool little features throughout and in these bosses that um that did make them you know for

better or worse uh you know longer and and uh but i i do agree with you josh i think those those attacks just do nothing and i'm I do this big flurry. I even use my immobilize. And then I transform. And I do all this. And I've taken off 8% of his health. And I'm like, man, I've got to charge up everything now. I've got to do all this stuff again.

And then just hope that I don't get a bad wave where he does this kick and then gets two or three attacks on me. And I'm three-quarters of my life's gone. And I've got to use my go-hard and stuff. So I had a little bit of a problem with that too it just seemed like they drug on and there wasn't a lot of um payoff for for all that effort of the combos you know when you're attacking i hear you i think one of my bigger complaints about the boss fights is hitbox consistency there are times when i was standing right next to a boss and i hit attack and it just doesn't hit and i don't know why and i've got the points into

significantly improves the range of your light attacks like you have to have that on in these fights and the uh the electric dragon at the beginning of chapter three is the one that i thought was the most poorly designed. You've got this dragon flying in the air. It finally lands and I'm swinging and you're hitting nothing. It's like I am literally two inches away. Yeah, the range is weird sometimes. Yeah, like you seem like you're right up on it, but your guy's just whiffing air too. So, you know, you kind of bring up a thing and we should probably talk about this very quickly because a lot of the negative reviews, especially when game the review embargo was up and you know a lot of the kind of bad ratings came out was oh performance issues you know the game's janky i fell through the floor uh you know

there was a lot of concerns and mentions of that have you guys had any issues whatsoever i did i had frame rate drops like twice and that's it this game never crashed i never had any real technical issues you did ryan i never had any crashes but i did i had some frame rate drops too i also had some like if you hold up your menu option like your right trigger to look at your stuff as you're running all of that i don't know if you guys had that it like stutters and shakes on the screen which is weird i never had that yeah if you hold it up while you're running it'll it'll like drag and almost shadow on itself so you can't even read it and then um i had some weird janky camera stuff where i just get like camera locked underneath the boss and then i couldn't move and circle around and and um that happened

not a ton a ton but more than i i would like to have happened and just weird stuff again, getting camera locked and then pushed off the side of a cliff or something dumb like that, which is probably more my fault being in that area. But there wasn't any crashes, but there was a few things weird with kind of just kind of not rubber bandy, but it was kind of just glitchy a little bit. But overall, it performed well. I was going to say for me, the performance has been flawless. I mean, I've maintained really good FPS in this game, and I've got it cranked out, max settings and all that.

I did have one crash to desktop where it was sudden. It wasn't like the game froze or anything where it was like I knew it was coming. I was doing something. Thankfully, it wasn't during a boss fight, but I was doing something. And then just all of a sudden, I was on my desktop. And I was like, oh, okay. But I'm 23.4 hours into this game. And that's the one crash that I've had.

So thankfully for us, and that's not to diminish where it happens for other people. But thankfully for us, this game has run flawlessly, in my opinion. I was really worried after those. I was waiting. And I'm like, where's all these tech issues, and it was just a couple things that i ran into but yeah overall it ran fine it ran more than good i am glad you mentioned the camera ryan i did have that once and it was the tiger boss the crouching tiger where i was like underneath him and the camera was looking straight up and then my character was still

running but the camera didn't move at all and so i was trying to fight without being able to see my guy i can hear the moves nice you know but the camera was just stuck in place so i did have that once as well but pretty minor over the course i mean i have 54 hours in this game and i can count on one hand you know the number of issues it's pretty minor all right there's so much more that we could cover this game is enormous you know we can quickly cover maybe a couple last things anything that you guys want to mention that stands out that hasn't been brought up yet i don't think so i mean you know there was conversation about, is this game just a boss rush game? Did you guys feel like that at all?

Yes. No. No, it's like Mortal Kombat with kind of an open world. You just go, fight a boss. Two steps, fight a boss. Three steps, fight a boss. I kind of asked this on purpose because I know with where Ryan's at, I felt the exact same way, Ryan. Like legitimately.

And we have our buddy Andy that actually heard me hyping this game up for so long that he picked it up. And then he said he refunded it after like two hours because it was like, he said, I spent 30 minutes on this one boss. I finally beat him. I jumped out of my chair. I ran for 60 seconds. And he's like, I made it to another boss. And he was like, I'm out. Dude, the boss fights are the best part of the game. I mean, I get it. I get it. But I mean, so it gets, in my opinion, it gets a lot better after chapter two, where again, I'm in the snow level where it's like, I can actually explore, I can fight trash mobs, look around and stuff like that. But there was a part of me when I

first started playing where, like I said, this game didn't hit for me in the beginning. I actually was fairly disappointed because of that. Like I was like, dude, another boss, like, is there any game to this or is this just boss fights? And as much as I love boss fights, don't get me wrong. Like after a while, I was kind of getting worried where I was like, is there anything else here? But the answer is yes. In my opinion is that it does open up a little bit and kind of give you a little bit more of that level exploration and, and, you know,

looking around and stuff like that. I don't know. Can you imagine playing Elden Ring without any of the bosses? Like, would that be a remarkable experience at all? I mean, Elden Ring's really so boring. I mean,

I don't know. No bosses, the discovery part of it. None of them. I mean, do you ever talk about killing trash mobs, Elden Ring's really good. It'd be so boring. I mean, I don't know, man. With no bosses. The discovery part of Elden Ring, I mean... Do you ever talk about killing trash mobs in Elden Ring? Dude, the trash mobs in Elden Ring will wreck you, dude. Of course they will, but it's not a memorable... You're not like, oh yeah, that one.

I mean, I get it. And again, that was one of the criticisms that people brought up, but I think it's just in the first chapter or two, it does feel that way a little bit, but it gets a lot better in my opinion. Yeah. I would just,

I would like, even if you kept them same amount, you know, 90 something bosses or what, 80 something bosses, give me just a little bit more of a gap to kind of get back in the flow of like, okay, fighting these trash mobs,

getting some more XP, getting some more spirit doing this. It gives me just that little break between the next, right here's the next big challenge you know and then i'm amped up for instead of okay all right that one's done and then boom you're right back into it again i just it that style just isn't for me oh yeah i that's crazy i think it's such a feature i love the number of bosses in this game that's i think what stands out the stands out. The trash mobs, if you press and hold your heavy attack, you can one-shot almost all of them. They're pretty easy.

To me, that's so much more boring than the bosses. I will say a lot of the invisible walls are a little bit of a bummer because it's like I can see an area and it looks like I should be able to run over there and I can't. I mean, that is to say, I know the game can't be fully open world, but there are some areas where they almost trick you. Like they make you think you're supposed to go that way to the next area and you just can't. You're running in place.

And then the last thing I was going to mention, the developer of this, Game Science, famously, it's their first AAA game. But they started development in 2018 with only 13 people. The fact that they cranked out a game like this after only six years of development with a pretty small team in the beginning is rather remarkable. I cannot believe how well polished this game is and how much care and all of the different animations and all of the different combos you can do. There is so much to this game. I'm shocked that they did this in six years. It's truly a AAA game. Looking at you, Bethesda. Yeah, that's true.

20 years for Starfield, right? And look at this game. I do feel like this is a true AAA title. I know that a lot of people were worried because this is their first game. Was it going to be a learning experience for them and stuff like that? But they nailed what they were trying to do, in my opinion. Well, and you can tell and feel, like Paul said, a passion project. And when you have people that are committed and devoted to making something that's not only just for monetary gain, it's actually for them too, that self-satisfaction and

gratification of creating something amazing. That's when you get something like this. And that's when the AAA titles, you know, really shine is when they can, you know, make something this awesome. There's some fun stories. If you even just read the Wikipedia page about how they put out the trailer for the purpose of recruiting more programmers. And the trailer was so beloved that they got 10,000 resumes and started building the team. So it's like they just wanted to plant the seeds. And then they brought in more people once they had the structure of the game and the look and the feel. And yeah, you can tell that they obviously added a ton of people over time.

But you hear about some of these games like Knights of the Old Republic. They worked on the remake for six years and they couldn't release it. And here you have Black Myth Wukong, which is built entirely from scratch. It's really impressive what they did here. All right. So last Twig episode when we were covering news, I said that I thought Black Myth Wukong had no chance at Game of the Year because the critic reviews were so low. I kind of wanted to revisit that. Now that we've all played it, do you guys see this getting a nomination? Do you think it might be in contention for Game of the Year or is it out?

I think it's definitely up for contention. I mean, the game, for what it's trying to do, it nails what it's trying to do in that regard. I don't think that this game tried to pretend to be something and then missed in that regard. It's more so, Ken, just an action-oriented, boss-fighting, beautiful graphics game, resonate with enough people, or whoever nominates these things for Game of the Year. Again, there's not much of a story here. This is all about the presentation and gameplay. Those are the two pillars for this game. But I think that's enough that I could definitely see it being in the running and being nominated at that point.

So I'm going to say yes. I think it could be in contention. I agree. I think it's got all the bones for what they look for. And, you know, not having, like, we didn't really have too many technical issues. It's beautiful gameplay. All of those things kind of check all those boxes for the nomination. I don't think it'll win. I'm still rooting on Space Marine 2 for sure. But yeah, I think it'll

definitely be in the running. I think it'll definitely be nominated after playing it. I don't know if politics will get in the way, kind of like how Hogwarts Legacy was such a phenomenal game, but you kind of saw it shut out. Maybe that'll come into play here as well. But my goodness, seeing this game as an 81 on Metacritic, that's a crime. That is so low. Yeah, that's insane to me. I don't get that. Maybe the reviewers version was just a lot worse, and somehow they patched it in the

meantime. I don't know. But I thought this game played incredibly well. I still think it's probably the heavy favorite. I would say it's like a two-man race with this and Space Marine 2. I don't know what else is going to touch it. Maybe Stellar Blade or Final Fantasy VII, but yeah, I would have my money on Black Mith Wukong still. All right, so let's go to our leaderboard. For people who don't know, you can go to videogamerspod.com. We have our top 10 leaderboards of top 10 games of all time, but then we also have our deep dive leaderboard. So anytime we cover a game like this, we each give it a score on a scale of 0.0 to 10.0, and then we come up with a consensus.

So if you ever want to see our thoughts on games, all of that's on the website. Ryan, let's start with you. I get the sense you're probably the lowest on this. I'm very curious to hear where you want to rank Black Myth Wukong. My rating has gone up and down as we talked about this. It's funny.

I keep scrolling up and down and I'm like, where do I want to put this? And then I'm looking back at my games in my list and I'm like, well, I liked it more than this, but I didn't like it more than that. And so, yeah, this one was hard for me because I do have – listen, I recognize what they did in this game. I recognize what makes it great for certain people that like this style. I mean, if you put it in the aspects of food, some people love certain types of food and other people want to puke just smelling it.

So it's kind of what your taste is. For this one, it's not my style. I just don't like these types of games. I don't like no story. I really, it's like having... There's a lot of story. Nah, there's not really that much story, dude. lot more than it's more than it's more than souls like for sure which is why this will be rated a lot higher than any souls i probably would uh play for sure but um for this one for me i'm gonna go 8.3 um okay i thought you'd get it

i was wanting i was gonna be in the sevens but then i i just i recognize that it's not it just isn't my style but i still did enjoy myself the the combat and the spells is what really took it over for me um i did enjoy that i did thoroughly enjoy that part it's just i hate i just hate the the kind of style of just fight a boss, fight a boss, fight a boss. Yeah, boss fights are fun, but I just want more with it. Famously, my wife always makes fun of me with food. I like sides. I like the meal, but I like to have sides too.

I want a little bit of flair. I want some other things to look at. So again, awesome game. Pick it up. I recommend it. It's just anyone else, if you like this style, you're going to love this game. So you've got it below Splitgate, Deep Rock Galactic, and Hellblade 2, and you've got it tied with Star Wars Jedi Survivor,

but above No Man's Sky, Payday 2, and Endless Dungeon. I'm a little surprised you have this below Hellblade 2. I'm a little shocked at that. I would have thought you'd have this one higher. I guess I didn't remember where Hellblade was. I think she might be a little too high. Nice. Well, we can always adjust it. Brian's like, I'm adjusting this. What about you, Josh? Where are you putting this? So my hope for this game was that this was going to be like the next 10 out of 10 game for me. I will say it's not. There are a lot of parts of this game that I really like. Part of this is I'm 24 hours in.

I feel like I should have a pretty good grasp of this game at this point. But I'm also starting to enjoy it more now than I did in the beginning. And so it's like, is it going to keep getting better? Because I feel like the level I'm also starting to enjoy it more now than I did in the beginning. And so it's like, is it going to keep getting better? Because I feel like the level I'm on now is a little bit more of what I wanted with a little bit more exploration. The vistas, there's a giant temple that I'm exploring, that kind of stuff. I've kind of got my head wrapped around the combat and stuff too. But this game does have some flaws to me. I think the boss fights, like I said, I do not like the feeling like I'm tickling a boss

and I have to land 30 combos on this boss and not get hit four times or something like that. So it is not a Souls-like game, which is fine. It's not supposed to be. Maybe I was expecting it to be. That doesn't mean that it doesn't stand on its own because there's a lot of very, very good parts of this game. But the game does have a few flaws to me as well. I am going to put this at an 8.7, which is high praise. I mean, that is not slander to this game at all. It just is not...

I think I was very hyped about, is this like Elden Ring, but with like Chinese mythology kind of thing, you know? And when I look at it, it is a different genre of game. Again, that's fine. But there are parts where it's like, I find myself like not getting super sucked in when I play it. I'll play this game for a solid 45 minutes, but then I'm like, okay, I'm done and I'm ready to go do something else because it starts to feel a little repetitive to me. Whereas like Elden Ring or even Dark Souls, I can play those games for hours, dude, like hours at a time. And there's just something about Black Myth Wukong that I have a lot of fun for those 45 minutes, but then I'm just kind of done and I need to go take a break.

And then I want to play again the next day kind of thing. And it's like, oh, let me hop back into Black Myth. But I can't put my finger on it, but it doesn't suck me in into these hours and hour-long sessions like I'm kind of used to with these types of games. And so I don't know if that is the frequency of the bosses, the fact that I don't feel like there's a lot of variation in the combos with the weapons and stuff like that. Again, I love the spells. The combat's fun. But I feel like it's just lacking that something magical for me. And maybe that was just my hype level. And it's like, hey, it's super hard to match what my hype level was for this. But that is not to say I don't like this game. I'm having a lot of fun with it. But it's not in that upper tier for me where it's like 9 you know, nine point whatever and higher, you know, so I think it's great. I would recommend it to somebody that likes the style. I would not recommend it to somebody like Ryan, where I'm like, Ryan, I do not think you're going to like this game. I didn't think you were going

to like this at all, to be honest with you. But yeah, for me, 8.7, I think that I think it's a very, very good video game. It just is missing some kind of magic to me that prevents it from being like in that upper echelon of games. So kind of funnily enough, you have the game also very close to Hellblade 2 and No Man's Sky. Hellblade 2 is like, it's weird because that was actually like, I almost gave it an 8.9. You know what I mean? Because, but it's like, I, Hellblade 2 is more memorable to me. I'm going to remember those moments, you know, like i hellblade 2 is more memorable to me i'm gonna remember those moments you know out of hellblade 2 that really stood out now there was a lot of boring moments i'm not saying there weren't but black myth wukong like even at this point it's like i can remember

i fought probably 30 bosses at this point and it's like i can remember like four of them you know what i mean like and so that's like that's kind of the thing where it's like you know it's like there's a few that stand's like, that's kind of the thing where it's like, you know, it's like, there's a few that stand out, but for the most part, a lot of them were just kind of like, okay,

yeah, I fought some dude to beat him. And that's that. So again, not slander towards the game at all. I think it's, I think it's a very, very good video game.

I just, I think I was hoping for a little bit more out of it and it's not the game's fault by any means in that regard, but you know, yeah, 8.7. Okay. Yeah. For me, this game hit on almost every cylinder. I think the combat is incredibly interactive. I think managing the 14 different systems between might and focus and key and mana and health and all that stuff, Swapping out your abilities between fights. That's something that we also didn't talk about.

Like you can only have three of your spells equipped and so tinkering with that. Figuring out what works on each boss I loved. I only got frustrated on two bosses the entire time. This to me is exactly what I would want for something that's Souls adjacent, since I don't like Souls games. I'm actually a little surprised Ryan wasn't a little higher because of the fact that he and I don't like Souls. And yet I absolutely loved this game on almost every level. I am giving it a 9.7. Oh!

This to me is so high. I think this is so much, so much better uh even than god of war ragnarok which i absolutely loved you take that back better than dos 2 wow it is yeah i've got it above those i've got it above hell divers 2 this is by far the best game i've played this year and it's not even i mean i love hearing that i love hearing it like Like, that makes me happy. But I would never have guessed that Paul would like this game this much. When he said he had 50 hours, I'm like, oh, yeah. Paul liked this game. I mean, I knew when he was like, I'm almost done with this game that it was like, because

this is like, what, a 40, 50-hour game? I mean, they say like 35 to 40, but I don't know what that even means. And I don't, I'm not sat in a menu at all and i'm halfway a little past halfway through so it's like it kind of makes sense that this is a 40 hour game um maybe a little bit longer if you're exploring and doing some of the optional stuff too but yeah i'm 54 hours in and i'm nowhere near done yeah yeah i i absolutely love it my only little minor hits would be the story is not as strong as something like you know red dead 2 or cyberpunk but uh the story i still found to be very interesting and having

those animated cut scenes in between the chapters really helps i think the number of bosses is an absolute strength of the game i i love almost everything about it. My only knocks on it are some of the hitbox issues, and a couple of the bosses really do need to be tweaked, because they're just not on par with the others. And I'm not quite done with it, so maybe my thoughts will change a little as I work through the rest of Chapter 5 and into 6. I am not a person who will sit and play a game very long i say that all the time the only game that i've ever played long sessions of was satisfactory with josh but this game was is is one of those ones where i did um elden ring is a game i had to play for an hour and i had to quit

i could not play that game longer than one hour at a time this one i would play for two and a half three hours that's funny you guys are literally session yeah paul and i are literally like backwards where i could sit and play elden ring for six hours straight and black myth i can play for like an hour and then i need to take a break and it's like the exact opposite for paul i found myself struggling to come log into play like and i would have fun for you know half an hour to an hour. And then I just got like, I really don't want to play this anymore. And then it would rinse and repeat. For me, the pendulum between fun and challenging, this is square in the middle. It is almost perfect.

Heck yeah, dude. That's awesome. Yeah. All right. Any final thoughts? Anything else to say before wrapping this one up? I think that's it, man. We're an hour and 23 minutes in now

so yeah yeah this is one of our longer ones in a while yeah i mean that wraps up this deep dive i will say for this being my last deep dive i'm glad how much i love it yeah i mean following up heavy rain with blackmuth wukong like these are very near the top of my leaderboard so yeah i'm very glad that i loved this one. As a reminder, please go check out Patreon support options. Ryan mentioned all of that earlier. You can do that at MultiplayerSquad.com. Make sure to follow us on socials everywhere at Video Gamers Pod and rate the show five stars. We'll be back breaking down gaming news on Thursday. Make sure to come check that out and make sure to hit the follow button so you don't miss any content. And until next time,

happy gaming. See ya. All right. See everybody.