I'm a day one player and would absolutely recommend Wuthering Waves to anyone who enjoys the following: an evolving story, wonderful visuals, fun combat, and amazing music.
DISCLAIMER: Be sure you can either RESIST spending, spend RESPONSIBLY, or have DISPOSIBLE income that won't harm you to use. It is a GACHA at the end of the day, self control and financial security come first.
1.) The story of Wuthering Waves starts off feeling lackluster, but it serves the purpose of World Building. 1.0-1.2 serve to teach you terms, how systems interact, and set the tone for what is to come, however what comes after this is where the game picks up and doesn't stop picking up. Making it through to 2.0 and onward lends to enjoyable story, dialogue and cutscenes culminating in spectacle. As we make it through 3.0 the writing takes an even stronger turn, emotionally gripping moments, callbacks to earlier references, everything from the start makes sense as long as you pay attention. Knowing Kuro Games, it'll only be getting better from here, at least I would hope so.
2.) The breathtaking environments get more stunning every new addition. The starting areas of Huanglong are nice, especially the city of Jinzhou, but the dystopian, war-torn land leaves much to be desired although it makes sense with the lore. Once we progress forwards in the story, every new addition gets increasingly more impressive. The difference between the natural and Wuxia and Xanxia inspired Mengzhou and the worn out post-apocalyptic vibes of Jinzhou's surroundings is a lovely tale showing the different effects of large-scale war. Exploration is really fun and rewarding.
3.) The combat is definitely interesting, I would say within the top 5 of the space. Teams of three utilizing their variety of combos, skills, ultimates, and buffing each other in a variety of ways. Skill based dodging, parrying, and mechanics do exist and reward you for performing well. You can choose to play fast paced teams requiring intricate switching and use of long attack animations to keep characters on field, or just use straightforward teams that swap in a set order. The "Quickswap" playstyle as it is called can be highly rewarding and adrenaline pumping.
4.) The music in the first few areas are very thematically fitting, but again early content leaves much to be desired. This is when they were still optimizing the direction to take the game in. But as many joke, Kuro Games is a music company that also has games. This is as true for their other game Punishing Gray Raven as it is for Wuthering Waves. The soundtrack for the game is phenomenal, the only gripe I would have is that some songs should be full length extended because you end up wanting more of them!
This is not to say that the game is not without its faults, albeit they do work hard on addressing desires and concerns that players submit through feedback and surveys.
1.) Teams. This is something that plagues majority of gacha games, especially when they go on for years. My main problem is when a mechanic is introduced or an existing one is expanded upon, new characters tend to need new characters to perform. An example would be the character Zani that depends on the character Phoebe as a teammate to perform optimally. Then a year later a new mechanic drops in Tune Break, the old characters cannot benefit from the new Tune mechanic enhancements although they can perform Tune Breaks. However of course, every NEW character can with things like Tune Burst, Tune Rupture, and Tune Strain. This creates the desire or need to spend if someone wants to optimize their characters as they rarely ever release more accessible 4 Star characters.
2.) Farming Echoes. Echoes are the summons and equipment that you need to farm in order to optimize your character's performance. It can take forever to find good stats for your characters, or you can get lucky and finish them in one day. This is every Gacha with this system, however my REAL problem with Echoes is that new characters require new sets which makes old sets obsolete yet can't be converted into Exp. This is probably my second biggest issue with Wuthering Waves.
3.) Powercreep. This exists in most gachas with this system and gameplay, and it makes sense as there needs to be a reason for characters to be pulled in the future other than "they're fun" or "they look nice." Making strong characters gives hardcore players a reason to pull other than personal attachments. However, if the latest endgame content can no longer be comfortably cleared with well invested old teams, there's a problem. No one should HAVE to pull new characters in order to compete. The fact that a god-strength level character such as Cartethyia with 3 extra copies of her is no longer competitive to the base strength of the latest character Qingxiao is a huge problem. The fact that a Zani team can stuggle to clear Spectro weak content is a problem. The fact that the 1.0 characters are currently unusable is a problem.
All in all, I love the game, it is a great experience that isn't necessarily perfect as nothing can be, but it strives its best to appeal to its playerbase. Kuro listens although they don't always get it right the first time, but they do try. Would recommend someone to do a free to play playthrough of the game or to at least consume the story through other media such as YouTube videos or Reddit lore posts.
