tl;dr - Mystical Ninja feat Goemon if it was a chinese soulslike that took it seriously.
Ok, not exactly THAT zanny, but a lot of interesting and unique takes on the genre.
Pros:
+ Pretty good soulslike
+ Beautiful
+ Way more forgiving in comparisons to other soulslikes
+ Gigantic cast of mini bosses
+ Neat mixed media rewards several times throughout the game
+ Chinese mythology a fresh change of pace (it's usually very difficult to do well/accurately)
+ Interesting for many people that aren't super familiar with Journey to the West
Cons:
- Definitely a grind if you can't roll what you need
- Hope you like opening the map because you will get lost
- Secret ending is a SLOG
- Gigantic cast of mini bosses
- Limited gameplay because you get access all three stances early and the gameplay becomes about your rechargeable abilities, which can be a drag
- GPU GO BRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR
- 140 funking gigs, dude. Wild.
Overall the experience was pretty dope, I'm glad I played it. However, I am of the opinion that the Chinese government padded a lot of the numbers. You're going to sit here and tell me that 46.3% of the 30 million copies bought were able to get through the game, with 41.8% getting through the True ending boss? Seriously? But Sekiro, a comparable soulslike with a similar system has only 18.1% of people that finished the NORMAL ending? It just doesn't make sense.
I liked running around and meeting the characters, lots of fun characters, lots of new kinds of stories because while I'm somewhat familiar, I don't know a toooooon about chinese mythology. So seeing visual representations of Chinese Buddhist and Taoism represented was pretty cool. I can't believe they made it so I can't make the full funking Bull King set in the first set.
I feel the fact there's no cosmetic picking is a bummer, there were a few early pieces that I was going nuts over, only to be dropped by the next one. Feels like a misstep. People are vain, they want to play their monkey character in the outfit they pick.
I think people that like soulslikes and don't want to invest a TON of brain power will like this. Gameplay cycle is pretty tight, if a little bland over time, but I feeeeeeel like it's ok to overlook that and keep pushing forward. I don't feel it was 2024's game of the year, though.
Pretty good game.
