Genshin Impact changed the free-to-play gaming landscape by delivering a robust open world adventure on par with most AAA releases. Developer Kuro Games echoes many of these elements in Wuthering Waves (available on mobile, PC, and PS5), but adds its own spin on the genre as well. While the expansive open world is a given, Wuthering Waves also delivers highly energetic action combat, rich RPG customization, superb movement systems, and terrific presentation, all of which thrust it to the top of the heap and earn it an Editors’ Choice award alongside its equally engaging inspiration.
What Is Wuthering Waves?
Wuthering Waves is a free-to-play, open-world action-RPG. You start with a limited roster of playable characters and engage with a gacha system to earn new fighters (you can have three in a party) and specialized weapons. In this respect, it’s no different than Genshin Impact or Honkai: Star Rail.
(Credit: Kuro Games/PCMag)Playing as the Rover, you awaken in the world of Solaris-3. In this post-apocalyptic alternate universe, mankind has rebuilt society after a grave calamity called the Lament. However, remnants of this catastrophe still plague the world, and nefarious happenings behind the scenes are poised to plunge it back into chaos. The story takes you across the world, where the Rover must end the evil machinations threatening peace.
In truth, the story feels like a rudimentary framework to drive the world and gameplay, especially early on. There is quite a bit of jargon tossed your way during the opening hours, which is difficult to parse as you get your bearings. Wuthering Waves eases the exposition dumps after the first major story arc, becoming more relatable and easier to follow. The voice-acting performances and visual flair skyrocket as you advance.
Exploring the World
Solaris-3 has puzzles, hidden treasures, exploration rewards, and, of course, combat encounters. There are many region-based activities, too. You may escort butterflies across a zone in one scenario and sort Tetris-like blocks in another. Wuthering Waves includes mini-dungeons, though they aren’t as complex or extensive as those seen in the Zelda series. As a dungeon-crawling fan, this is one Wuthering Waves aspect I’d like to see expanded.
(Credit: Kuro Games/PCMag)Wuthering Waves makes free-form movement a major aspect of exploration. Like Genshin Impact and The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, it lets you climb virtually anything, including cliffs, trees, and walls. Wuthering Waves adds a fun wuxia spin to this formula by letting you wall-run along any climbable surface. Your character also automatically parkour-hops over smaller obstacles while dashing, which makes movement dynamic and fluid. As a result, exploration is extremely enjoyable as you investigate new landmarks and points of interest.
This is especially true once the story takes you to Rinascita, the Europe-inspired new region added to Wuthering Waves with the 2.0 update. The Rinascita islands allow you to fly, letting you explore the zone however you like. Flying is especially satisfying, as you have liberal amounts of stamina to spend while zipping through the air, and you can quickly restore it by landing for a moment. You never feel restricted when you get to a new area: everything feels accessible right from the start, which is impressive considering the world’s size.
Perhaps the only real limitation comes from the sea. Later zones, such as the Black Shores, Mt. Firmament, and Rinascita, are segregated from the mainland by large bodies of water you can’t cross. In these cases, you must let the story take you to them. But once they’re unlocked, you can explore them at will.
Excellent Action Chops
Kuro Games has already established itself in the mobile/gacha gaming market with its previous title, Punishing: Gray Raven, an action game blending anime-style spectacle with intense combat. This frenetic edge is what makes Wuthering Waves particularly outstanding.
(Credit: Kuro Games/PCMag)Wuthering Waves features a character-swapping, team-based system similar to Genshin Impact. However, each character has unique intro and outro abilities that make swapping far more synergistic (they’re similar to Zenless Zone Zero‘s tag mechanics). In addition, Wuthering Waves features considerable amounts of aerial combat, with some characters letting you perform lengthy juggle combos that vastly expand your offensive options.
Defeated enemies drop Echoes, which are equipable, stat-boosting summons you can call into battle, similar to the Yokai skills in Nioh 2. Finally, the game also incorporates a Final Fantasy XVI-style parry system, where a well-timed melee strike clashes with certain enemy attacks, leaving the foe open to a counterattack. Altogether, the action is fun, fluid, and impressively robust.
Kuro Games designs much of the end-game content around fighting waves of enemies and bosses for completion rewards, such as level-up materials and Astrite, the gacha currency. Wuthering Waves also has its tower and gauntlet challenges that get remixed every few weeks. Hologram boss battles also litter the world with scaling difficulty and rewards, so there’s always something to fight and build toward.
One element I would like to see expanded is the style-ranking system, which judges your combat prowess during a given encounter. Right now, only specific challenges and scenarios present you with this Devil May Cry-like meter. Seeing your style rank climb from D to S as you pull off parries and combos is tremendously satisfying.
However, I wish the parry had a dedicated input rather than simply using your melee attack, since it’s easy to mistime a parry when you’re mid-combo. Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance addresses this by requiring a directional input with your attack, letting you cancel into a parry at any time. A system like this would greatly tighten your defense and make the mechanic more useful. Nonetheless, Wuthering Waves’ combat is highly rewarding, and is easily the game’s strongest pillar.
Monetization and Responsible Spending
Wuthering Waves is a free-to-play game. Nothing is truly free, however, and the gacha system is how titles like these turn a profit. You get a limited team of characters to start the game, and temporary allies join the battle during key story sections. However, if you want a team of warriors, you must engage with the gacha system.
(Credit: Kuro Games/PCMag)The game awards you with gacha currency, called Astrite, when you complete daily quests, weekly quests, events, and story chapters. With Astrite, you can purchase Tides to roll on characters from the Standard and Limited banners. You aren’t guaranteed the character you want, so you must do a bit of gambling with your hard-earned Astrite to get whoever you set your eyes on.
You can also purchase Astrite with real money, which is where the danger lies. Spending real money for more gambling currency speeds up the recruitment process, but this can quickly get out of hand. Generally, a single pull on a banner costs about $2.50 when you cut through the naming jargon. It takes 80 pulls to guarantee a premier character, and even then, you only have a 50% chance of getting the character on the banner.
The cost adds up, so we’d encourage you not to engage with this system if you don’t have the discipline to gamble responsibly. Wuthering Waves is perfectly payable without spending money. Don’t let FOMO drive you to spend when you shouldn’t.
Can Your PC Run Wuthering Waves?
Wuthering Waves isn’t especially demanding, but it requires more resources than Genshin Impact, its closest analog. Your PC should have an AMD Ryzen 2700 or Intel i5 CPU, an AMD Radeon RX 570 or Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 GPU, 16GB of RAM, 30GB of storage, and the Windows 10 operating system to play at minimum settings. My test PC, equipped with an AMD Ryzen 5 3600 processor, Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 GPU, and 16GB of RAM, let me smoothly play at 1440p and 60 frames per second with minor frame dips while exploring the overworld.
The game benefits tremendously from an SSD installation. I made the mistake of installing it on an HDD at first and encountered extensive loading issues, which adversely affected the experience. They disappeared when playing from an SSD.
Wuthering Waves supports both keyboard and mouse controls, as well as gamepads. It isn’t available on Steam Deck by default, but you can run it by dual-booting Windows. However, a Windows-based Steam Deck alternative should let you play on the go.
Verdict: A Fun, Action-Packed Adventure
Wuthering Waves is packed with style and challenge. The synergistic tag-team elements, tight defensive abilities, and aerial combat mechanics give it a thrilling Devil May Cry-like flair. Likewise, smooth movement abilities make travel fast and convenient, and the newest region introduces even more options, making exploration as fun as combat. The story is the title’s weakest link, but even that only falters during the introductory arc, quickly shifting gears into something vastly more interesting during the later chapters. Aside from a few minor nitpicks, Wuthering Waves is a fantastic release and an Editors’ Choice winner for free-to-play, open-world action-RPGs.
